Tuesday, November 01, 2005

Maori Workers Take Haka to Canberra

More than a hundred Maori workers will perform a mass 'Haka' in front of Parliament House in Canberra tomorrow (November 2) to protest Howard's planned workplace laws, which mirror laws that caused hardship for New Zealand workers in the early nineties.

Construction Forestry Mining Energy Union organiser Steve Keenan said he organised the protest along with other Maori workers who had fled New Zealand for Australia after individual agreements resulted in wages dropping by up to a third and workplace conditions deteriorating.

"In New Zealand many workers saw their take home pay slashed almost overnight," he said. "We lost overtime pay, paid public holidays, annual leave and other basic entitlements, which resulted in a mass exodus of hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders across the Tasman to Australia where we could receive decent pay and conditions.

"We have seen first hand the terrible consequence of these laws, not only on our work, but on our families as hours increased, pay dropped, and workplace deaths and injuries occurred more often."

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