the temperate passion of democratic reason: the new zealand firefighters' struggle against...

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The Temperate Passion of Democratic Reason: The New Zealand Firefighters' Struggle againstRestructuring, Downsizing, and PrivatizingAuthor(s): Eleanor RimoldiSource: Social Analysis: The International Journal of Social and Cultural Practice, Vol. 48, No.1 (Spring 2004), pp. 161-178Published by: Berghahn BooksStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/23178848 .

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General Articles

The Temperate Passion of Democratic Reason The New Zealand Firefighters' Struggle against Restructuring, Downsizing, and Privatizing

Eleanor Rimoldi

Abstract

Loader concludes his analysis of the trend in Britain and elsewhere

toward private security systems by suggesting that "the value of other

more deliberative ways of addressing the crime question and structur

ing the relationship between the police and the 'publics' they serve;

ways that seek to subject 'consumer' demands for particular kinds of

policing and security to the test of public discourse oriented to the

common good, and so temper with democratic reason the passions that consumer culture threatens to unleash" (1999: 389). The privati zation of public services and the undermining of professionalism have

taken hold in many countries on the advice of international monetary

agencies. In New Zealand, a provincial reading of new right philoso

phy within the close-knit circle of the New Zealand Business Round

table generated a power lobby group that served as a conduit for free

market libertarian ideas. This article traces the response to these trends

as a measure of the strength of civil society and public life in Auckland

City, with a specific focus on the resistance by the New Zealand fire

fighters to restructuring and downsizing the fire service.

Key words: Civil society, work, firefighters, resistance, privatization,

public service

Introduction

At the end of the twentieth century, the New Zealand labor force experienced a powerful assault on their conditions of work, the definition of their craft, and

Social Analysis, Volume 48, Issue 1, Spring 2004



162 Eleanor Rimoldi

their control over the labor process. The neoliberal effort to undermine the state

has also undermined what Jesson called an "historic compromise" between the state and labor that created the New Zealand welfare state in the mid-1950s, the basis of which was the relationship between the first Labor Government and

the unions: "the manual working class had been brought in from the margins

of society ... Labor extended the economic role of the state and created a regu

lated and protected economy, through exchange and import controls, monetary

and fiscal policy, public works and the like. And it used this greater economic

stability to extend the health, education and social security systems and

thereby create the welfare state. Most of the country's social and political forces

benefited from the welfare state and the regulated economy, but in return they

moderated their political aims" (1989: 17-18). This social welfare democracy not only moderated political aims, but also tempered economic policies, restrain

ing the market economy from excessive influence.

I arrived in New Zealand as a permanent resident from New York in 1961, in

time to experience what Jesson calls the golden age of the historic compromise.

Over the next forty years, I observed the changes that eventually led to an end

of the historic compromise, and a headlong rush into an individualistic, new

right, market driven economy that, within a few short years, effectively destroyed the welfare state democracy that had created a New Zealand known worldwide

for its high quality of life. The neoliberal ideology, led by a group of New Zealand businessmen (The Business Roundtable) took over a powerful group of Labor Party members in Parliament after it came to power in 1984, and they

attacked all aspects of the historic compromise that had existed since the 1930s. The social, cultural, and economic reasons for this dramatic change in New

Zealand's way of life are complex and dealt with in detail by Jesson and oth ers. In this article, I am concerned with the effects experienced by one particu lar section of the New Zealand workforce—the men and women of the Fire

Service. I have been observing public events in New Zealand from an anthro

pological perspective for several decades and this has led to a broader interest

in civil society (Rimoldi 1997). The firefighters' union-backed protest through out the 1990s, against restructuring, downsizing, and privatizing the fire ser vice, dramatically represented the growing tension in New Zealand between civil society and the state—both from the left and from the right. Workers at

every level in New Zealand society were caught up in the managerial mone tarism promoted in government by the New Zealand Business Roundtable. This

group of business leaders strongly influenced Treasury policies:

By the early 1980s there were quite a number of countries experimenting with poli cies of economic liberalization for New Zealand to imitate. Thus, a number of

observers have commented on how similar the New Zealand reforms are to ...

Argentina, Uruquay and Chile. Given New Zealand's social and cultural origins, how

ever, the most influential experiment was probably that of Thatcher's Britain ... They have not followed Thatcher exactly, of course. If anything, Roger Douglas [Finance

Minister in the Labor Government at the time] was purer and more rigid in his com

mitment to monetarism than were his counterparts in Britain. (Jesson 1989: 83)



Temperate Passion of Democratic Reason 163

Whatever benefits New Zealand might have hoped to gain internationally, the shift from the state as a provider of services to the public, to manager of prof

itable 'state owned enterprises' certainly benefited a few former public servants

that became highly paid chief executives.

Phillip Adams's "Once Upon a Time" story about Australia published in the

Weekend Australian (2003) is a witty but sad tale of pretty much the same recent history experienced by New Zealand. "Gather round, Kiddies" he says, and proceeds to contrast the old Australia with the present Australia. The old Australia was a place:

where, it was believed, wealth should be shared among everyone. Whereas,

these days, wealth is increasingly uncommon, something to be enjoyed by our

visionary business leaders and their fortunate families ... In the olden days, the

Australian people owned lots and lots of institutions and services. There was a

Commonwealth Bank and many things denoted 'public.' There were public hospitals, public broadcasting and even public toilets.

Then along came the wonderful idea of 'privatization' and governments started

selling the things that all of the people had owned to ... some of the people. Gov

ernment monopolies like power stations and Telstra were, of course, unhealthy for the economy. So they became private monopolies. Which is what capitalism is all about... There are so many wonderful aspects to living in what we call the

'free market society,' where we live by the twenty-first century's Golden Rule.

Say after me, kiddies: 'Do unto others before they do unto you.' (Adams: 2003)

The vast number of New Zealanders who saw public services become less accessible and more costly, protested in towns, villages, and cities—for example,

at the closing of post offices and local hospitals. At the first opportunity they threw out the Labor government, even though the alternative was a National

government that is more sympathetic traditionally to the business community.

However, the neoliberal agenda continued with the sale of national assets,

and in 1999, Labor was given another chance with Helen Clarke at the helm

(she was reelected in 2002). Things have not returned to the Golden Age of the

1950s and 1960s, but government has to some degree made an effort to restore

something of the historic compromise between the state and labor. However, it

will not be possible for New Zealand to return completely to the 'good life' that is remembered by many older New Zealanders who experienced, as I did, edu

cation, health care, and other excellent public services paid for through a taxa tion system that did not privilege the wealthy. Consumerism then had not yet reached the proportions familiar to me in the United States, and although I was not used to the level of control over the economy that was the case in New

Zealand when I arrived, I came to understand that a social democracy with all

its benefits of security and well-being for the majority of its citizens required a restraint and moderation of desire for the common good. Economics alone can not address the problem of 'common good'—or the 'good life.' Habermas

reflects on the difficulty for philosophy in the "post metaphysical age" to have answers to questions regarding the personal, or even the collective, conduct of



164 Eleanor Rimoldi

life. He refers to philosophy as a "melancholy science" (after Adorno's Minima

Moralia), unable to develop an ethics beyond the "scattered, aphoristic reflec

tions from damaged life," unlike a time when the "doctrines of the good life

and of a just society—ethics and politics, made up a harmonious whole. But

with the acceleration of social change, the life spans of these models of the

good life have become increasingly shorter—whether they were aimed at the

Greek polis, the estates of the medieval societas civilis, the well-rounded indi vidual of the urban Renaissance or, as with Hegel, at the system of family, civil

society, and constitutional monarchy" (Habermas 2003: 1-2).

Habermas struggled to reconnect what has become an individualistic sense

of morality to "an ethical self understanding that joins the concern about one's

own well-being with the interest in justice" (2003: 4). It is the argument of this article that a revitalized sense of self-understanding entwined with one's life work may reconnect ethics with morality in our increasingly pluralistic, global world. However, for this to happen, work can not be controlled and defined by

"the all pervasive language of the market [that] puts all interpersonal relations

under the constraint of an egocentric orientation toward one's own prefer

ences. The social bond ... being made up of mutual recognition, cannot be

spelled out in the concepts of contract, rational choice, and maximal benefit

alone" (Habermas 2003: 110). If it is through work that citizens in a free democratic state are to develop an

ethical good life, then it is essential to understand the insight of workers into their own condition including the "destruction of craftsmanship during the

period of the rise of scientific management" (Braverman 1974: 6), and the neoliberal individualism that denied the social bond—society itself. Anthro

pologists have learned to rely on the lived experience of the subjects of their

research, and to find in this the truest expression of a working culture or, in this case, the culture of work. My focus on the firefighters' resistance to manager ial control of their profession developed from public displays of this resistance and appeals in public to the public. It is based on interviews with key figures, and by following the firefighters' own line of argument and their own percep

tion of their conditions of work through a variety of sources, including my own

photographs and videos of their public protests. The broader view of the

human condition to which Habermas refers ("how we see ourselves anthropo

logically as members of the species"] takes us beyond any particular hege monic linear history that prohibits us from revisiting a world we have lost

(2003: 29): "I hope that no one draws from this the conclusion that my views are shaped by nostalgia for an age that cannot be recaptured. Rather, my views

about work are governed by nostalgia for an age that has not yet come into

being, in which, for the worker, the craft satisfaction that arises from conscious and purposeful mastery of the labor process will be combined with the marvels of science and the ingenuity of engineering. An age in which everyone will be able to benefit, in some degree, from this combination" (Braverman 1974: 6).

Work can be denned in many ways—production of material objects, cre ative endeavor, and service to others, whether on a commercial basis or not.




Braverman gives the concept of craft a contemporary significance in relation to the labor process broadly defined. Craft is more than skilled handiwork; it refers to skill and ability as well as a philosophical resonance with an earlier age when

guilds maintained standards and protected the interests of craftsmen. Braverman

clearly does not wish to be seen as backward thinking—but does want to cri

tique the contemporary degradation of work and disempowerment of the work ers over their craft. Braverman takes a broad view of craftsmanship. He quotes

from the International Molders' Journal on the nature of craftsmanship: "The

really essential element in it is not manual skill and dexterity but something

stored up in the mind of the worker. This something is partly the intimate

knowledge of the character and use of the tools, materials, and processes of the craft which tradition and experience have given the worker. But beyond this and above this, it is the knowledge which enables him to understand and overcome the constantly arising difficulties that grow out of the variations not only in the tools and materials but in the conditions under which the work must be done"

(cited in Braverman 1974: 135-136). The editorial identifies the "managerial ism" that has now reached epic proportions as a dangerous form of the separa

tion of craft knowledge from craft skill which has reduced the worker to "an animated tool of the management" (Braverman 1974: 136).

If we accept, and I do, that workers understand their own conditions of

work, how might we consider the evolution of the guild in relation to other

ways in which workers express a common bond and common interests based on their craft? One contemporary form is unionism. Work is a fundamental

aspect of both public and private life—it is an aspect of civil society, but it is also integral to the well-being of the private individual as well as being essen tial to the economic base of any social structure. Unionism crosses all of these boundaries, and has the power to seriously affect the wider society.

It is also important to keep in mind the complexity of all of these concepts that

can only be understood in context, and in a constant state of negotiation and

interpretation. For example, Iveson refers to the idea that people of status and

power prefer to treat their privilege "as a purely private matter rather than a mat ter of public concern" (2001: 370). As a remedy to this situation: "marginalized and oppressed communities have often formed 'counterpublics' ... where mem

bers of subordinated social groups invent and circulate counterdiscourses to for

mulate oppositional interpretations of their identities, interests and needs ... The labor movement, for example, may be considered historically as one example of

a counterpublic. It has sought to both revalue and reinterpret the identity of

'workers,' and to open up the private privileges and status of capitalists (owner

ship and control of the means of production) to public control" (Iveson 2001: 371).

New Zealand Firefighters

The privatization of public services and the undermining of professionalism have

taken hold in many nations on the advice of international monetary agencies.



166 Eleanor Rimoldi

Through an analysis of public events and civil society it is possible to gain some measure of the acceptance of, or resistance to these global forces. An

analysis of the New Zealand firefighters' resistance to restructuring in a small

nation remote from major metropolitan centers of power reveals significant issues that challenge our notion of the public good, the integrity of labor, and

individual responsibility. The international extent of privatization of state-owned industries and pub

lic services has led commentators such as Letwin (1988) to construe these

upheavals as somehow part of an inevitable evolution. Letwin, a former mem

ber of Thatcher's U.K. Policy Unit, and head of the International Privatization

Unit of N.N. Rothschild and Sons Ltd., creates this illusion of natural processes

through such phrases as the "pre-history of privatization" (my emphasis), and a pretense that the "message" (as he calls it) of privatization just somehow

spread across the planet in ways that are too obscure to be documented. He

says that this "trend" is easier to describe than explain: "it cannot be fitted into the traditional picture of policy formation, which begins with agreed objectives and progresses through options to decisions, because in this case there is no

single authority with a single set of objectives" (Letwin 1988: 25). It is true, as Letwin suggests, that privatization took different forms, and for

different reasons, in the various national settings that he analyzes (with some

exaggeration he refers to New Zealand and Australia as "socialist govern

ments"). In New Zealand, a provincial reading of right-wing philosophy, such as Ayn Rand's The Fountain Head, within a close-knit circle of conservative businessmen referred to as the "Business Roundtable," generated a powerful

lobby group that served as a conduit for free market, libertarian ideas, and a

consequent push for privatization as an expression of their distrust of the State.

The Business Roundtable mounted an energetic campaign of media commen

tary, energetic lobbying, and publication of books and pamphlets to change "hearts and minds"—a campaign that was directed at the public and the gov ernment as well as academics. One example is Green's From Welfare State to

Civil Society: Towards Welfare That Works in New Zealand, published in 1996

by the New Zealand Business Roundtable in Wellington. At the time, Green was

the Director of the Health and Welfare Unit of the Institute of Economic Affairs in the United Kingdom. A former Labor councilor in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne from 1976 to 1981, he came to the Australian National University in Canberra

as a research fellow from 1981 to 1983. He neatly represents one of the many loops that tie in Thatcherism, international business interests, and the global propagation of a supposedly 'organic' revelation of the ideology of privatiza tion. Green refers to the more conservative business leaders active in the Busi

ness Roundtable, such as Roger Kerr, Roderick Deane, Roger Douglas, Ruth

Richardson, and others, as well as Maori leaders, or authors such as John Tami here and Alan Duff who argue for Maori initiatives that do not subscribe to an attribution of victim status. Green's work is a later development in right-wing libertarian tactics after the defeat of both National and Labor governments in New Zealand, that pushed the privatization and free-market program too far for




the citizens of New Zealand to accept. I argue here that specific groups, such

as the firefighters, were particularly astute in analyzing the detrimental effects

that these policies had for their work and their lives. The firefighters were one of the few unions to mount a strong defense against the pervasive restructur

ing and privatization that swept all sectors of the country during the 1980s and

1990s. Ken Loach's (2001) film, The Navigators, set in South Yorkshire, reveals

similar processes that not only undermined the unions that supported the

British Rail maintenance crews, but also destroyed the railway culture and the skills and safe practices that had been handed down in a spirit of solidarity for

generations. The film is a realistic portrayal of the fragmentation and competi tion in the workplace that destroys rather than encourages, concern for fellow

workers and the community at large. Green resorts to a conservative naturalized vision of the good life—one

where people can return to a world where society can "count on spontaneous

efforts to help people in need, and thus the less it will need coercive interven

tion by the State" (1996: 2). He imagines an "older ethos" of a "community without politics" where "the majority of the population assumed responsibility for fostering a 'public but not a political domain' of duties to care for all those who were not succeeding for one reason or another" (Green 1996: 3).

Green blames overseas influence during the 1960s, from the United Kingdom and the United States, in particular, for "collectivist thought," welfare policies, and the victim mentality which, he says, disturbed New Zealand's "home

grown tradition"—a tradition which seems to represent for him some form of

organic "community without politics." There is, of course, no single interpre tation of New Zealand social history, but many scholars see New Zealand as a

leader, not a follower, in developing a successful welfare state, or as sometimes identified—a social democracy: "The roots of the welfare state date back to the

introduction of pensions and compulsory industrial arbitration in the 1890s. It

was expanded in the post-Depression 1930s, creating an extensive network of

social services and income support" (Kelsey and O'Brien 1995: 1). As Kelsey and O'Brien point out, the success of the New Zealand Welfare

State throughout the 1930s to the 1970s was partly based on a prosperity "pro

vided by low unemployment, relatively secure markets for agricultural products,

and a program of industry assistance and protection. The overriding objective

was full employment, with the welfare state providing a secondary line of sup port," but worldwide economic changes in the mid-1970s "made that infra structure impossible to sustain" (Kelsey and O'Brien 1995: 1-2). In other words, to naturalize the "organic homegrown" nature of New Zealand policies evades the influence of economic and political reality. Green would like to imagine a

"community without politics," or civil society, that avoids the dialectic between

business, government, policy, and ideology. To separate them conceptually is useful only if we reintegrate them analytically. Instead, he constructs an ideal

community that is based on his own preferred belief in 'the natural order of

things.' It is, in his view, a matter of human nature and individual character. Green favors the views of Adam Smith who "warned ... of the catastrophic



168 Eleanor Rimoldi

results for the poor of moral laxity," and that "a man who starts with little cash

and who has little ability [he seems to presume the two are necessarily related]

must make the most of his character. He can not command a good job because

of his intelligence or skills, but he can make himself indispensable to an

employer or to customers by making the most of his main assets: virtues like

hard work, loyalty, and honesty" (Green 1996: 75-76). However, consider Sen nett's argument that it is the "new capitalism" itself that leads to the "corrosion

of character ... Detachment and superficial co-operativeness are better armor

for dealing with current realities than behavior based on values of loyalty and

service" (Sennett 1998: 25). Particularly relevant for firefighters and other high risk work is the importance of trust between fellow workers and not just between workers and employers: "deeper experiences of trust are more infor

mal, as when people learn on whom they can rely when given a difficult or

impossible task. Such social bonds take time to develop, slowly rooting into the cracks and crevices of institutions" (Sennett 1998: 24).

There is also a spirit of devotion to duty which may seem unfashionable in an age when "the glorification of earnings, productivity, and competitiveness, or just plain profit, tends to undermine the very foundation of functions that

depend on a certain professional disinterestedness often associated with mil itant devotion ... It has been observed that people who enter public service, and most particularly 'street-level' bureaucracies, often have a certain devo

tion to their function, seeing it as potentially useful to society" (Bourdieu 1999: 183-184).

In Loach's film, the rail track maintenance workers understood their pre dicament and its effects, but they lost their nerve under the pressure, their

union failed them, and their former solidarity gave way to individual self-inter est that, in the end, undermined their safety, their livelihood, and their self respect. Ultimately, the safety of the traveling public was also put at risk.

The story of the New Zealand firefighters, however, had a different ending. Theirs was a story of determined resistance at grass roots level: "If change occurs it happens on the ground, between persons speaking out of inner need,

rather than through mass uprisings. What political programs follow from those

inner needs, 1 simply don't know. But 1 do know a regime which provides human beings no deep reasons to care about one another cannot long preserve its legitimacy" (Sennett 1998: 148).

The New Zealand firefighters spoke from this inner need, and their public expression of this became the focus of my research. The firefighters mounted a

strong resistance to new right policies that threatened their integrity. It could be said that all transactions in our complex, fragmented, contemporary society

depend upon trust, and all such transactions effect our safety and well-being.

However, some institutions have come to symbolize public protection at its most basic, for example, the police and firefighters: "[T]he public police con tinue to be identified within English mentalities and sensibilities as the princi pal source of security and protection and that despite recent attempts to

'demystify' them, the police retain among large swathes of the (law-abiding)




public traces of a 'sacred' status as symbols of law, order and nation ..."

(Loader 1999: 387). Loader concludes his analysis of the trend in Britain and elsewhere toward

private security systems by suggesting "the value of other more deliberative

ways of addressing the crime question and structuring the relationship between the police and the 'publics' they serve; ways that seek to subject 'consumer' demands for particular kinds of policing and security to the test of public dis course oriented to the common good, and so temper with democratic reason the

passions that consumer culture threatens to unleash" (Loader 1999: 389).

On the whole, the police are held in high regard in New Zealand as well. In his history of policing in New Zealand from 1886 to 1917, Hill says that it "can not be stressed enough that it was seen as a truism that New Zealand's police

were the 'best conducted' in the world, a theme of self-congratulation which has extended to the present day" (1995: 427). This referred to trust, credibility, and the lack of corruption. Dunstall's history of New Zealand police during the

period 1918 to 1945, characterizes New Zealand as "a policeman's paradise" at a time of stability in the country (1999: 355). Generally, New Zealand police remain unarmed, in spite of an increase in violent crime in recent years. How

ever, it is acknowledged that the attitude toward the police has become more ambivalent in some respects. The 1981 anti-apartheid street protests against the

Springbok rugby tour divided New Zealanders bitterly—the brutality of a spe cial baton-wielding police squad to break up protesters shocked many people

when they saw the iron hand of the state turned against them. Nevertheless, 1

would say that the use of private security of various kinds in New Zealand is more a product of the under funding and understaffing of the police force, rather than widespread public disaffection with the police.

The processes of commodification of security services and policing in Britain

are similar to processes in New Zealand, with private security firms patrolling

neighborhoods, gated suburbs, and so on. Gangs like the Headhunters also have their own private security, with high fences, video surveillance, and tow ers. Sometimes the two worlds come together, when gang members infiltrate

the police or find employment in private security firms. In December 2000, a

group of six men overpowered two Chubb security guards servicing an ATM.

This daylight robbery included three men who were former security guards themselves (The Dominion, 6 February 2001; The Press, 24 February 2001: 24). Recently, a warning was issued in the New Zealand Herald, for "businesses and homeowners to check the credentials of security firms and individual guards before employing them. The warning comes after North Shore police discov ered that staff at some security firms had criminal records" [New Zealand Her

ald, 16 August 2001: 4). Loader suggests a public unease at the dissociation of

policing and security from public interest, justice, and legitimacy. He associates the commodification of security with a concurrent destruction of occupational culture within the police force.

Krause (1996J explored the nature of occupational culture with a specific focus on professions that, in his analysis, have their roots in twelfth century



170 Eleanor Rimoldi

guilds. He argues that to qualify as a guild, there must be power and control

over the association, the workplace, the market, and the relation to the state

(Krause 1996: 3). The powers of the guild were important, and included who could be hired, how they were trained, and control over the apprentice-master

relationship. The guild must also have an effective ethical code. Guilds estab

lished themselves as powerful forces positioned between town and state:

"Guild position in all guilds depended on family status. Because guilds were Brotherhoods—social clubs as well as economic organizations—the mix of fam

ily backgrounds in a guild would determine its position in a town's hierarchy, and perhaps the amount of political clout the guild could muster in support of

its monopoly" (ibid.: 12). This family quality, however fictive, is notable among firefighters who extend the analogy internationally—"a firefighter can always find a bed and a meal in a firehouse anywhere"1—cooking and eating together is standard practice for firefighters on call.

Krause considers university academics, doctors, and engineers, in relation to

guild power. Engineers, however, provide him with a negative case; in his view

they never were a guild but an occupation subject to capitalist profit motives

that undermined solidarity, professional control, and ethical commitment. He

says that whistleblowers are not common in that occupation because it would

mean the end of their career. This has obvious implications for public safety. Krause considered doctors and academics as guilds in the past, but notes that within the professions, "guild power ... is declining as state power and capi talist power encroach upon it. Where state and capitalist power have won out,

they and not the profession control the aspects of professional life that we call

'the workplace' and 'the market' and determine to a large extent how much

associational group power the professional has left vis-a-vis the state and cap italism" (Krause 1996: 22).

During the New Zealand firefighters' protests, the Association of University Staff of New Zealand, supported by student unions, took part in the broad

based union support of the firefighters, but the poor showing from the univer

sity staff in public protests was in stark contrast to the sense of solidarity in the

firefighter's union. It was a graphic demonstration of the loss of guild power in academia, and the strength of it among the firefighters. Nevertheless, when

staff at Otago University in Dunedin went on strike for better pay and condi tions in 2002, local fire fighters stood with them, specifically because the aca demic union had supported their cause earlier.

Firefighters in New Zealand have been a site of resistance for over a decade. An analysis of this struggle and the eventual success of the firefighters' union

against the downsizing and restructuring planned by the government and the

Fire Service management, stands in stark contrast to less effective attempts at

protest in other contested areas of New Zealand society. In 1994, the New Zealand Fire Service faced a major restructuring that threatened the loss of three hundred and thirty frontline firefighters, sixty senior operational staff, and sixty support staff. In 1995, the firefighters responded by taking industrial action, but the review was adopted and a five-year plan developed (Stevens 1997: 5).




Figure 1: Auckland firefighters appealling to the public to sign their petition for a

referendum against a restructuring of the fire service (Photo: Eleanor Rimoldi, 1998)

The firefighters started a nationwide campaign to collect signatures for a referendum that was held with an overwhelming win to the firefighters. Not

only did they have an advantage in the high regard the public has for them, but they were able to give voice to years of public discontent at government's

policy of downsizing public services, leaving citizens at the mercy of com

mercialized agencies. In June 2001, after some ten years of resistance to unacceptable contracts

and restructuring, the firefighters' union accepted a new contract and their first

pay rise in eleven years (Rees 2001: 16-17). One very important reason why the

firefighters won their case was that they shared a common sense of their pro

fessional status and knew the history of their profession in New Zealand. The

history of fire fighting in New Zealand is a history that reflects the development of civil society in this country:

Auckland had the first fire brigade in New Zealand. The first recorded fire was

in Mechanics Bay in 1842 where raupo huts, the homes of immigrant Scottish

families, caught fire. This was attended by the army barracks fire brigade, which

was stationed in what is now Albert Park. The alarm for fire was a special bugle call. As New Zealand's towns grew, civic authorities, as an act of social respon

sibility, took over the task of fire fighting. Along with the city volunteers, insur

ance brigades developed as a way of protecting their company risks. For decades



172 Eleanor Rimoldi

there was on-going strife between volunteer brigades who performed a public duty and insurance brigades that wanted to protect only their companies' customers.

There were many reported occasions where rival insurance brigades attacked each

other at fires, cutting hoses and turning off water supplies to increase the fire dam

age to their rivals' customers. (Gillon 1998: 11-12, my emphasis)

This account by Gillon, a firefighter of many year's experience, is not just a his

tory, but is also a polemic, written as part of the resistance in which they were

engaged. The quote above clearly links fire fighting with social responsibility and the emergence of civic life. There is also reference to the potential conflict of interests between public interest and private profit. Oliver Letwin, a former member of Thatcher's Policy Unit, uses history to validate a different polemic:

private enterprise of many sorts—in manufacturing, trading and services—was

certainly a feature of ancient civilizations. Indeed, in ancient Rome, the level of

private enterprise was sufficient to stir eloquent complaints from Horace and

other puritanical commentators. Crassus, perhaps the richest and most ruth

lessly enterprising of all the Romans, is reputed to have run an interesting com

bination of a private property firm and a private fire service, with what would

now be described as a synergy between the two: buying houses at a low price when burning and then sending the fire-engines speedily to rescue his new

found property. (Letwin 1988: 1)

This, with other examples, leads to Letwin's 'naturalization' of privatization: "Economies have ... been 'mixed' since time out of mind. The 'public sector' and the 'private sector,' in many different and often hazily distinguished forms, have been present together through history" (ibid.: 2).

The hazy mists of time is an important metaphor for Letwin, as he alludes to the origins of the private sector, and speculates that this may go back to our distant, primitive, ancestral past. The implication is that it is human nature. Gillon's history is more one of material struggle between competing interests in

a specific historical context, and it is not necessary to attribute a fundamental

human nature to one position in the struggle. But one common thread between

these two histories is the link between property, destruction by fire, and profit. In New Zealand, the hiatus occurred in 1949 when forty-one people lost

their lives in the Ballantynes department store fire. The following Commission

of Inquiry led to a recommendation that the Fire Service be properly standard ized in procedures and a national structure be established: "This was gradually introduced until the Fire Service Act 1975 was passed and a fully nationalized fire service took effect as from 1 April 1976 ... New Zealand had a truly national fire service that was funded from a Fire Service levy on insurance poli cies, approximately 74 percent, and a central government contribution which was approximately 26 percent" (Gillon 1998: 12).

According to Gillon, this Fire Service became internationally recognized for its high standards, but "commercial interests thought the employment condi tions were too generous [and] they were paying for them through an excessive




Fire Service levy" (Gillon 1998: 12-13). This tension between various interests

remained, and came to a head in the most recent dispute: "The Business

Roundtable embarked upon a major attack on the New Zealand Fire Service,

with what appeared to be the sole purpose of trying to eliminate the contribu tion that their members had to make ... A major early scheme was for compa nies to place their insurances offshore and thereby avoid paying any Fire Service levy inside New Zealand" (Gillon 1998: 13).

For the firefighters, knowledge of the history of their profession was impor tant in understanding their contemporary circumstances. The Fire Service addressed the issue of avoidance of the levy by petitioning the Minister of

Finance, Ruth Richardson, for an amendment to the Act that would prohibit such a practice. The corporate sector responded with a Business Roundtable

report in March 1995 that argued for a privatization of the Fire Service (Gillon 1998: 13-14). An understanding of these vested interests was reflected in the

posters and slogans displayed by firefighters during their union protests, specif ically naming prominent members of the Business Roundtable and politicians that supported them. The strength of feeling was dramatically represented at the end of a long march of firefighters from all over the North Island up Auck land's main street in the heart of the business district. The fire engine at the end of the march carried a fallen figure dressed as a firefighter spread across the lad

ders with a large knife in his back. The firefighters' union mounted a successful struggle against the restructur

ing of the Fire Service during a historical period in New Zealand when the union movement had been seriously undermined by the Employment Con tracts Act. Throughout 1985 and 1986, the Labor Government invited comment on industrial relations legislation and its Green Paper, "Industrial Relations: A Framework for Review"; the "Green Paper itself took the continuance of a spe cialist jurisdiction, of some sort, for granted ... one sole submission, that of the

Business Roundtable, argued for a 'return to common law and common sense

in industrial relations [involving] a simple system of renewable contracts'"

(Ryan and Walsh 1993: 3). The Labor Government at the time ignored the Business Roundtable pro

posal. However, in 1991 The New Zealand Employment Contracts Act was

passed following the election of a National Government. In the lead up to the

election of 1990, a backroom policy debate took place over whether or not the traditional labor law jurisdiction be continued. Arguing for a contractually based system of labor relations (since 1986, in fact) were Treasury Officials, the Minister of Finance, and the Business Roundtable. On the other side, arguing for the retention of the specialist jurisdiction, for reasons of social justice and

equity, were the minister of Labor, the Department of Labor officials, and the Council of Trade Unions. The influence of the Business Roundtable is indicated

by the fact that, in 1991, the Minister of Labor invited the Employers Federa tion, the Council of Trade Unions, and after a meeting with business leaders,

Doug Myers and Roger Kerr, he included the Business Roundtable, to make sub

missions directly to him (ibid.: 9):



174 Eleanor Rimoldi

The Business Roundtable called for the complete abolition of a specialist institutional structure. It was critical of the Labor Court's attempts (and

those of the Court of Appeal and the Law Commission) to incorporate

notions of fairness into employment related matters and suggested that over

time this would undermine government attempts to deregulate the labor

market. Employment contracting was the same as any other type of con

tracting and there should be no separate jurisdiction for labor contracts, whether in the form of a labor court or a labor division of the High Court. The Roundtable argued that use of the mediation service was based on cost

considerations rather than any approval of the quality of its work. In its

view, mediation should be a service provided through the market for which the State should have no responsibility, (ibid.: 10)

The Business Roundtable view held sway. If we accept that civil society is partly located in the associations and com

mon interests of shared work, then not only does the determined resistance of

the firefighters go beyond the paternalistic notion of subservient loyalty to the

'master employer,' but raises other issues of loyalty—to one's fellow workers, to

one's profession, to the public at large. Professional loyalty, among firefighters, for example, is based on the knowledge that their lives are quite literally, in one another's hands. It is interesting that, in spite of the government plan to restruc ture the fire service by replacing professional trained firefighters with volunteers, and thus pit the professional union against the volunteers, there were instances

where the volunteers themselves rejected the plan: "A plan to increase the role

of volunteer firefighters in Porirua in place of professionals is being opposed by the volunteers, who decided this week that they were not adequately trained to

cope ... a memo from the volunteers to all station staff... says it is not capable

of manning the second fire engine. 'We are not adequately trained to cope with

more first attendance incidents (where they would be first at a fire) ... The aver

age period of service of the volunteers is two years and most are not adequately

skilled for the responsibility ... "' (The Dominion, 16 January 1999: 9).

The volunteers also said that they did "not want to replace paid staff and

[were] not willing to take harassment from the community and paid staff for tak

ing over a job done by paid staff" (The Dominion, 16 January 1999: 9). This reveals the deeply complex social nature of work, as well as the recognition that

morality is a product of our relations with others. The Business Roundtable, however, promoted a 'naturalized' concept of labor relations that was based on

the idea that the individual pursuit of happiness was the natural basis for a just society. In the same way, their preference for a common law approach to labor

relations reflected what they considered to be the nature of the relationship between employer and employee. The Business Roundtable prefers the pater nalism and patronage inherent in the concept of master-servant or head of household to that of the role of the state in regulation of employment through

statutory systems of labor law and collective bargaining. The master-servant

relationship is somehow naturalized by reference to common law as being akin




to the law of God and nature, the latter being revealed to humankind through

scripture because "human reason is corrupt and ... full of ignorance and error":

this has given manifold occasion for the benign interposition of divine Provi

dence: which, in compassion to the frailty, the imperfection, and the blindness of human reason, hath been pleased, at sundry times and in divers manners, to

discover and enforce its laws by an immediate and direct revelation. The doc

trines thus delivered we call the revealed or divine law, and they are to be found

only in the Holy Scriptures. These precepts, when revealed, are found upon

comparison to be really a part of the original law of nature, as they tend in all

their consequences to man's felicity. But we are not from thence to conclude that

the knowledge of these truths was attainable by reason, in its present corrupted

state; since we find that, until they are revealed, they were hid from the wisdom

of ages. As then the moral precepts of this law are indeed of the same original with those of the law of nature, so their intrinsic obligation is of equal strength

and perpetuity. Yet undoubtedly the revealed law is of infinitely more authentic

ity than that moral system, which is framed by ethical writers, and denominated

the natural law. Because one is the law of nature, expressly declared so to be by God himself; the other is only what, by the assistance of human reason, we

imagine to be that law. If we could be as certain of the latter as we are of the for

mer, both would have an equal authority: but, till then, they can never be put in

any competition together ... Upon these two foundations, the law of nature and

the law of revelation, depend all human laws; that is to say, no human laws

should be suffered to contradict these. (Blackstone, cited in Jones 1973: 30)

Along with the vestiges of the master-servant relationship in common law, is the notion of loyalty to the employer. On the face of it this seems not a bad thing— indeed a mutual loyalty of sorts might be expected. However, litigation in this

area might well be seen to favor the master rather than the servant as, for exam

ple, in "bringing the fire service into disrepute," an accusation leveled at several of the firefighters during the protest actions. It is my contention that the fire

fighters remain something of a twenty-first century guild with the qualities iden tified by Krause—control over training, association, workplace, and their relation

to the public and the state, and importantly, an ethical code of practice.

While discussing the protest action with a group of fire fighters, they revealed the anger and hurt they felt toward those who sought to restructure the fire ser vice. The firefighters felt alienated from the Fire Service Administration—man

agers who, in some cases, were never frontline firefighters and who were

prepared to follow government directives to downsize and privatize. The fire

fighters referred to them as "barbarians." However, the firefighters expressed a dedicated loyalty to the public—they were very proud of the lives they saved, and keenly felt defeat when lives were lost. The numbers were at their finger tips. The firefighters were analytic and systematic in defending their position. They kept an extensive file of information, communications, and medical

reports. They kept track of the theoretical models developed by their antago nists, such as those advisers who were brought in to restructure the service.



176 Eleanor Rimoldi

They compared them to other "Harvard educated" people who restructured the

health services. Now, they say, the man who invented the "Harvard model"

admits it is wrong. In any case, one firefighter said, the fire service is not a

profit organization, so the business management model is not appropriate.

Another firefighter said he wants to stay in the job because he has nowhere else

to go. The job he does is too highly specialized. He explained that the business

community favored the use of volunteers to reduce the cost of the fire service,

and thus less levy would be paid in the central business district—in other

words, the Business Roundtable protected their own interests. The professional

firefighters and their union had a very sophisticated grasp of the economic

power brokers and political ideologues ranked against them. Indeed, profes sional firefighters are a powerful center of resistance, and have to a large degree

succeeded in their battle to defy deregulation and privatization of their profes sion. They insisted on negotiation through their union, and in this, set the

example for other threatened groups. They strongly resisted the undermining of their expertise and experience, and their right to determine the number and

quality of the resources they need to do the job well and in safety. They have a

strong sense of public duty, and this forms in part a basis for civil society. Their confidence in addressing their concerns in public and to the public reinforces the very notion of civil society in New Zealand, and this in turn strengthens the democratic basis of the state.

Conclusion

Sennett warns us that contemporary public life is in decline. He argues that: "our

public life, once an important complement to our private life, has been diminished

by the disappearance (or the designing out) from towns and cities of areas for

public events, by our fear of crime, pollution and human variety, and by the cul

tural emphasis now placed upon 'intimacy'" (cited in Cohen and Taylor 1992: 8). Elshtain (cited in Hefner 1995: 4) worries over the "deepening emptiness" to

public life, and a "kind of evacuation of civic spaces." Like Auden's elegy to the

dying Yeats, we can imagine the fading of the human spirit where the private person moves ghostlike and alone among the cold shadows of public buildings on city streets:

But for him it was his last afternoon as himself,

An afternoon of nurses and rumors;

The provinces of his body revolted,

The squares of his mind were empty, Silence invaded the suburbs,

The current of his feeling failed; he became his admirers ...

Now he is scattered among a hundred cities

And wholly given over to unfamiliar affections ....

Auden (1998) In Memory of W. B. Yeats




Civic culture is generated out of a spontaneous need to address public issues

that impact on the body politic. Civic culture represents the mood and will of the

people, and although a particular group of people such as the firefighters may initiate the process, their actions will remain idiosyncratic unless the wider cit

izenry responds. The response can be positive, negative, or both, but not

ignored or civic events remain so much public noise, noticed only until the traf

fic lights change and we move on. According to the Etymologies by Saint Isidore of Seville, one root of the word city is civitas, and "this word is about the emo

tions, rituals and convictions that take form in a city" (cited in Sennett 1990: 11). Sennett sees the division between the sacred or domestic sanctuary of church or

home as one that developed "in the medieval way of marking territory" (ibid.: 18). But, in time, the "zone of immunity protected people from the city, yet left

the civitas of the secular world amorphous, violent, undefined, a space of moral amnesia" (ibid.: 18-19). However, we can observe that a civic culture of moral

comment, political commentary, rebellion, or celebration emerges sponta neously from time to time, and public space is revitalized and imbued with a

human history of action apart from or even in spite of architecture. Indeed—

space and time may well be irrelevant in an age of global protest such as that which has emerged in demonstrations against the World Bank and the IMF. The international nature of the firefighters 'guild power' is an example of solidarity that also goes beyond national borders—a kind of global civil society:

It is understandable that minor civil servants, and more especially those charged with carrying out the so-called 'social' functions, that is, with compensating, without being given all the necessary means, for the most intolerable effects and

deficiencies of the logic of the market—policemen and lower-level judges, social

workers, educators, and even more and more in recent years, primary and sec

ondary school teachers—should feel abandoned, if not disowned outright in

their efforts to deal with the material and moral suffering that is the only certain

consequence of this economically legitimated Realpolitik. (Bourdieu 1999: 183)

NOTES

1. A firefighter at Auckland Central fire station, personal communication, 5 March 1999.

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