Maritime workers join national day of action against asset sales

Mar­itime work­ers will be among thou­sands of peo­ple join­ing ral­lies in cities around New Zealand this Sat­ur­day 27 April to demand no asset sales.

Mar­itime Union of New Zealand nation­al sec­re­tary Joe Fleet­wood says the union strong­ly sup­ports keep­ing pub­lic owned assets.

“It’s about look­ing out for the major­i­ty.”

Mr Fleet­wood says all New Zealan­ders are cur­rent­ly share­hold­ers in pub­lic assets includ­ing state owned pow­er com­pa­nies, and it should stay that way.

“Any pri­vati­sa­tion is sim­ply nar­row­ing the ben­e­fit to a minor­i­ty of peo­ple, and as we have seen many times before, these assets will even­tu­al­ly end up in the hands of big glob­al investors.”

He says there has been a strong pos­i­tive reac­tion to the announce­ment this week of the Labour/Green joint pow­er pol­i­cy which was a move in the right direc­tion.

Mr Fleet­wood says there is also sub­stan­tial con­cern about the pri­vati­sa­tion threat to ports in New Zealand, many of which are owned by local Gov­ern­ment for the ben­e­fit of local com­mu­ni­ties.

He says this will be a hot issue dur­ing the local body elec­tions lat­er this year.