A new book documenting twelve years of the Aotearoa Living Wage Movement is out now. We spoke with author and Living Wage Movement veteran Lyndy McIntyre.
When Lyndy McIntyre reflects on the content of her book, she might as well be making a case for why its example is needed now more than ever. “The book’s only about two things,” McIntyre says. “It’s about power, and it’s about winning.”
The two matters demand our attention and energy. Consider the coalition Government’s sustained attacks on working people: a pathetic minimum wage increase, the scrapping of Fair Pay Agreements, bringing 90-day trials back from the dead – the list could go on. Power to Win documents twelve years of history and successes in the Living Wage Movement. Parts are testimony to how working people can win despite unfavourable conditions.
“It’s important to point out the Living Wage Movement got started under a National Government. And it thrived and flourished.”
“The movement changed the way we talk about wages in Aotearoa. Twelve years ago, nobody talked about the living wage. Now it’s part of the lexicon.”
Except, they didn’t only talk about it. The book chronicles how low-paid workers, along with their unions, community organisations and faith groups, organised and won life-changing pay increases for thousands of people.
The world as it is and the world as it should be
Power to Win challenges readers to reckon with the credibility of their approach to social change. Are we thinking strategically about the world we live in? Or are we relying on the goodwill and fairness of the world as we think it should be?
McIntyre grew up in Stokes Valley, Lower Hutt in the 1950s and 1960s, a time of relative economic prosperity in Aotearoa. She remembers some people in her neighbourhood were better off than others, but inequality wasn’t as prevalent.
In the 1980s, as that divide grew significantly, Lyndy worked as a newspaper compositor. She cut her teeth as a delegate for the Printers’ Union, as computerisation was causing rolling redundancies.
McIntyre then became a union organiser in 1990, working for the Northern Hotel Workers’ Union, a forerunner to the Service and Food Workers’ Union, which later merged with other unions to form E tū. But the start of McIntyre’s 30-year career working for unions coincided with the arrival of the Employment Contracts Act (ECA), brought in by the fourth National Government in 1991.
“There were lots of signs things were going to move in a different direction for working people. As a young organiser just starting out, I certainly experienced the ECA as a very major turning point downhill. It took more power from workers and gave more power to bosses.”
The ECA took away legal recognition of unions and the ability to have industry and occupation wide employment agreements that set minimum pay and conditions. It isolated workers and ignored the inherent inequality of bargaining power in the employment relationship.
For 20 years afterwards, unions would grapple with new ways of building power to win significant improvements to pay and conditions.
There’s power in the community
The Living Wage Movement was brought to Aotearoa by John Ryall and Muriel Tunoho. The pair were inspired by London Citizens - an umbrella group that brought together unions, faith groups, and community organisations to win fairer pay by combining their power. The group had soon landed huge wins for cleaners, as well as people in the finance sector, even successfully campaigning to make the 2012 London Olympics pay a living wage.
In 2012, the Living Wage Movement publicly launched in Auckland and Wellington, during the months of May and August respectively. Other local networks soon followed – an explosion of collective action.
“Unions just don’t have a monopoly over caring about poverty and inequality,” McIntyre says. “It only made sense to combine the power of union, faith, and community to a common purpose.
“Members are community people. For many, their church or the community they live in is actually their top priority in their life after their whānau. The union’s up there, but it's not necessarily at the very top.”
These relationships enrich the lives of people in the movement, make organisations stronger, and make the collective more powerful.
The Living Wage movement proved this model could work for contractors in the public sector, whose companies are incentivised in a race to the bottom to offer the lowest tender. For contracted MSD security guards, who won the living wage campaigning as part of the movement, she concludes “that was never gonna happen over the negotiating table. Ever.”
The PSA played a big role from the beginning and signed up quickly to get delegates and members actively engaged in campaigns.
No worker gets left behind
One of the first things you notice about Power to Win are the names. Every page is filled with them - union delegates, community leaders, reverends. Everybody’s there.
McIntyre attributes some of the movement’s success to the principle that when workers win the living wage for themselves, they know it wouldn’t have happened without the groundswell of the movement, and so they keep showing up for other workers yet to win.
She mentions an example that is close to home. After directly-employed public services workers won the living wage in 2018, PSA members didn’t walk away.
“The solidarity shown by PSA members is just outstanding and that’s what the living wage movement is all about… They gave huge support to the lowest-paid contracted workers - invariably the cleaners.”
Specifically, McIntyre shouts out Eleanor Haggerty-Drummond, a PSA delegate and Wellington City Council library assistant. Haggerty-Drummond not only became a leader in the campaign to win the living wage for directly-employed council workers, but continued her leadership throughout campaigns targeting Wellington and Porirua City Councils.
We’ve won before and we can win again
Power to Win is full of lessons for anyone navigating building power in this era.
There are countless stories of leadership, mentorship, and friendship – including many people in McIntyre’s life; Sister Maribeth Larkin, Reverend Hiueni Nuku, Reverend Perema Leasi, John Ryall, Annie Newman, Rebecca Matthews, Ibrahim Omer, and Rebecca Nyakuong Kuach to name just a few.
There are stories about what it means to build long-term alliances that truly focus on relationships first. These are stories about organisations and leaders, who reach across diversity and build power around a common cause.
One thing that’s striking, particularly given this current moment, is the number of instances where the same battle needed to be won multiple times after decision-makers eroded wins, or took them away. It’s an all-too-common reality that will resonate with many working people, but perhaps especially care and support workers in the depths of their second push for clearly deserved pay equity.
“You know, it's tough and challenging and demoralising sometimes to be doing it again, having already won. But it's gotta be done. We're about campaigning for justice, so that's what has to be done and it will be done.”
Our movement is blessed when organisers as experienced and knowledgeable as Lyndy McIntyre find time for reflection, amongst the hecticness of kaupapa-driven lives, and write books like this one.
Asked about what’s next in the movement for fair wages, McIntyre is clear-headed in her analysis.
“It’s going to take really strong alliances across civil society to be able to fight back. We need to be finding our allies, forming partnerships and campaigning together because that’s how we’ll have the power to win.”
Power to Win by Lyndy McIntyre is published by Otago University Press. You can buy a copy here, or at local bookstores.