The senior doctor's strike in September was just one of 22 work stoppages this year. Photo: Kim Baker Wilson / RNZ
New Zealand used to be the poster child of industrial relations, but strikes have become woven into our culture in the last century - and next week's walkouts are set to be some of the largest in modern history.
A week today, New Zealand classrooms will sit empty and hospital wards will fall silent as an estimated 100,000 teachers and medical staff walk off the job, again.
The country has recorded at least 22 official work stoppages this year, with many more rolling or unreported strikes that have brought public services to a crawl. However, the strike action next week is shaping up to be the largest in decades, billed as a mega strike.
Among others, more than 36,000 nurses will walk off the job, while more than 11,500 other healthcare workers and 40,000 teachers will go on strike.
They want safe staffing levels, better pay and conditions, as well as more respect and recognition.
"It seems like how the stars have aligned for the unions is that there could be more than 100 thousand workers participating in industrial action on the same day, and that is a really high number for New Zealand in recent times," says The Post senior political journalist Anna Whyte, who has covered the strike action extensively.
"On what happens next, it's going to be really interesting. We are heading towards December; people don't really want to be striking over Christmas. Let's see what happens on October 23 - what the energy level is like there.
"Some of these unions have been striking - or have been engaged in industrial action or bargaining - for quite some time.
People get fatigued, so maybe that's what the government is hoping for."
The year began with quiet rumblings, with public servants and lab workers staging stop-work meetings over stalled negotiations.
By May, there was an unprecedented moment when more than 5000 senior doctors walked off the job.
Then, in July, a spread of the discontent, with 36,000 nurses, midwives, and health care assistants downing tools for 24 hours in one of the largest strikes of the year.
Education soon followed. Classrooms were abandoned in August as secondary school teachers walked out, forcing thousands of students to stay home.
Then last month, doctors and dentists went back on strike, and Uber drivers joined the action, putting the brakes on driving for a nationwide protest.
The impact was felt right across the country, with elective surgeries postponed, parents juggling childcare during school closures, and commuters stuck or scrambling for alternative transport.
But the strikers remained resolute because behind almost every banner was the same frustration.
"It seems to come down to your own personal circumstance - cost-of-living, inflation, just seeing those increased prices at the supermarket," Whyte tells The Detail.
A land 'without strikes'
It's hard to believe now, but New Zealand used to be known as the "land without strikes" and was the pin-up country for industrial relations.
Victoria University associate professor in law Grant Morris tells The Detail that this dates back to the 1890s, when trade unions started flexing their muscles, forcing the government to pass the Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration Act 1894.
"This is a very, very important piece of legislation ... which is world-leading, groundbreaking and sets the scene for the coming decades," Morris says.
Strikes were avoided because workers and employers submitted their grievances or disputes to an arbitration court, and the binding decision was accepted by both parties.
"New Zealand became known, at least up until World War I, as the land without strikes, and people from overseas and other jurisdictions would come and visit New Zealand to see what we had done and how it was working.
"We were the case study in, perhaps, how to do things in industrial relations."
But Morris says some of the big unions became frustrated by the arbitration process, believing they could get a better deal by striking.
So, in 1912, Waihi miners went on strike - a worker died "in the chaos" - and the following year, 16,000 port and mine workers walked off the job for six weeks.
Then, the wars and depression put picket line protests on the back burner, but after World War II, unions decided it was time to "flex their muscles" again, Morris says, and by 1951, the "most famous - or infamous - strike in New Zealand's history" began.
The waterfront strike lasted 151 days, and at its peak, 22 thousand wharfies were involved.
Then in 1979, the country's biggest strike, in terms of numbers, involved more than 300,000 workers.
"[This was] New Zealand's only general national strike," Morris says.
"It's important to note that this could happen in 1979 because one group of workers has an issue and others can sympathy strike, but there is no longer the ability to sympathy strike under the Employment Relations Act 2000."
Fast forward nearly 50 years, and 2025 may well be remembered as the year New Zealand stopped and a new generation of workers discovered the power of walking off the job together.
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