WORKERS RIGHTS CAMPAIGN                                                                       MEDIA RELEASE

March 6th   2009

Pacific Brands and Sealord decisions contemptible

The Workers Rights Campaign today expressed its profound contempt for the so-called captains of industry in their ignoble fleeing the country.

Spokesman Paul Piesse referred to the latest in a long list of examples – Pacific Brands and Sealords. He said that these enterprises, built on the backs of New Zealand workers, were now deserting the country, taking both the capital created by those workers and even the workers’ very jobs with them.

The fact that one of these firms is foreign-owned and one is NZ-owned indicates that workers are just as easily discarded no matter who owns the companies.

But many New Zealanders, especially Maori workers, might be surprised that the largely Maori-owned Sealords would just as bloodlessly discard workers – including many Maori workers – in order to invest in cheaper-labour Argentinean fisheries.

“So much”, he noted, “for the sham claims of traditional fishing rights as Taonga”.

Mr Piesse claimed that all this proved that globalised Capitalism ultimately has no loyalty to anything except maximising profits - wherever and however.

“All the be-suited posturing at the Government’s jobs conference would not save a single about-to-be-exported job, since all our leading politicians are creatures of Capital and will not challenge its right to go where it wants to, even to the detriment of New Zealand workers”.

“The first responsibility of politicians is to have a care for the people who elect them. Despite their bluster, it is clear that our current lot have more concern for profit than for people”, Mr Piesse said.

Ends

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