“Blame the System, Not the Victim!” Organizing the Unemployed in New Zealand, 1983–1992

Abstract

AbstractThe restructuring of capital and the transformation of the workforce in the late twentieth century has produced a newly-shaped working class; one that encompasses those in insecure work and unemployed workers. With this repositioning has come new political organizations of unemployed workers, of which Te Roopu Rawakore o Aotearoa, the national New Zealand organization for unemployed workers, is an example. This organization of unemployed was not only significant for its existence in the face of poverty, status disintegration, and a perceived sense of social worthlessness, but also for the tripartite ideology its members employed. Unemployed workers in New Zealand combined the identity politics of race and gender with a class-based critique of society to demand “the right to work and a living wage for all.”