Most people today are coping with the rising cost of living individually: cost cutting, looking for a better paid job, taking on “side hustles”, and so on. But not so long ago, many workers globally and in Aotearoa New Zealand approached the same problem in far more collective ways.
From the late 1960s to the early 1980s – sometimes referred to as “the long 1970s” – the union movement used strikes to combat the effects on workers of chronic inflation and a deep economic crisis. These were often successful, both in Aotearoa and around the world.
