About 10,000 public servants will join a nationwide
strike across New Zealand on Wednesday. It will be the
country’s largest industrial action since the October 23,
2025 strike by more than 100,000 teachers and healthcare
workers.
Pickets or rallies have been announced in
Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and 13 other cities and
towns.
Those participating include workers from the
Department of Internal Affairs (DIA), the National Emergency
Management Agency (NEMA), the Ministry for Ethnic
Communities (MEC), the Ministry of Business, Innovation and
Employment (MBIE), and the Ministry of Social Development
(MSD).
In each of these departments, workers have been
offered a pay rise below the annual rate of inflation, which
stood at 4.1 percent for the 12 months to June. Petrol
prices increased 27.5 percent, driven up by the criminal US
war against Iran, while electricity prices rose by 12
percent.
In the same period wages increased by only 2
percent, and in the public sector 1.7 percent, which follows
several years of plummeting real wages.
Prime Minister
Christopher Luxon lashed out at the strike on September 1,
dismissing it as “politically motivated.” The Public
Service Association (PSA), which called the strike, is
supporting the opposition Labour Party’s campaign for the
November 7 election.
The National Party-led government
is imposing a brutal austerity agenda, which has included
cutting wages for teachers and healthcare workers, slashing
welfare and public housing entitlements and refusing to
properly fund hospitals. Firefighters are holding regular
strikes against planned pay cuts and equipment that
constantly breaks down.
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The government’s May budget
announced plans for 8,700 more job cuts to reduce the core
public sector workforce by 14 percent. Public Service
Commissioner Sir Brian Roche has also recommended that the
government take steps to reduce the number of departments
and agencies from 42 to 15-20 over the next three to five
years.
There is seething anger in the working class
over the deepening social crisis and the gutting of public
services. The union bureaucracy, however, has played the key
role in preventing any organised resistance by
workers.
On September 2, the PSA’s Duane Leo told
Radio NZ (RNZ) that workers were striking to demand “a
fair pay deal” and said, “this government is a clear and
present danger to PSA members and working New Zealanders.”
He noted that the DIA had offered “less than 1 percent for
the majority of staff” and MSD’s offer to its workforce
was only slightly higher.
When the interviewer stated
that most workers in NZ are not getting a 4 percent pay
increase to match inflation, Leo replied: “We’re not
asking for 4 percent… what we’re asking [for] is more
than 1 percent.” In other words, the PSA leadership is not
even demanding a real wage rise, just a slightly less severe
cut!
The PSA has sought to limit the impact of the
September 9 strike as much as possible: it will go for about
5 hours for most workers and only 2 hours for MSD
staff.
The union will then return to negotiations with
the government to devise a series of sellout agreements for
each agency.
That is what happened following the
October 2025 “mega strike.” The unions refused to
organise any further joint strikes and pressured the
teachers, nurses and other healthcare workers to accept real
wage cuts. In February, the PSA pushed through a pay
increase for 12,300 allied health workers of just 2.5
percent in the first 12 months and 2 percent in the second
year—well below the increase in the cost of
living.
The PSA is promoting the illusion that a
change of government will improve conditions for workers.
Speaking at a PSA event on September 2, Labour Party leader
Chris Hipkins declared that under Labour “there will be no
restructure or cost cutting unless we understand the
consequences of every decision” and agreed with the PSA
that there should be a “national interest test” for any
cuts. Such statements do not commit Labour to
anything.
The Labour Party intends to keep core
government spending below 33 percent of GDP, which is almost
identical to the present level of 32.6 percent.
At the
same time, Labour agrees with National that military
spending should roughly double from 1 to 2 percent of GDP,
as the ruling class seeks to integrate New Zealand into
US-led imperialist wars in the Middle East, against Russia
and war plans against China.
PSA leader Fleur
Fitzsimons also supports the military spend-up. She declared
last year that New Zealand must “build a modern,
combat-ready defence force,” and singled out China as a
threat.
In short, a Labour government backed by the
unions in New Zealand will pursue similar policies to Labour
in Britain and Labor in Australia: attacks on public
services and more money for war.
The last Labour
government lost the 2023 election in a landslide as living
costs soared. Nurses and teachers held nationwide strikes
but the unions imposed below-inflation wage agreements. As
the election approached, Hipkins announced plans to cut a
further $4 billion from public services (about 2 percent) in
addition to previous cuts of around $4 billion.
In an
August 29, 2023, interview with RNZ, the PSA’s Duane Leo
said the economic situation was “tough” and Labour’s
proposal was “a reasonable, prudent move to tighten the
belt.” He said the union would work with the Labour
government to “find these efficiencies.”
To carry
out a real struggle against austerity and militarism,
workers must oppose all the capitalist parties, including
Labour and its allies, the Greens and Te Pāti Māori.
Workers must also rebel against the union apparatus, which
does not function as a workers’ organisation but as an
enforcement agency for the state. It seeks to isolate and
divide workers and extract concessions from them, while
promoting the imperialist agenda of the ruling
class.
The Socialist Equality Group calls on workers
to build rank-and-file committees that they control
democratically, independent of the PSA and other union
officials. These committees will provide a means for workers
to discuss and formulate their own demands and to organise
the broadest possible industrial campaign. They must break
the isolation imposed by the union bureaucracy and fight to
unite all public and private sector workers, who confront
historic attacks on their wages and living
standards.
Workers’ committees in New Zealand should
also forge links with workers in Australia and other
countries by building the International Workers Alliance of
Rank-and-File Committees. This will strengthen the position
of working people against the nationalism and xenophobia
that is being stoked by the ruling elite to divide workers
and prepare for war.
Most importantly, workers must
adopt a socialist perspective. Capitalism is destroying
jobs, public services and living standards and plunging the
world into barbarism. The system of private profit must be
abolished and society reorganised on a rational, planned
basis in order to meet human needs.
By Tom Peters,
Socialist Equality Group
8 September
2026
Original url: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2026/09/08/tukz-s08.html
