Thousands of workers at universities and polytechnics (TAFEs) across Aotearoa (New Zealand) went on strike Wednesday 21 October, rallying against poor pay offers and the increasing precarity of employment in tertiary education. This was exciting enough on its own terms. The last time we went on strike, in 2022, it was the first in decades, and felt like something new. Now tertiary workers join teachers, public servants, health workers and others who have taken action over the last two years.
Our right-wing coalition government has attacked many of our rights but, in the fightback against their assault on everything from Te Tiriti o Waitangi (the country’s founding treaty with Indigenous groups) to pay equity, we’ve seen that the long drought around industrial action in these islands has been broken by welcome and nourishing rain.
Each bargaining campaign has different priorities and, at Te Herenga Waka in Wellington, my university, one part of our campaign stands out. We went on strike for Palestine. University Workers for Palestine, a campaign group bringing together staff across the country, emerged from the anti-genocide protests since 2023 to make concrete demands of institutions here. One focus is university superannuation schemes and their investments, including in weapons companies and others connected to Israel’s ongoing war against the Palestinians. A core part of our demands, then, is for the superannuation scheme to divest from the genocide.
We are striking for the “Three Ps”: pay, precarity and Palestine. The last of those got the loudest cheers at the strike rally yesterday, and there were signs from “Librarians for Palestine” to staff committing “from the river to the sea” that Palestine will be free. Unionised workers here have shown that our action for everyday pay and conditions can be linked to a wider vision of justice and liberation.
It’s a small start, but an exciting one, and another sign that the protest moment of 2023 has, over the years, become a long-term movement for Palestinian freedom.
