Women’s Conference 2021

By Annie McCauley, Lyt­tel­ton Local 43 Women’s Rep

After months of plan­ning along­side our Nation­al MUNZ Women’s Rep Fiona Mansell, a strong group of 24 MUNZ Women from around New Zealand attend­ed the Coun­cil of Trade Unions Bian­nu­al Women’s Con­fer­ence in Welling­ton on 19 and 20 July 2021.

This year’s theme was Maranga mai wahine ma – mean­ing ris­ing above, and boy does that state­ment ring true for our Union.

Through pure deter­mi­na­tion from our Nation­al Women’s Rep we had the largest ever MUNZ del­e­ga­tion to attend the Wom­ens Con­fer­ence. For the sec­ond time in a row the Mar­itime Union of New Zealand was again the talk­ing point of the con­fer­ence for all the right rea­sons.

In all hon­esty it was a very hum­bling expe­ri­ence to be a part of, a super proud moment to be able to change our Union’s past his­to­ry of par­tic­i­pa­tion at this event.

From some­one who has been priv­i­leged to attend four of these events there was no deny­ing the two days of Con­fer­ence were full on and there was a lot to take in.

There was a slight­ly dif­fer­ent take on events this time round. Due to COVID there were no inter­na­tion­al guest speak­ers. How­ev­er the orga­niz­ers need to be com­mend­ed for the pro­gramme.

Day one kicked off with Hon Jan Tinet­ti who is cur­rent­ly our Min­is­ter for Women, Min­is­ter of Inter­nal Affairs and Asso­ciate Min­is­ter of Edu­ca­tion. I have to be hon­est she didn’t do much for me, due to the lack of sub­stance of answers to some pret­ty hard ques­tions by our fel­low union­ists.

Up next was well-known writer and jour­nal­ist Rebec­ca Mac­fie who was tru­ly cap­ti­vat­ing. Rebec­ca spoke about her recent­ly pub­lished biog­ra­phy of the late Helen Kel­ly and time spent with her hear­ing about all the cam­paigns she was involved with.

Rebec­ca also spoke about her oth­er book Tragedy at Pike Riv­er, and of Helen’s con­vic­tion and pas­sion for the fam­i­lies involved. Rebec­ca believed that if Helen was still with us, Helen would see our cur­rent hous­ing cri­sis as a “work­ers cri­sis” and be cam­paign­ing for change.

After lunch we had anoth­er cap­ti­vat­ing speak­er Jen­nifer Ward-Lealand who is the pres­i­dent of Equi­ty New Zealand (the Union for Actors.)

Jen­nifer has an incred­i­ble list of acco­lades and was hon­oured as the Kiwibank New Zealan­der of the year in 2020. An amaz­ing woman that has over a 40 year plus back­ground in tele­vi­sion, radio, both the­atre and film indus­tries. Jen­nifer spoke of the roles of an Inti­ma­cy Co-ordi­na­tor (which isn’t quite what you may think it might be).

From the moment Jen­n­fi­er stepped up to speak she had us all in sus­pense of what was com­ing next. I was in awe of her pas­sion, ded­i­ca­tion of com­mit­ment for chang­ing mind sets in her select­ed field for the bet­ter.  

She not­ed one in three peo­ple expe­ri­ence sex­u­al harass­ment in their lives – not just women.

My first Work­shop after lunch was Fem­i­nism 101: A short His­to­ry of fem­i­nism in Aotearoa.

This was a very hands-on work­shop work­ing in groups of six to eight. It was inter­est­ing learn­ing of the dif­fer­ent inter­pre­ta­tions of the fem­i­nist move­ment over time.

Work­shop two was on How to rep­re­sent Mem­bers and win. This was an in depth work­shop with lots to take in. We were giv­en a detailed hand­out to refer back to after the Con­fer­ence.

Day two kicked off with the remit process.

To give you a bet­ter idea this is the process is where poli­cies such as the paid 10 Days Domes­tic Vio­lence leave and increase to 10 Sick Days per year have all been advo­cat­ed for.

Hot top­ics on the remit agen­da includ­ed advo­cat­ing for the removal of GST on all fresh fruit, veg­eta­bles, meat, fish, and dairy prod­ucts. I have to say this was anoth­er very inter­est­ing process to be part of too.

I am sure a few of the first timers were also inter­est­ed by it, now know­ing that this is where our Unions advo­cate for change to the gov­ern­ment.

I am sure it gave them food for thought, to be able to hear the oth­er 14 Unions present have their dis­cus­sions on the dif­fer­ent top­ics put for­ward.

Dr Eliz­a­beth Kerekere fin­ished off the morn­ing ses­sion, which then went onto our after­noon ses­sions and get­ting to min­gle with oth­er like­mind­ed trade union­ists.

To end the day came with the Group pho­to – once again MUNZ was noticed for our awe­some Appar­el, Brand­ed and proud the cap­tion read.

Last but not least once again I want to thank the Women of my MUNZ Branch Local 43 for all your sup­port dur­ing the con­fer­ence. It was a plea­sure to attend along­side you all.

Many thanks to Fiona for let­ting me assist with the Appar­el and be a part of this amaz­ing MUNZ His­to­ry.

In Uni­ty.