Abstract

The restructuring of capital and the transformation of the workforce in the late-twentieth century has produced a newly shaped working class; one that encompasses those in insecure work and unemployed workers.  With this repositioning has come new political organizations of unemployed workers, of which Te Roopu Rawakore o Aotearoa, the national New Zealand organization for unemployed workers, is an example.  This organization of unemployed was not only significant for its existence in the face of poverty, status disintegration, and a perceived sense of social worthlessness, but also for the tripartite ideology its members employed.  Unemployed workers in New Zealand combined the identity politics of race and gender with a class-based critique of society to demand "the right to work and a living wage for all."

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