New Zealand’s streets filled with nurses, doctors, teachers, healthcare assistants, public workers, and firefighters on October 23 in a massive one-day strike demanding that the government fully fund public services. In all, some 100,000 workers took part in the action—making it the largest strike New Zealand has seen since its first and only general strike in 1979.

“Defining moment in our history” was the headline in the New Zealand Herald, the country’s most important newspaper. Many schools were closed—the strike took place on a Thursday—and medical procedures put on hold.

It’s been a year of big protests and walkouts by workers in New Zealand. Nurses, for instance, have struck more in the past twelve months than at any other time in their history.

The protests are fueled by rage over decades of government underinvestment and privatization—policies that have eroded public services and stretched essential workers to their limit. Hospitals and primary health services are constantly over capacity and patients are falling through the cracks. Firefighters are forced to use decrepit, decades-old equipment that constantly breaks down. Schools face huge staff shortfalls and underfunding.

The public funding crisis was created by a rigged economy designed to deliver wealth to the few and scraps to the many.

New Zealand’s far-right coalition government, elected in 2023, had no intention of resolving the crisis in essential services. Instead, it launched a radical program of austerity, imposing enormous public service cuts to fund billions of dollars in tax breaks for landlords, tobacco companies, and big business.

These cuts have pushed the country over the edge. But in response to this year’s strike wave, the government has only accelerated its push for privatization and has offered raises to public workers that fall well below inflation.

Labor’s fall and rise

The attacks on New Zealand’s unions and the public sector didn’t begin in 2023.

Back in 1979, New Zealand had a robust welfare state with world-renowned low levels of wealth inequality. The country’s trade union movement was strong and operated in an industrial relations framework that guaranteed compulsory union membership.

Things changed dramatically in 1991, when the government passed the Employment Contracts Act, dismantling New Zealand’s industrial relations framework overnight. Collective bargaining across sectors disappeared, and the institutional power of unions evaporated. A highly individualized contract system took its place.

In 1979, almost every worker belonged to a union. In 2025, less than a fifth are unionized.

But this year’s massive protests signal that there’s cause for hope. Essential workers are fighting back—and the public supports them. Despite the disruption the strikes have caused, and despite government attacks on them, public opinion polls show that 65 percent of New Zealanders support workers’ actions.

Meanwhile, union membership in New Zealand has begun to rise, particularly among younger workers: In 2017, just under 14 percent of younger workers were union members. Today that number is 17.2 percent.

Reflecting on their actions in 1991, when the workers’ movement suffered its greatest defeat, union leaders have admitted their response was too restrained and cautious. The president of the Council of Trade Unions (New Zealand’s equivalent of the AFL-CIO) at the time called for amending, not defeating, the bill that virtually eviscerated labor’s power. There were calls for a general strike, but it never came to be.

In 2025, the rallying cry from the Council of Trade Unions is “Fight Back Together, Maranga Ake,” and New Zealand is seeing its largest strikes in over 45 years.

The lessons of history seem to have been learned. If we want to win, we must dare to struggle, and that is exactly what essential workers in New Zealand are doing.

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