Sometimes, underdogs can win

Unite union has scored a moral as well as actual victory with their steadfast opposition to zero-hour contracts. Photo / Nick Reed

Turnaround over zero-hour contracts demonstrates power of unions and value of minimum standards.

How pleasing it was to see Labour Minister Michael Woodhouse walk back from the worst excesses of zero-hour contracts this week.

Granted, it came after he was given the tap on the shoulder by Cabinet, who had been given the tap on the shoulder by PR advisers, who had been given the tap on the shoulder by pollsters, with the advice that the public had turned against them.

Publicity around these ridiculously exploitative contracts had certainly helped the cause, but so had the Minister himself, inadvertently. Most people know enough about the world and its shades of grey to realise that being told by the Minister to just go and get another job if you don't like it is fine for an IT specialist in Auckland, but not so appropriate for a minimum wage mother of three in Taumarunui.

One of the more interesting things about this turnaround, other than the fact it proves once more - as if we need it - that the market should never be allowed to act upon any citizens without the protection of minimum standards laid out in appropriate legislation - is the role of the Unite union.

Lord have mercy, that union has come in for some pretty spectacular bashing from the Government's allies and the public at large. They've been labelled crazy, corrupt, racist, and both insignificant and too significant, among other things. You occasionally see them standing alongside six or seven incredibly brave souls outside a major multinational, waving placards and blowing horns, fighting on behalf of the most marginalised workers in this country for things that, inexplicably, employers are under no obligation to provide, such as tea breaks. They've had both a moral and actual victory with their consistent opposition to zero-hour contracts, and deserve a hearty slap on the back. They and other unions are working to ensure New Zealanders are able to feed themselves and their families doing an honest day's work, and a reasonable person cannot fault them for that. But they're probably in for double the drubbing. After all, our discourse is dominated by the rubbishing of do-gooders. People who work on ideas to combat obesity, including no fast-food advertising during children's programmes or a tax on sugar, are called "nanny statists". Environmental scientists working to ensure we have clean water are ridiculed and called "traitors". Unions working to ensure basic rights are communists. Those trying to feed hungry children are left-wing loonies (and their parents useless), and John Campbell, one of the few prime time television voices to try to get answers to real questions, is a chardonnay socialist.

What binds these people together is that they are people who care about this country and the people in it, and want to ensure its long-term health and wellbeing. As far as John Campbell goes, there is undoubtedly an element of ego to it as there is with all journalists, but the fact is he is driven by a desire to make New Zealand better. Ironically, this seemed to have endangered his job: if he sat back and talked crap night after night for the past few years he'd be a bosom buddy to every powerbroker in town.

On a related note, I had to laugh as I imagined the reaction of some to chef Jamie Oliver's prescription for a better Britain as revealed in the Independent newspaper this week. His ideas on how to put public health and wellbeing at the centre of everything if he were prime minister would have many in New Zealand blowing a gasket. Zero tax on fruit and vegetables, clear and honest food labelling, food and agriculture removed from the TPP, a soda tax with proceeds used on preventative public health messages, nutritious food prescribed for every school and retirement home, fast-food outlets banned from government property or next to schools - all common sense ideas that would eventually mean a lower public spend on healthcare. Ideas that reflect the fact we are part of a community, a community that will ultimately be degraded if we accept it is natural to leave large groups behind in the quest for endless growth.

New Zealand is in danger of doing precisely that. Just how far we have fallen is easy to measure in many ways, one being that in 2015, feeding hungry kids breakfast is considered a political act. In better times this was simply a sensible thing to do.