Labour History Project AGM: ‘The power of the story’

Register for a zoom link

‘The power of the story’

Following the Labour History Project AGM, Lyndy McIntyre will talk about the power of stories, particularly how the stories of workers came together in her new book Power to Win: The Living Wage Movement in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Her book explores how our lowest-paid workers and their unions can build power to win the Living Wage in alliance with the broader community. It documents the emergence of the Living Wage Movement in 2011 and campaigns over the following ten years that delivered large pay increases to thousands of workers and changed how we talk about wages in our country.

Lyndy will focus on those courageous workers who often risked their jobs to speak out, how their storytelling won the living wage, and the role of their unions in identifying potential storytellers of this history.

The book sets out to inspire activism to build the community power necessary to win decent wages and transform the lives of workers, their whānau and their communities and to demonstrate how community organising can create real change and victories for workers, unions and community allies.

AGM meeting agenda

• 5.30pm — Drinks and food

• 6pm — AGM & Bert Roth Awards

• 6.30pm — Talk by Lyndy McIntyre

Can’t make it in person?

Can't make it in person? This event will also be delivered using Zoom. You do not need to install the software in order to attend, you can opt to run Zoom from your browser.

Register if you’d like to join this talk and we'll send you the link to use on the day.

Register for a zoom link

The Labour History Project

The Labour History Project is an organisation dedicated to researching, recording, preserving, and promoting Aotearoa New Zealand’s working-class history.

The Labour History Project

The Bert Roth Award

The Bert Roth Award for best work in New Zealand labour history is given annually to an outstanding contribution to the field of labour history in the previous calendar year — an event, a publication, a film, an article or, conceivably, a sustained body of work over a long period of time.

Previous winners include Cybèle Locke for Comrade: Bill Andersen, A communist, working-class life and Gay Simpkin and Marie Russell (editors) for Women Will Rise! (2023), Julia Laite for The Disappearance of Lydia Harvey (2022), Noel O’Hare for Tooth and Veil: The Life and Times of the New Zealand Dental Nurse (2021) and ATL curator Jared Davidson for Dead Letters: Censorship and subversion in New Zealand 1914-1920, (2020).

The award is named for librarian, writer and historian Herbert Roth (1917-1994), whose collection is now held in the Alexander Turnbull Library.

Herbert Roth collection

About the speaker

Lyndy McIntyre learnt her union activism in the 1980s as a newspaper compositor and a member and delegate of the Printers Union. Her first union job was with the Northern Hotel and Hospital Workers Union which, through amalgamations, became the Service and Food Workers Union and then E tū. Since the early 1990s, Lyndy has worked in a wide range of union campaigning roles in Aotearoa and briefly in Australia. She was a key member of Living Wage Movement Aotearoa NZ from its launch in 2012 until 2020, when she left her job as a living wage community organiser and began to write a book telling the story of the movement. Lyndy McIntyre is a proud E tū life member and an NZEI Te Riu Roa Associate Fellow and continues to be active in the Living Wage Movement.

Power to Win will be launched by Rebecca Macfie at Unity Books in Wellington on 4 July at 6pm and at Scorpio Books in Ōtautahi Christchurch at 5.30pm 8 July. Power to Win has been published by Otago University Press and printed in New Zealand by Pivotal, an E tū unionised site and a long-time fully accredited Living Wage Employer, where all workers, including the contracted cleaners, are paid a minimum of the living wage.