Matt McCarten: Now is the time for MPs with union hearts to take a stand for workers

I feel terrible watching my old mate Taito Phillip Field being done over. The best defence that his supporters can offer is that his actions were misguided, albeit well intentioned. His political opponents and most New Zealanders have no doubt he misused his position as a Parliamentarian to personally profit. On evidence to date it's clear that he won't recover his public reputation or his political career.

I'm trying to come to terms with the fact that this man condemned as an exploiter of the vulnerable, is the same Phillip Field I shared an office with 20 years ago.

Back then we were both young idealists in the Hotel Workers Union organising thousands of low-paid people in the hospitality industry. Field had been a workers' leader in the meat works before we became colleagues. He was an impassioned orator and he was fearless. He commanded enormous loyalty and I looked up to him. Of course I was an idealist - still am. It's sad to see a hero of yesteryear stumble.

People such as Field and I were part of a group of young working-class leaders off the shop floor. Few of us went to university. We claimed that our union was our university. We learnt our fighting skills and politics in the dying years of the Muldoon regime. We really believed we would change the world where workers got a better deal. Some of our more radical mates believed we could overthrow the whole rotten capitalist system so that workers need not slog their butts off to make their boss richer.

We were jubilant when David Lange swept to power. But we all got a nasty shock when our "workers" party turned out to be an even better friend of big business than National. Roger Douglas made Muldoon look like a socialist. From out of that betrayal we decided to actively pursue a strategy to put our own people into Parliament. We thought if we got enough of us there we could change the rules and help the people we represented.

Getting the leaders of the Hotel Workers Union into Parliament was extraordinarily successful. No other single organisation has done better. In the last Government we had 10 MPs with four ministers in the Cabinet from our old union. The current Government still has two former union members in the Cabinet. Field was there too, before he got the boot.

When I was the union president in Auckland, the head of our union was Rick Barker. The finest years of our union were under his leadership. I remember him organising a mass meeting of 4000 of our members to bring down Muldoon and defy his government. We mobilised mass strikes. At the time the wage freeze was on and industrial action was illegal, but we didn't care. Barker was arrested. A few days later I was nabbed, too. We were on a picket line when Muldoon capitulated and resigned. How we cheered that day. We thought we were indestructible.

We lost our illusions and innocence under the Lange Government when we realised that low-paid workers were still getting screwed over, whether Labour or National were in. When Labour got dumped in 1990, Barker went to Parliament with the head of our Christchurch branch, Lianne Dalziel. The first time I met her she was crying because our members were being treated badly. She wasn't soft, she just cared. Both of them are now Cabinet ministers. Business lobbyists tell me they are both from the "business-friendly" ideological camp. I hope that doesn't mean that their support is at the expense of workers.

Barker's union successor Mark Gosche went in next with Mark Peck. Even after some of us formed the Alliance we still kept on the tradition of stacking Parliament with our union's members. My mates, Laila Harre, Matt Robson and Willie Jackson, went to Parliament via the Alliance. Dave Hereora, Sue Moroney and Darien Fenton have slipped through since. And then there was my old comrade in arms, Field, who inherited Lange's seat. Even the newest MP, Charles Chauvel, was one of ours, although I see he doesn't mention his connection any more.

Now of course it would have been the greatest coup ever to have these MPs regularly meeting as a group, strategising on tactics to win benefits for working people. Unfortunately this doesn't happen. In fact some of them despise each other. Our mothership, the Hotel Workers Union, has since been morphed into the Service & Food Workers Union and there doesn't seem to be any residual loyalty or sense of obligation to work together. But I hope in their hearts they haven't forgotten that low-paid workers put them there.

I hope they feel a little guilty that since they have been enjoying the privileges of public office, the poor in this country have been getting poorer while the rich have been getting richer. But there is something they can all do in the next few weeks to prove themselves. There is a whisper that a number of senior players in the Government are planning to block Sue Bradford's Bill that will abolish the right of employers to pay lower rates to workers under 18 for doing the same work as older workers. If Labour supports the bill, it will pass. If they don't, it will fail. So there's no getting off the hook for any one of these former union colleagues.

It's a chance for Field and the former Hotel Workers Union team to show the working poor that they really did go to Parliament to help them. I look forward to it.