Ani O'Brien: Politicising a Tragedy - PSA takes the gloves off

New Zealand's largest public sector union increasingly sounds like an opposition party.

The death of a man in the waiting room toilets at Waikato Hospital’s emergency department is a tragedy. He went to hospital needing help and died before he could be treated. His family, and the community, deserve to know what happened, whether it was preventable, and what needs to change so it does not happen again. That is the serious version of this conversation. But unfortunately, we are in an election year and serious conversations are not what some of New Zealand’s unions appear to be interested in when a tragedy can be turned into a political opportunity.

Mike's Minute: What did the unions achieve?

I watched a woman from one of the unions explain how much work had been done to settle their claim.

The allied health workers have signed off their deal. That’s 12,000 physios, social workers, etc. There was more work to do, she said.

Ryan Bridge: Political wannabe's come from unions

Unions charge like wounded bulls for their services.

And they claim they're in it for the workers.

They care about workers' pay and conditions so much, they're worked their way up the union ranks to help those at the bottom.

Peter Williams: Why the Big Strike is a bad idea

Where will public sympathy fall?

When doctors, teachers and nurses walk off the job together it can make international headlines — but that doesn’t mean it’s wise, principled or remotely strategic.

Thursday’s public service strike may thrill some union executives and excite X’s permanent catastrophists, but in cold political reality it is self-defeating, reckless and potentially damaging to the very causes these professions claim to represent.

Kerre Woodham: Unions seem to have struck themselves into irrelevance

Back when I was a kid, you knew the school holidays were coming up when the Seafarers Union went on strike. Sure as God made little apples, a week before the school holidays, the unions would be all out, brothers and sisters, and then there'd be all night negotiations between the cloth caps and the capitalist overlords, while parents waited anxiously to see if the annual road trip —south in our case— would take place to go down and see the Christchurch rallies. Generally, at the last minute they would, so it was a mad dash to Wellington, over the Cook Strait to Christchurch for the school holidays. Every single time.

Ross Meurant: Spot the Difference - or the Similarity

Drug Cartels in Central & South America, have massive influence on who stays alive and who dies. Anyone who stands against or interferes in the commercial operations of suppling drugs to the major market i.e. America, is in serious danger of death. Such is the power of fear imposed on populations where these parasitic elements operate with virtual impunity.

The latest example being Colombian presidential candidate Miguel Uribe Turbay, a 39-year-old senator who remains in intensive care after he was shot three times - twice in the head - at a campaign event in the capital, Bogotá.

Cam Slater: Good, the Unions Are Worried

One of the reasons I support charter schools, but not the only reason, is that they put the fear of God in to the teachers’ unions. And so, it is with some pleasure that I see that, right on cue, the teachers’ unions are saying they are afraid of the new format charter schools that David Seymour announced this week.

Kerre Woodham: Are unions still relevant?

You don't really need to watch or read the news at the moment, at least not for the first couple of stories, because all we're really getting at the moment is a union campaign from the PSA and the CTU dressed up as news, with stories about how cuts to the civil service are going to bring the country to ruin.

JC: New Zealand’s Nasties: Labour and the Unions

The Labour Party and its union bosses have chosen, unsurprisingly, to show their nasty side. The unions are aware the politicians they support have turned out to be no more than a bunch of incompetent losers. Their answer is to attack. It’s not to attack in a constructive way, instead, like poisonous snakes, they spit their venom. They play the man, not the ball.

This is perfectly illustrated in Monday morning’s NZ Herald advertisement personally attacking Christopher Luxon. If the unions think this is the way to win an election they get zero out of 10 for intelligence. If I were a paid-up union member who intended to vote National I would be outraged that my money was being used in such a scurrilous way. If I were Chris Hipkins I would be outraged that my campaign had been hijacked in a way that did nothing more than bad-mouth my opponent.

Richard Epstein: The Rise of American Protectionism

The wedge issue of the 2016 primary campaign is the rising hostility to free trade—and, specifically, to the Trans-Pacific Partnership. 

On the Republican side, establishment candidates like Jeb Bush, Scott Walker, and Marco Rubio have failed or fallen behind, while Donald Trump maintains a commanding lead going into Florida and Ohio thanks, in large part, to his protectionist rhetoric. On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton has been veering leftward to fight off a determined challenge from Vermont’s democratic socialist Bernie Sanders, another unapologetic protectionist.

Richard Epstein from the US: End The 'Agency Shop'

On Monday, January 11, the United States Supreme Court will address in Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association two long-standing issues about the status of public unions that have vexed the Court for at least 60 years.

The first of these questions asks whether the Court’s 1977 decision in Abood v. Detroit Board of Education should be overruled. That case allows for so-called “agency shop agreements,” under which a union is entitled to collect from nonmembers fees that cover the cost of its collective bargaining expenses with the government employer, but not those expenses that are said to be properly chargeable to the political activities of the union.

Kevin Donnelly: We can learn from Finland and Sweden

What is the most effective way to raise education standards? Given Julia Gillard's argument that we need to "take a giant leap forward in education" and her promise, most recently reiterated in a letter in News Limited tabloids on Sunday, to put Australia among the top five schooling systems by 2025, the question is more than academic. 

Karl du Fresne: Union lobbyists good, business lobbyists bad

In Orwell’s Animal Farm, it was “four legs good, two legs bad”. In the New Zealand Labour Party, some of whose MPs seem capable of Orwellian reasoning, it’s union lobbyists good, corporate lobbyists bad.

Only a week after Green MP Holly Walker’s Lobbying Disclosure Bill passed its first reading in Parliament, Labour has had an attack of the collywobbles.

Richard Epstein: How Unions Violate Free Speech

Money is what drives all major election campaigns. In the run up to the 2012 presidential election, sharp knives have already been drawn on the issue of corporate and union contributions. In addressing this issue, virtually all roads lead back to the much-contested Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which made it unconstitutional for the federal government to restrict any “electioneering communication” to the public by a corporation or a union within 30 days of a primary or general election.