Ministers call in to reclaim the roots

By Chris Daniels

Prime Minister-designate Helen Clark, Attorney-General Margaret Wilson and Transport Minister Mark Gosche made an important social visit yesterday.

Hours after the new Labour/Alliance Executive was named, they went to the Petone headquarters of the Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union.

The meeting between union officials and a victorious Labour Party was the culmination of an operation to retrieve the party from the heady free-market days, fronted between 1984 and 1990 by Roger Douglas and Richard Prebble.

The union movement has provided some common ground and helped broker peace between Labour and the breakaway hard left wing of the Alliance.

Many of the new cabinet of 1999 started the journey to a ministerial limousine with the trade union movement.

And a number of those elevated cut their teeth in the Service Workers Union.

In 1993, the Service Workers Union - formed from a merger of hospital, hotel, restaurant workers and cleaners, caretakers and clerical workers - claimed a great victory in the general election, when six of its officials stood for Labour and half were elected.

With Lianne Dalziel, who was re-elected in 1993, they made up nearly 10 per cent of Labour's 1993 caucus.

"We are as big as the two minor parties," said Mark Gosche, then still an official of the union.

After 22 years as a unionist and three as an MP, Mr Gosche yesterday made it into the cabinet as Minister of Transport, Housing, and Pacific Island Affairs.

MMP has also allowed those who left Labour to set up NewLabour and the Alliance to take seats around the cabinet table.

"But the Labour Party is not just a party of trade unionists," says Mr Gosche.

"We did feel that frustration in 1984-1990 that the party had been hijacked.

"We knew the answer was to remain politically active, and we have been proven right. We've seen off the likes of Prebble and Douglas. The balance is back."

Just as Maori have "come home to Labour," says Mr Gosche, so has the formal part of the trade union membership.

The 1993 election was a landmark in the reclamation project, when the Service Workers' Rick Barker won Hastings, Taito Phillip Field won Otara and Southland organiser Mark Peck beat National MP Rob Munro.

Lianne Dalziel, now in charge of the Immigration and Senior Citizens and an Associate Minister of Education, was once the union's Canterbury region secretary. She was voted into Parliament in 1990.

The proliferation of Service Workers Union officials in the new cabinet is no accident of fate, but rather the result of a definite strategy explained by Mr Gosche after the 1993 victories.

"It's a deliberate policy to get more working people, particularly with a union background, into Parliament," he said.

Unlike other unions, which "criticised Labour from the sidelines," the Service Workers Union believed its best chance of influencing policy was to be inside the party and inside the caucus.

"We've earned the positions those people ended up achieving through hard work and loyalty to a party that perhaps sometimes didn't deserve the loyalty it got."

Reflecting on the early 1990s, Mr Gosche said it was difficult to persuade union members to get out and support a Labour Party that had moved so far from its roots.

"We have been through the worst of times, but I am now part of a Labour Party our forebears would be proud of. It's taken a long time."

Alliance MP Matt Robson, a former barrister and legal officer for the Hotel Workers Union, sees no surprise in the trade union background of many new ministers.

Business groups, farmers and landowners the world over joined together to push for common goals, he said.

The first Labour Government of 1935 was born from organised labour's wish to be represented in Parliament.

It was natural that these groupings eventually became political parties.

And working for a trade union often led people to look at the bigger picture, said Mr Robson.

"You advocate for people, plus you look at the larger picture - many problems have a social origin.

"Workers have problems with housing, education ... whatever.

"Sometimes you can't solve a problem just in relation to the union; you must solve it on a wider political level."

Trade unions played an important part in bringing Alliance and Labour together, said Mr Robson.

"They said they would 'like you two to work together but we want the Labour Party to return to its original principles'."

This push for a united left wing came not from union officials but from the grassroots of the movement.

"We accepted that pressure, but it's been good and bad for us," he said This "bad" has been giving up any chance of seriously criticising the senior coalition partner and losing some of the Alliance's public anger.

"It was absolutely essential to show people you could have a united centre-left which could form a government," he said.

So stage one of reclaiming the Labour Party of their forefathers is over. Now the union movement is hoping this new-look party of the worker can deliver.

A long-standing Labour promise to abolish the Employment Contracts Act and replace it with more union-friendly legislation is an immediate priority for the movement.

The union campaign to get a new-look Labour Party in government is over.

Now the union movement is waiting for words to become actions.