His Union Backers will insist on boosting Engineering and Manufacturing . . .

HASTINGS, HAWKE'S BAY, NEW ZEALAND, November 21, 2014 /EINPresswire.com/ -- Andrew Little the new leader of the Labour Party won the job with the slender but overriding vote of its union component. Mr Little's career has been with the Engineering Union, later to become the Engineering and Manufacturers Union. He started as the union lawyer and signed off as its general secretary.

His first task must be now to unpick the Labour Party's association with the Green Party. If he is unable to disentangle the relationship in operational terms, then he must distance the two political parties in the minds of voters.

The Green Party is against any extractive industries, and also any energy applications deriving from them. It is also against logging of non-plantation timbers. It is against crop modification.

In the recent general election Mr Little stood for the second time as electorate candidate for New Plymouth, the nation's oil exploration and production capital. He failed on both occasions, seeing his number of votes substantially reduced. Though the candidate of the governing National Party was the victor, Mr Little slipped into Parliament again under New Zealand's proportional representation system.

In the 2014 general election the Labour Party vote was seriously split because so many of its natural adherents placed their secondary party vote with the Green Party.

In contrast the ruling National Party enjoyed a dual consolidated vote with its followers voting for the National party electoral candidate and then again voting in favour of National as their party of choice.

Mr Little must now reassure his union backers that he is in the business of sustaining and creating jobs for their members. This will mean encouraging industries in the extractive sphere and thus their downstream industries in engineering and manufacturing.

He will not win the support of the urban Green Party in this endeavour. This is because the Green Party draws its support from academia and the liberal professional classes.

Mr Little as is the custom now in the Westminster zone Labour parties is himself drawn from this class. He must now win back the Labour Party's traditional support in manufacturing which dates from the era in which Labour created and even underwrote productive sector industries in order to generate employment.

He must accomplish this and also send signals to the urban professionals, notably those employed in state health, education, and welfare services that the encouragement of the productive sector employment is in their own long term interests. His task here will be rendered more difficult by the New Zealand media's fear of criticising anything that the Green party does, or intends to do.

Mr Little was not the popular candidate in the internal machinations of the election of the new leader of the Labour Party. The decisive intervention of the unions in support of his selection serves also as a reminder that the Westminster Labour Parties were formed in order that they become the parliamentary wing of the union movement.

This article was penned by MSCNewsWire's Specialist Technical Journalist Peter Isaac. Peter is author of New Zealand’s first book on IT, Computing in New Zealand. His specialisation is in production control systems. His role in technology as practitioner and commentator has involved him in leading international tour groups into the world’s industrial zones. He is president of the National Press Club. He writes exclusively for MSCNewsWire and theFactoryFloor.

Max Farndale
Manufacturers Success Connection
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