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Posted on 4-4-08 For Managed Trade
March organised by Global Peace and Justice Auckland, Unite Union. Meet at
Aotea Square, Auckland, 12noon, Saturday 5th April
The Prime Minister has left New Zealand on a trip which will include the
signing of a free trade agreement with China in the second week of April.
Global Peace and Justice Auckland and Unite Union are organising a protest
march to take place shortly before the FTA is signed.
The proposed FTA has wide implications for New Zealand. It will cause the
further loss of quality jobs here (particularly in the manufacturing
sector) following the lost of hundreds of thousands of such jobs when
tariffs were first slashed in the 1980s.
The proposed FTA also comes at a time of intense struggle by the people of
Tibet against Chinese occupation. Chinese and multinational corporations
are active in exploiting minerals in the region while the Tibetan people
live under a brutal occupation.
Meanwhile Chinese workers continue to work in slave-like conditions of
long hours for pitiful pay while Chinese and international businesses make
handsome profits. The only way this exploitation is possible is through
violent, repressive state control of Chinese workers such as a ban on
workers organising independent trade unions.
The march will call for:
³Free Tibet not free trade²
³Save jobs in New Zealand Support workers rights in China²
For the protest to be as successful as possible we need widespread
endorsement of the march. Please let us know if the organisation you
belong to will support this march and its objectives. We also need support
to spread the word about the march as widely as possible. Look forward to
hearing from you. ,
John Minto, GPJA Spokesperson; jbminto@xtra.co.nz; Mike Treen, National
Director of Unite Union, mike@unite.org.nz
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