Protest Picket For Student Democracy

Matt McCarten, Unite Union Secretary-

“Not even the most anti-union employer tries to ban a group of workers forming a union Yet the senior management at MIT seems to think it can stop students forming a student club. Unite union has over 100 union members who are MIT students who have asked their union to help them form a student union at MIT. Every other tertiary campus has a student body except MIT.

“MIT management is also trying to ban Unite and its student members from getting other students to sign the CIR petition to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour. This petition is being circulated in other tertiary campus in the country without obstruction.

“This is an important democratic principle guaranteed by the Bill of Rights and that’s why I will be on Thursday to collect signatures for the $15 petition and join up MIT students to a new student club that will fight for their rights at MIT.”

Joe Carolan, Campaign for a Living Wage and Unite on Campus Organiser-

"IN Auckland, our campaign has been relentless- on the campuses, in the weekend markets, and yes, even on the beaches! But such systematic and cumulative activism around the issues of low pay and poverty has thrown up another subplot to this campaign- the right to democracy itself.

"Nearly everywhere we go, we are approached and surrounded by bosses, bureaucrats, security or cops, who think they have a right to control or forbid democratic activity. We have to fight an unholy cabal of authority figures for the simple right to talk to fellow workers and ask them to sign a petition. In Auckland, we thought this had come to a head when we took on the City Council at the Lantern Festival a few weeks ago."

"Here, our stall was surrounded by a dozen policemen and a dozen private security guards, who photographed and videoed people signing the petition in support for a living wage. A Council bureaucrat tried to serve us with a Hawkers notice, despite the fact we were not selling anything. Unite leader Matt McCarten prepared himself for a night in the cells, promising Auckland City Council resistance to such petty bureaucracy. In the stand off that ensued, 1500 people ignored the cordon and signed our petition, and the police backed off when we insisted on our rights."

"The next battle for democracy will be happening in Manukau Institute of Technology this Thursday. Here, the right of students to form a Unite Club on Campus to campaign and petition has been denied by University Officials. The feudal University Authorities at MIT don't even allow an independent Student Union."

"IN the 1960s, American students spent their summer holidays helping Black people to register to vote in racist states such as Alabama and Mississippi. When they returned to campus, they tried to set up Civil Rights Clubs in their universities. Draconian College authorities cracked down hard, forbidding students to hold any political opinions or exercise their democratic rights. But the repression saw an explosion of resistance, and the Free Speech Movement was born. Within five years, American universities became centres of resistance to racism, capitalism and the Vietnam War. Mario Savio's famous speech still echoes throughout the decades..."

"Students have the right to campaign and petition about poverty, in a campus located slap bang in the centre of it in Otara. Students have the right to independent student unions and representatives elected by themselves, not appointed by anti-union college authorities."

12 noon. This Thursday 25th March
MIT. Corner of Otara and East Tamaki Road,
off the Southern Motorway.

ends

© Scoop Media