Futures Network Recording: 7 November 2024
Following the passage of the anti-worker/anti-union Employment Contracts Act in New Zealand in 1991, unions were searching for new ways to win decent pay for members. The NZ living wage movement was launched in May 2012 by then NZCTU leader, Helen Kelly, with the aim of building power in the community to win wage justice.
Lyndy McIntyre was active in the movement since the inception, working on living wage campaigns alongside unions and community allies. From 2015 to 2020, Lyndy was a community organiser employed by the living wage movement. Since the launch of the movement many thousands of low-paid workers have had pay rises of up to 30% as a direct result of living wage campaigns.
Lyndy has written a book about her experiences and what she learned: Power to Win: the living wage movement in Aotearoa New Zealand, and presented on the innovative approach of their model of campaigning and how they pressed case and built the power needed for low-paid workers to win.
Presenter:
Lyndy McIntyre grew up in the 50s and 60s in a time of relative prosperity in Aotearoa New Zealand. In the 70s she became increasingly active in left/progressive issues and her community. Lyndy learnt about unions on the job as a union delegate in the printing industry through the 1980s. In 1990 she started a 30-year working life in unions, with a short stint as a parliamentary press secretary, and briefly in Australia in working with the ACTU on the Your Rights at Work campaign.
In 2007 she was elected to Kāpiti Coast District Council. She served one term and decided that union work was more worthwhile. In 2015, she became one of two paid community organisers in Living Wage Movement Aotearoa New Zealand. In 2020, she left her paid role and began to write this story of the movement, while continuing her activism.
Access Resource
http://atui.imiscloud.com/ATUI/Library/Campaigning_for_a_living_wage_in_Aotearoa_NZ.aspx
