Striding down Auckland's Wellesley Street in the golden glow of an autumn evening the flags atop UNITE House were hard to miss. Bright red, and emblazoned with the UNITE union's logo, they declared to all the world that capitalism's monopoly over Queen Street was about to be contested by a merry band of entrepreneurial socialists. In celebration, the new tenants of 300 Queen Street's twelfth floor were having a party.

Barry Thomas Market forces in the shadow of the long black and white cloud, 2007

As Matt McCarten, the Organising Director of UNITE, and his new partners from Te Wananga O Aotearoa and the United Credit Union, were welcoming a broad cross-section of the Auckland Left to their proletarian penthouse atop the old ASB building, another entrepreneur - this time in the arts - was preparing for an opening of his own.

Just a few miles away, on the other side of the Waitemata, Barry Thomas, and his fellow painter from the Coromandel, Evelyne Siegrist-Huang, were putting the finishing touches to 'Di-Vested Interest' the joint exhibition they were due to open the following day at the Depot Artspace in Devonport.

What's the connection? Well, apart from the fact that I've known both men for more than twenty years, it's their extraordinary talent for breathing new life into very old ideas.

Barry Thomas Conscience serving life - Huia 80m. bc - 1961"

In McCarten's case, it's the idea that, to make a real difference to workers' lives, working class organisation must go beyond the 'bread-and-butter' fixations of traditional trade unionism. McCarten's key insight, at the very beginning of his career, was that the only way to avoid being seduced by, and eventually joining, his capitalist opponents (as one of their industrial 'minders') was to beat them at their own game.

With Thomas, it's an even older idea: that art can change society - and that one of the artist's primary roles is to represent people's desire for change through creative media. With personal links going all the way back to the merry pranksters and film-makers of BLERTA (Bruno Lawrence's Electric Revelation & Travelling Apparition) in the 1970s, Thomas's modus operandi has always been to laugh and/or embarrass 'Korporate Kapitalist Kulture' off the artistic stage.

And Thomas knows whereof he speaks. It takes a special appreciation of the adman's art to win a Golden Axis Award for the best automotive commercial - when the automobile being advertised is a Lada. Winning his award with the slogan 'Nothing But Car' - because there wasn't anything else! - was something of an epiphany for Thomas. "I suddenly realised, I don't have to do this anymore."

Barry Thomas New age spiritualism in the Rangipo Desert

With characteristic chutzpah, Thomas decided to stand the whole idea of advertising on its head. In collaboration with other like-minded 'artist provocateurs', he somehow persuaded Television New Zealand to pay for the privilege of inserting miniature artistic manifestos called 'rADz' (Radical Art Advertisements) into the network's programme schedules. Popping up at random in the middle of genuine ad breaks, these frequently bizarre examples of guerrilla art caused many viewers to doubt the evidence of their own eyes: 'Did I just see that?'

There is, however, nothing remotely electronic about Thomas's contributions to 'Di-Vested Interest'. Trained at of the Ilam School of Fine Arts, where he studied under the notorious Rudi Gopaz (who also taught Tony Fomison and Philip Clairmont), Thomas has always revelled in the experience of covering canvasses with paint. Three large examples of these: 'Market Forces in the Shadow of the Long Black & White Cloud', 'Conscience Serving Life' and 'Between Moa, Man, Sheep, Cabbage Tree & Rail' dominate his half of the exhibition.

Executed in pigments he has personally extracted from the Coromandel clays, these are paintings of stern didactic purpose and haunting imagery. Not for Thomas the elaborate explanatory infrastructure normally required to carry the ideas of 'conceptual' and 'installation' artists. The meaning of these three works is plainly rendered - and the message is unmistakable.

We have marred this landscape, says Thomas, and in doing so we have marred ourselves. But before we can heal our ravaged environment we must heal the wounds we have inflicted on each other.

In the words of one of Thomas's youthful compositions: "Come to the country be rained on."

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There's not a lot of countryside to be seen from the twelfth floor of UNITE House, but the ideas of redemption and mutuality are in no way foreign to the two institutions McCarten has invited to flesh out his vision of a new trade unionism. Redemption through education, and mutual financial support, are the core businesses of Te Wananga O Aotearoa and the United Credit Union.

UNITE's focus on young, Maori, Pacific Island and immigrant workers - many earning no more (and often less) than the minimum wage - made its innovative approach to trade union organising inevitable. In most developed countries such people constitute a stealth workforce, operating beneath the organisational radar of the traditional unions. Indeed, most of the 'experts' in the field have argued that workers in the vast service industries of mature economies are simply not interested in joining unions. McCarten never bought it. "My secret weapon," he chuckles, "was to ask them."

The UNITE union's highly successful "Supersize-My Pay!" campaign to organise young workers in the fast-food industry has already acquired semi-legendary status among those who keep an eye on such developments. But, in an industry with close to 100 percent staff turnover annually, something more was needed to keep the kids on board.

Having battled on behalf of Rongo Wetere and Te Wananga O Aotearoa against Trevor Mallard and Michael Cullen in 2005, McCarten was well-placed to initiate discussions about linking UNITE's mission to organise young workers with the Wananga's mission to educate them.

Bentham Ohia was there at the opening to celebrate a deal which brings the Wananga's tutors face-to-face with young Maori, Pacific Island and Pakeha workers in language, computing, and basic business courses. For most of these low-paid workers it is their first encounter with anything remotely resembling a tertiary institution.

Phil Todd, CEO of the United Credit Union, was also there at the Friday 23 March opening. The 65 year-old, Wellington-based UCU is a not-for-profit financial institution dedicated to providing full banking-type facilities to its 10,000 trade union members. Naturally Todd was thrilled to be given the offer of office space in the CBD of New Zealand's largest city.

The person who got McCarten really interested, though, was the UCU's National Development Manager, Mark Griffiths, who successfully pitched the idea of a special UNITE "loyalty" card that offers "massive" discounts to union and UCU members. Recorded at the point-of-sale, their savings are aggregated and posted to UNITE members two weeks before Christmas in the form of a cheque from McCarten himself. "What could be better than that?", demanded the UNITE leader of his mostly young audience. "A letter from your union boss which says Merry Christmas! Oh, and by-the-way, here's five hundred dollars for being a loyal union member!"

Old hat, you might say. Union discount cards have been around for years. Which is true. What's different about the UNITE-Wananga-UCU combination, however, is that, in the past, the main recipients of such services were sensible public servants, and all those other employees-for-life who grew up in the stable industrial environment of the post-war boom. UNITE's flash new card is going to patty-flippers, baristas and pop-corn sellers: the new, casualised, and consumption-driven workforce of the 21st century.

But, if the audience is new, the script is at least a century old. Because what's being pulled together on the twelfth floor of UNITE House is something very like the trade union organisations which set the pace of collective bargaining at the turn of the 19th Century. They were unions which harboured ambitions much larger than winning a few extra pennies on the hourly rate. Their goal was the emancipation of an entire class.

And it's this emanicipatory - this transformative - impulse, which, finally, brings the "openings" of Matt McCarten and Barry Thomas together. This gleaming office complex: with its Maori and trade union iconography; its rooms filled with state-of-the-art computer technology; and its UCU officer, Siu Armstrong, ready to lift the burden of South Auckland's loan sharks from the shoulders of the poor - is McCarten's work of art. And, like Thomas's paintings, it has a power in and of itself: a power to move and inspire.

Not long before the opening, McCarten noticed one of the UNITE staff - his first recruit, Rima Taraia - just standing and looking at the bright new premises. This staunch, working-class woman had been with him at the very beginning, when the organisation ran on sweat, hope and aroha - and not much else. As she stood there, quietly taking in what she and her comrades had built, a single tear welled up, and rolled slowly down her cheek.

Oh, why don‚t you break away?
You weren't born to obey.
Come to the country - be rained on.

Originally printed in the Independant Financial Review, 5th April 2007