Clive Bibby: "I'm all right Jack!" - Really!

Those of you as ancient as me will remember the 1959 British film classic " l'm all right Jack" starring Peter Sellers and a long line of fellow famous British comedy actors in an iconic sendup of the British Industrial scene that had become a battleground between the trade unions and the bosses.

That film was one of the first to expose the British class warfare of the 1960's, 70's and 80's that had virtually brought the nation to its knees. I guess the fact that the film itself was a satirical comedy enabled it to make its point without inflaming the tense standoff that characterised the administrations' of Harold Wilson, Ted Heath and James Callaghan before the advent of Margaret Thatcher almost two decades later.

Richard Epstein: Pension Abuse In California

One of the main themes in the blockbuster case of Janus v. AFSCME—currently before the United States Supreme Court—is the risk of having unions sit on both sides of the table in public-sector contract negotiations. 

Nowhere is that risk more pronounced than in California, where the perverse and pervasive effects of union political influence are on display in Cal Fire Local 2881 v. California Public Employees’ Retirement System, now before the California Supreme Court. Between 2009 and 2013, California law allowed state and local employees with over five years of service to purchase with their own funds up to five years of “fictional years of retirement service credits”—commonly called “airtime”—that they could then add to their years of actual service in order to increase the value of their pensions at retirement.

NZCPR Weekly: Deepening the Dependency Trap

Dear NZCPR Reader,   

This week we examine how the policy agenda of the new Labour-led Government - that puts the demands of the unions ahead of the needs of young people and the unemployed - will deepen the dependency trap, our NZCPR Guest Commentator Kerry Jackson explains how poorly designed public policies have made California the poverty capital of the United States, and our poll asks whether you are optimistic or pessimistic about the future of our economy under the policies proposed by Labour.

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Michael Bassett: Labour and the Greens

Reading comments by Matthew Hooton on the damage Labour has done to itself by entering its agreement with the Greens brought to mind the problems faced in earlier times by the New Zealand Liberal Party. And how little our modern Labour Party knows about its history and its own climb to power. In this centennial year of Labour’s birth that really is unforgivable.

After a couple of centuries of Whig politics in Britain and more than two decades with John Ballance, Dick Seddon and Joseph Ward leading successful Liberal governments in New Zealand 1891-1912, the Liberals here, as elsewhere (except Canada) found their votes being preyed upon by a new political force, the trade unions and their political entities.