1981: Rixen
December 3, 2021
By AHNZ
Between 26 August and 4 December, 1981, ex-employees of the Rixen Manufacturing in Levin occupied the factory. This is New Zealand’s longest industrial sit-in in our history. It gained them nothing. Why did they do it?
There is no rational tactical advantage to flogging a dead horse. Rixen’s owner, Ken Dungey, had evidently been unable to keep the clothing factory profitable. The women workers had contracted for low wages and no provision for redundancy pay should the firm they had hitched their livelihood to be unable to survive the economic turbulence. Nor did the workers have a union, preferring to leave all decision-making input and communications up to the Boss. That meant that as the firm ran out of puff the workers would have no influence and the news would come as a shock. This employment arrangement was acceptable for many years until Rixen hit the wall.
“The search for dozens of women who occupied Levin’s Rixen clothing factory in 1981 prompting game-changing redundancy rules has brought memories flooding back for the workers and unionists…who remember the day they were told the factory was closing, and they could pack up their things and leave.”
“The power stayed on, food was delivered, indoor sports were set up, and there were a lot of visitors providing support.”- The women who stood their ground in Levin factory found, Stuff (2018)
Management didn’t act with suspicion or bad faith. Workers were given the opportunity to leave with dignity and pack up their own belongings before leaving the factory. It was a time to be sad and say goodbye not a time to be malicious and exploit the access to the worksite to turn it into a hostage situation. Against the honesty and expectations of Rixen the workers instead boarded themselves in and occupied the factory!
Mainstream/Government history says this protest achieved something but it did not. The 70 protesters whittled down to 29 and their demand for a redundancy pay-out came to nil. It’s Politically Correct to lionise the women for throwing a 14 week tantrum and numerous articles do so along with a full-length documentary: Even Dogs Are Given Bones, Dyke Productions (1982); Ref. Vimeo
“How silly to think logistical antiques can be made economical again because women are given free rides and catering for sitting on their tails on rails! Antique…systems don’t become economically efficient because Victimhood Culture women throw tantrums on their asses. It’s ridiculous. But very interesting history.” – 1955: Tails On Rails, AHNZ
Fortress New Zealand was coming to an end in 1981 as our protected and closed economy struggled to remain insular in an increasingly free world. Consumers were kept poor, forced to pay extra for un-competitive products that kept some careers, firms, sectors, and entire industries, subsidised on artificial life support long after they had become brain-dead. New Zealand, until the reforms of Labour 4.0, tried to politically force itself to stay in the socio-economic Hobbit Shire of post-War settings. Tried to make reality serve our culture rather than the other way around. In the end we just stunted our cultural growth and economic performance.
The Rixen Women were not savvy enough to keep an eye on their own workplace politics so it’s highly unlikely they were sophisticated enough to be making geopolitical calculations. If so, they might have been betting on the election of November 1981 to save them by throwing out Prime Minister Robert Muldoon’s National 3.0. The reality was that Muldoon was the only one trying to preserve the Fortress New Zealand that Rixen’s jobs had depended upon. When a Labour government was re-elected in 1984 it was not like Labour 1.0, Labour 2.0, or Labour 3.0. They were not a party for the Workers now. Labour had crossed a line and gone full Victimhood Culture mode as evidenced by Jim Anderton’s exit in 1989. Even if the Rixen Workers really thought so deeply it didn’t matter because Labour, in 1981, was too much in the midst of this identity crisis to be of the slightest help. Never the less, this didn’t stop Labour 6.0 hoovering up some “beautiful” stolen glory in 2019…
“It was a beautiful thing when Grant Robertson introduced the evening and asked the Even Dogs Are Given Bones women to stand up so we could applaud them.And beautiful to watch..in a crowded cinema.” – Wellywood Woman (2019)
“The VC takes no responsibility and does none of the work, unless you include counting to 4. She generates a force field of irritation (toī) so that her staff (receptionist and mother) will do the work for her. They, in turn, lean on technicians with genuine skills and value to offer who bend to the will of the irritated child. By lacking assertion, not being able to say “no,” the tantrums of children and their supporters in this way come to rule or lives. This real life Veruca Salt doesn’t say “thank you” for the exception that has been made for her, she says that bending to her will should never have even been a debate. “About time ay?” says her mother after the workmen leave.” – The Wokeavator, NZB3
This only goes to show that the Rixen Women are as politically naive today as they were 40 years ago. They even referred to themselves as striking workers as if they thought they still had jobs to strike from!
Why did they do it? Dismissing all other explanations explored it must simply have been a reflex action. In September 1955 another group of women pulled a similar stunt by sitting-in on another obsolete bit of capital in Nelson. The Nelson-Glenhope railway was as obsolete as the Rixen Factory and that’s a matter of economics not something to be changed by public displays of sedantry women. The Rixen women, like their Nelson predecessors, had a catering service for their protest as people brought in food. They even had power services to the factory running! Both of these women’s groups failed. Of course they did. The wonder is that they ever thought things could go any other way.
Some people’s reflex when confronted with a reality they don’t like is to self-harm in some form until some alpha figure relents and gives them what they want. By definition this is a posture of being an inferior who is not an author in one’s own life but gets their needs met by manipulating others. It’s not a function of one’s own personal power but of the toxic sympathy of those who do have personal power. Rather than reform themselves the toxically sympathetic generally keep giving away value as welfare until there is no more to give out. Having bankrupt our store of wealth due to lack of boundary-setting we come upon hard times. “Good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times.” The 1981 Rixen Affray is an historical marker for when New Zealand had run out of free rides for uneconomic white elephants.
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Image ref. Coronation Street factory
Ref. Veruca Salt: I Want It Now!, Willie Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971); Youtube
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