‘Commie’ who joined capitalists

AKtrade unionist b November 16, 1935 d September 14, 2022

fter the new National Government, on May 15, 1991, passed the iniquitous Employment Contracts Act that emasculated the rights of trade unionists, thousands of blue-collar workers screamed foul and demanded that the Council of Trade Unions, led by its president, ‘‘Red’’ Ken Douglas, call for an immediate general strike.

Peter Galt, a Lyttelton-based seaman and union official, spoke for many when he wrote: ‘‘The big man came to Christchurch to address the town hall full of workers. He said no we haven’t got the power to take on the Government. The whole meeting was against him, screaming ‘Strike, strike, strike!’

‘‘Nobody could believe it. Here was this red-hot commo; we thought he’d push it through for us. He didn’t. Ah Jesus; it was the saddest day of my life.’’

Many other epithets – traitor, scab, chicken-shit coward, class collaborator – were flung Douglas’ way at the mere mention of his name. He avoided going to pubs after that to avoid anger directed towards him. One aggrieved unionist did smash a full glass of beer in his face.

But his long experience as a trade union negotiator meant that Douglas believed there was a better way, even facing the most drastic diminution of union power in this country’s history.

He was prepared to wait for a ‘‘new’’ Labour Party to return and fulfil its promise to overturn the act and replace it with a more humane measure – as had already been promised by Labour finance spokesperson Michael Cullen.

Eight years on, under a new Labour Government, he had an impact as a special adviser in the select committee hearings for a new, fairer bill to replace the ECA. The Employment Relations Act (2000) stipulated that collective bargaining meant recognition of union involvement in wage and condition negotiations, distant from ‘‘agents’’ divorced from unions, who had been the go-to people under the ECA.

As Douglas predicted, there would be no return to compulsory unionism, national awards, or to fixed conciliation, arbitration or relativity procedures. He was vindicated.

enneth George Douglas was born in Wellington to Madge (nee Farrow), a seamstress, and Attie Douglas, a truck driver. They lived initially in a state house in Khandallah before, in 1942, Madge decamped to the city to be closer to American servicemen and the high life.

Attie, Ken and younger sister Teree then moved in with Attie’s parents in Northland, Wellington. Ken’s grandmother Carrie Douglas became his primary caregiver through childhood and adolescence, inculcating in him values of honesty and diligence that would become a hallmark of his life and work.

It was a crowded home with father, uncles and sometimes others sharing the space. For much of the time a hanging sheet separated him from his father in the same small bedroom.

After education at Northland School and Wellington College, he worked firstly as a trainee wool classer, wharf labourer and finally a truck driver. It was while working on the Wellington wharf that he first observed effective trade union practice. Union delegate Ted Thompson never raised his voice but was always resolute, analytical and well-informed in negotiation. These were lessons Douglas would carry with him for life.

In August 1956 he married Lesley Winter, a primary school teacher. Both were 20. They had four children, Jane, Peter, Helen and John, before divorcing in 1979. He would later develop a relationship with Marilyn Tucker, a pharmacist and Socialist Unity Party activist. She survives him.

After Douglas started as a truck driver aged 20, his father insisted he attend a meeting of the Drivers’ Union instead of going to rugby practice. Overcoming prejudice because of his youth, he spoke animatedly of more focus on wages and conditions, impressing his erstwhile antagonists. Within a year he was on the union’s executive.

He did his homework and brought a new aggression and knowledge to the negotiation table; when he was 23 he was elected its president, the youngest president of any union in New Zealand history. There followed election, in 1963, to the executive of the national Drivers’ Federation and the Wellington Trades Council.

By this time he was a committed communist. His first political understanding, he believed, came from listening as a child to the BBC lauding the bravery of Joseph Stalin’s soldiers successfully defending Stalingrad against the German invaders.

Then, during his brief time on the wharf, he enjoyed joining his uncle Terry Farrow in the cafeteria’s ‘‘Red Square’’, the set of tables around which the Communist Party’s watersiders ate their lunches. . Douglas joined the party later, in 1966, and then the Socialist Unity Party (SUP) after it split from the main party.

He was instrumental in setting up the Wellington branch of the SUP. He stood for the party three times in Porirua in national elections, receiving 62, 46 and 70 votes in the 1972, 1975 and 1978 elections respectively. He travelled to Russia seven times.

Because of his political beliefs, his wife and children suffered abusive phone calls and death threats. In the 1970s the Young Nats set up a group to phone his house every half-hour during the weekend to abuse whoever answered.

He was adamant that his political beliefs played no role in his status as a trade union leader. Yet despite his growing profile as a hard-hitting and successful union negotiator, he struggled for seven years between 1969 and 1976 to be elected on to the Federation of Labour executive because of his Communism. Thereafter, his rise was rapid.

In June 1979, after FOL president Tom Skinner retired, replaced by Knox, Douglas was elected secretary. In this role many unions asked him to negotiate on their behalf. Under Douglas’ leadership, problems were usually resolved.

Through the 1980s he worked hard to get tripartite support for a new pay system that linked wage rises to productivity. Compacts such as these were the only way forward.

Throughout the 1980s, the union movement was under extreme pressure; factories closed and unemployment rocketed. He wanted reform and was instrumental in leading a merger of the private-sector unions (represented by the FOL) and public-sector unions (represented by the Combined State Unions) into a single body. That was achieved in 1987 and Douglas was voted in as the inaugural president of the new Council of Trade Unions, representing the interests of 650,000 workers.

Douglas retired from the CTU in 1999. By then he had also played a prominent role in international trade unionism as president of both the Asia-Pacific Regional Organisation of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions and the International Centre for Free Trade Rights.

In 1999, he became a member of the Order of New Zealand, the country’s highest honour. The same year Victoria University awarded him an honorary doctorate of laws for his ‘‘tireless service on behalf of ordinary New Zealanders’’.

Douglas then turned his considerable energies to the corporate world. He sat on boards of Air New Zealand, NZ Post, Positively Wellington, NZ Trade and Enterprise, the Capital & Coast District Health Board, the Porirua Licensing Trust, and on Porirua City Council, on which he served six terms from 1998.

From 2003 he served on the board of the New Zealand Rugby Union. He occupied many roles at his beloved Tītahi Golf Club, including acting as a mentor to a young Michael Campbell.

Douglas’ career in capitalist governance was not a rupture from his past philosophy, but a continuation of it.

He brought to it the same intensity, energy and experience that he had in his union leadership. He believed that any organisation is successful only when it overcomes the contradictions of capital, technology and labour. ‘‘It is not an accommodation of one over the other,’’ he said. ‘‘We are all there for a shared purpose. Nothing is black and white.’’