Matt McCarten: The next thing you know, the police will be firing a taser at my workers

I see the president of the police union is advocating that police officers should have the right to take industrial action over their wage claims. So it's a bit rich that members of his union are arresting supermarket workers who have been locked out of their jobs by the multi-national owner of Foodtown, Woolworths and Countdown stores.

I was even less impressed when on Thursday his union members arrested two of my union staff who had gone to support supermarket workers on a picket. One of them was a young woman who has only just started working with us. Our new staffer and the other picketers got a lesson in police "objective professionalism". Thirty workers were picketing a transport company that was "scabbing" on the locked-out workers.

One trucking contractor aggressively drove his huge truck into the picket line, at the same time leaning out of his window swinging an iron bar at the workers. As you can imagine, tempers flared. Eggs were thrown and the truck's tyres were let down. According to the workers, a young cop turned up and called in seven patrol cars and a paddy wagon. The cops started arresting people at random even though the workers had already backed off. My new staffer was standing on the footpath when a cop signalled to her to come and talk to him. He then arrested her. She still has no idea why she was arrested. The only thing she can think of was that one of the workers being arrested handed her his megaphone to hold.

Of course, it was distressing for the workers as their workmates were being manhandled, handcuffed and arrested for no reason. Workers claim that the cops were trying to provoke the workers into a confrontation. Even when the union official in charge of the picket was calming the workers down, the cops arrested him, too. Tellingly, the truck contractor who started the fracas wasn't arrested. It's a good thing workers are such a law-abiding lot so the more excitable members of the police union didn't have the excuse to pull out their taser guns for a bit of zapping practice.

Once arrested, the workers were told that if they signed a bit of paper admitting to a charge and paid a fine, they wouldn't have to go to court and have their arrest appear on their record. They were told that everyone else had signed it. When my new staffer refused, she was taken to the senior cop, who said: "Look, Love, just sign it like all the others so we can all go home." She didn't, and when she was released, she found out that none of the workers had signed either and had been told the same thing.

One worker made a rueful observation: "How is it right that there are 600 of us locked out by our boss and we have no money, yet the police help the boss to hurt us?"

In times like this it comes as a shock to people when they realise that when there is a conflict between capital and labour, the state forces always seem to side with capital.

And before I have the right-wingers start up their rhetoric about union militancy, I'll remind you that these workers aren't on strike. It's the boss who is on strike, trying to use economic muscle to bludgeon these workers into submission on his terms.

All these workers are asking for is some parity between their distribution centres between Auckland, Palmerston North and Christchurch. They used to have the same deal. But in 2003 their owners "streamlined" them and cancelled their national agreement. Since then, wages and conditions have gotten worse as the owners have employed new staff on lesser pay.

Last year, the company promised the workers and their union, the National Distribution Union (NDU), to start negotiations for a national agreement, but since the buyout by the Australians, it seems the owners have changed their minds and have made it a non-negotiable demand that the workers give their request for a national agreement. When the workers took a 48-hour strike in protest, the senior bosses retaliated by locking the workers out of their jobs. They have demanded that the workers capitulate to all of their demands before they let them back to work.

Despite the company's claims of unaffordable demands, these workers are in fact asking for an 8 per cent increase, which they say is negotiable, and a return to parity between the centres over a period of time. The owner's squeals at these "outrageous demands" are silent when it comes to reaping profits.

The chief executive, Roger Corbett, said that Foodtown, Woolworths and Countdown's profits had increased 24 per cent in the last year to over a billion dollars. The supermarket workers say that the "lockout-busting strategy" is spearheaded by a recent import from Australia, Marty Hamnett. This high-flyer was appointed the New Zealand boss last year after the Woolworths Australia giant swallowed Foodtown, Woolworths and Countdown. The word is that Hamnett is being positioned for the top chief executive's role at Woolworths Australia when head Corbett retires. This role gets A$8.5 million (NZ$10 million) a year.

Woolworths Australia sends its senior management to the internationally renowned union-busting Wal-Mart in the United States to learn the tactics employed there to keep workers low paid. Now it seems these tactics have arrived in New Zealand. I guess if we don't believe it's our business that an overseas monster is using its muscle to intimidate low-paid workers, then we'll keep shopping at their stores.