Who will make it on to the New Year Honours List this year?
Video / NZHerald
Edgar Spark, a longtime staunch advocate for railway workers’ rights and employment conditions, has been made a member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to railway unions.
Spark, from Paekākāriki, said the New Year Honours accolade came “a bit out of the blue”.
“Union officials don’t tend to get looked on kindly by governments.”
His career with New Zealand Railways started in January 1959, shortly after leaving Penrose High School (now One Tree Hill College) and becoming employed in the telecommunications division and working in Auckland, Wellington, Palmerston North, Taumarunui and Hamilton.
It was in Taumarunui when he first got “into union business”.
“A group of people felt they had been hard done by. There’s nothing worse than a sense of injustice to drive an effort to change the world.”
He has held various roles over the years, two of them being general secretary of the Railway Officers Institute in the early 1980s and general secretary of the Combined Union of Railway Employees in the early 1990s.
Noeline and Edgar Spark at home in Paekākāriki. Photo / David Haxton
It was an extremely demanding time and “life was hard”.
“At the end of the 1980s Railways was something over 20,000 people ... but [the Government] chopped down to about 12,000 ... and it got even worse.
“I’ve seen grown men cry.”
Spark said work became all-consuming and he became unhealthy, leading to a defining moment in 1995.
“I didn’t have a life and was working 11 hours a day seven days a week ... and then I collapsed, probably from stress, and was taken to Wellington Hospital.
“That was when I decided I needed to change my life.
“When you go for a ride in an ambulance it does one or two things to you — it makes you re-evaluate things, or you die, I suspect.”
Spark took on a lesser role before retiring in 1998 but undertook various railway-related voluntary roles, including a long stint as NZ Railway Superannuitants Association president.
Helping railway workers was a key part of Edgar Spark's career. Photo / David Haxton
Asked about his highlights, Spark said seeing people become better off and getting on with their life, after union help, was special.
“A lot of people, probably without the assistance of others, would have gone, as my wife’s grandmother used to say, blue-mouldy.
“Little wins on behalf of real people are what sort of drove the effort.”
Spark paid special tribute to his wife Noeline, whom he first met at the start of his career in Railways. The couple had three children: Shane, Jennifer and Claire.
