Man for All Seasons: The Life and Times of Ken Douglas
It's not about how clever these people were, it's about what was happening at the time and I think he kept it pretty straight.
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It is a vivid social history, firstly of Wellington and New Zealand in the middle decades of last century when events, such as the waterfront lockout, influenced the young Douglas's politics. And then of the trade union movement during a period where it lurched from challenge to crisis as successive Governments during the s and early 90s shook up industrial relations.
Man for All Seasons the Life & Times of Ken Douglas
It is this phase of Douglas's life that is the most controversial. Some union and left wing hardliners criticise his leadership of the Combined Trade Unions CTU - when the National government of the day was pushing its Employment Contracts Act in - as too weak. Many feel he should have called a general strike to oppose the legislation which ended compulsory unionism, and some go as far as accusing him of being complicit in the breaking of union power.
In spite of his claim he doesn't care what people think of him, Douglas admits he still gets "really offended" by what has been said about his role as CTU president at the time of the ECA.
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As a SUP member he believed workers' organisations would only be effective if they operated along democratic control and decision making lines. Having represented , union members when the CTU formed in , by that was down to , But Douglas doesn't see the weakening of union power in early nineties as having anything to do with the fall of communism in the Soviet Union and its satellite states at the same time.
The Soviet Union, which he visited a number of times as a SUP representative, was fundamentally weak because it denied workers any say in tackling problems of creating wealth, better job security and greater efficiencies. We're still controlled by the dictates of very small minorities.
On the other hand he praises Prime Minister John Key as "a pragmatic person who wants to believe in a system of equity and fairness". It's very easy not to make mistakes, you just don't do anything and I'd rather be known as a person who made huge mistakes because I tried to do huge numbers of things. Truck driver, father of four, life-long socialist, pivotal figure in New Zealand's union movement for four decades.
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Man for All Seasons the Life & Times of Ken Douglas
A few years later, a Trades Hall neighbour of Douglas copped another brush-off, this time at an FOL conference, when the new Prime Minister was asked if it was true the Bank of New Zealand was for sale. David Lange replied, "Dame Rumour is a lying jade", telling Pat Kelly the line was Shakespeare's, not his, and sounding at best as if he was taking unions for granted and at worst as if he regarded them as irrelevant. There was no doubting the next Government's views, though, with its Employment Contracts Act referring only to bargaining agents.
Douglas is still criticised for not leading a national strike to try to force changes. However, with unemployment rising as restructuring of the economy continued and tariffs fell, he is unlikely to have been the only union leader who doubted unions' ability to call the bosses' bluff, let alone the Government's.
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So biographer Grant presents no mea culpa from Douglas, who thought a strike would achieve nothing and that the bill would be passed but then have to be changed because it was unworkable. It was also, according to the International Labour Organization ILO , inconsistent with internationally accepted principles of freedom of association. But it was consistent with Treasury advice to the incoming Government on the need to lower "unit labour costs", so the ILO was ignored, along with warnings that the absence of a good-faith bargaining provision would enable some employers to make "take it or leave it" contract demands, cutting conditions and pay.
Douglas, Grant says, wanted a warts-and-all biography and the Wellington historian has delivered one, with no glossing over the big man's affairs, indifference to domestic duties and attitude to women unionists, some of whom saw him as paternalistic and patronising.
Then there is his surgically resolved battle with obesity, and his unresolved battles with former colleagues over his inaction when the Employment Contracts Act was being formulated. Grant calls it the union movement's biggest schism since the waterfront lockout the subject of his book The Big Blue. A Man for All Seasons is a timely contribution to our recent history, with extension of the day trial period and other changes to employment laws pending.
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The early chapters, though, which Grant says are "unapologetically wide ranging and critical to understanding Douglas's working class roots", could have been condensed. In the decade since the global financial crisis, investors have enjoyed a steady upward ride and very few shocks.
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