“Can I see with a show of hands—who here has walked out from work today?” A cheer ripples across the growing crowd outside the State Library of Victoria on 10 September as dozens of people, maybe a hundred, put up their hands. Somewhere around ten times that number have skipped work, used a day off, extended a lunch break or otherwise made time in our day to stand with these striking workers. 
Some strikers hold giant letters, spelling it out in red, green and black: ON STRIKE FOR GAZA. For the second time since Israel’s latest genocidal onslaught started on Gaza, community sector workers in Melbourne workplaces have done something that the whole union movement should be doing—used workers’ industrial muscle to disrupt business as usual, by going on strike and rallying in the streets. 
As one of the strike organisers, Louisa Bassini, told Red Flag: “We know we have the power as workers to do more to stop the genocide. This action has helped prove that we can use that power, and will hopefully encourage others do the same in other industries”.
The rally is a sight for sore eyes. 
Tasnim Sammak, a member of the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU), addresses the crowd on behalf of the Free Palestine Coalition: “We can’t look at the images of the rubble and destruction and think it’s over. No. What we should think is: we need to act now, with urgency. And urgency needs to fuel us”.
A series of striking workers take the microphone. A striking worker from Inner Melbourne Community Legal points out the hypocrisy of community sector employers and peak bodies:
“Despite standing for so called justice and human rights, our peak bodies have refused to speak out—and have said ‘it’s not our core business’. Shame! That’s why we’re here today. It’s time to do the most powerful thing we can do as workers, and that’s to withdraw our labour.” 
“We’re a union shop—we’re all here!”, announces a speaker from Flat Out, an advocacy organisation for women in prison: “What’s the point of having civil society, a community sector, if it won’t stand up to the government. I know the government funds us, but at some point you’ve just got to say: stop the genocide, free Palestine!”
“We’re sick of seeing parents holding dead children in their arms”, says another striker. “We’re sick of seeing plastic bags full of body parts. And we’re also sick of seeing children playing funerals because they see people on stretchers all the time. Israel bombs Qatar and our government and media are silent, because they’re part of a genocidal machine which is hungry for profit. But we’re not silent. We’re on strike today. We’re using our power as workers to shut things down, saying we’re not going to work as usual during a genocide, and calling on other workers to strike too.”
Another striking worker puts it in the most straightforward way: “We have to strike because nothing else is working”. 
The rally features banners and flags from the NTEU, and from the Australian Services Union which covers most of the striking workers. Some at the rally are members of the Australian Education Union, others the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation. Many have been active in the various Unionists for Palestine groups over the past two years.
 It is living proof that despite the crushing consensus among politicians and media commentators, large numbers of workers recognise and oppose a genocide when they see one. One attendee, social worker Louie, tells Red Flag: “Today is a real demonstration of the fact that workers support Palestine and oppose genocide and they want to build forces so that their voices are heard”. Another social worker, Rachel, explains: “I’m here because I’m sick of seeing children starving, and seeing people blown up”. 
“I want to put pressure on the government to put sanctions on Israel”, says another. 
Easily the largest and most visible political group on the day is Victorian Socialists, which includes several strike leaders and rally organisers among its members. Veteran journalist Marty Hirst gives an impassioned speech about the importance of fighting for free speech on Palestine, announcing the launch of a <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/media-workers-to-launch-free-speech-campaign-for-palestine">major campaign</a> on the issue on 20 September. There are references to the current important fight to stop the Fair Work Commission from imposing massive pay cuts on community sector workers.
Some recall the proud history of workers in this country acting in solidarity with workers worldwide, connecting that to an argument that <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/why-palestine-union-business">Palestine is union business</a>. There are cheers for the dock workers of Genoa, Italy, who have <a href="https://x.com/usbsindacato/status/1962085329575313604">pledged</a> to blockade the port—and to call out other ports in solidarity—if Israel intercepts the Global Sumud Flotilla, which is currently sailing to Gaza. A pledge to rally (and if possible, strike) in support of the Genoa dock workers if and when they take action in defence of the solidarity flotilla is greeted by loud applause. 
But it’s rally co-chair Monica Campo who really brings the house down by talking about the importance of fighting for the right to strike—by striking. 
“The Fair Work Act deliberately limits our ability to organise, and to use the power that we have as workers, as a class”, Campo explains. “It limits our ability to continue that long tradition of standing in solidarity with international struggles. We should and must continue to fight these limitations in the Fair Work Act, and we’re pleased to hear that the ASU has committed to keep challenging these limitations on our right to strike. But one way to challenge the law is to break it!” The applause building through the crowd erupts into cheers. 
This is more than a propaganda point—it should be a call to action. 
Though it is right to emphasise the repressive and anti-democratic nature of Labor’s Fair Work Act, it is also the case that the sort of “demonstration strikes” that community sector workers have now taken twice against the genocide have rarely, if ever, resulted in sackings or even serious disciplinary action. Of course, the level of support in individual workplaces and within union structures, and a concrete assessment of how management are likely to respond are all important factors. But this form of industrial action can and should be much more widespread. 
Every unionist in the country owes a debt to the community sector Palestine strikers. They are showing us that we don’t have to resign ourselves to the unspeakable horror unfolding in Gaza today. And the strikers are continuing a living, breathing, organising, fighting current of solidarity—one that has played a crucial role in the history of the working-class movement. 
The official, Labor-aligned leadership of our movement have spent decades smothering the political radicalism and industrial militancy that kept this tradition of struggle and solidarity alive. But the strikers are reminding everyone of the obvious truths: that workers still have the power, that more of us need to use it, and that we still have a world to win.

Jerome Small

‘One way to challenge the law is to break it!’: Community sector workers strike for Palestine again

In 2021, the Aged Care Quality and Safety Royal Commission shone a harsh light on the sickening and dangerous priorities of the business interests that control the aged-care sector. It exposed that billions of government dollars were flowing into an increasingly privatised industry, fuelling enormous wealth for the operators, while workers copped rock-bottom wages and old folks were locked in their rooms in squalor due to lack of staff. 
One of the aged-care companies at the centre of media attention in the years that followed was Heritage Care, which operated nine for-profit aged-care homes. Heritage Care and its owners became infamous in 2020, after 38 people died of COVID-19 after a major infection control breach at its Epping Gardens aged-care facility in Melbourne. 
In the wake of this disaster, family members talked of short staffing leaving residents unwashed, unfed and undressed. The Age revealed that another of the company’s facilities, in the Sydney suburb of Botany, had failed all eight minimum standards in an audit by the regulator in 2019. Management of nutrition, hydration, skin injuries, falls and pain was inadequate, the food was bad, and staff numbers had been cut, leaving residents uncared for. Nonetheless, the regulator allowed the facility to keep operating. 
Much of the government money that was never spent on staffing or care was instead siphoned off to finance the luxury lifestyle of Peter Arvanitis, one of the two co-owners of Heritage Care, and wife Areti Arvanitis. In October last year, the Australian Financial Review <a href="https://www.afr.com/property/residential/aged-care-mogul-asking-55m-for-toorak-temple-of-opulence-20241009-p5kh61">gushed</a>
over the Toorak residence of these two aged-care industry profiteers: 
“From a French chandelier sourced from Hollywood producer Aaron Spelling’s Los Angeles home, to the master bedroom’s plum-red silk carpet floors – the aesthetic on display throughout Estia Healthcare founder Peter Arvanitis and his wife Areti’s Toorak mansion is nothing short of unbridled opulence.
“The entrance hall alone features brass doors, marble floors, eight-metre-high ceilings, a hand-blown glass dome with hand-painted roses and a sweeping curved staircase… 
“The five-bedroom home comprises 2000 square metres of sumptuous interiors across three levels. Along with six bathrooms, there’s a wellness room, a 10-car garage, cinema and a secretly accessed wood-panelled bar inspired by London’s private clubs.”
Government money and pathetically weak regulation lead to low wages for the workers, unspeakable conditions for many of those who rely on the sector for care—and Toorak mansions for the owners. 
The National Disability Insurance Scheme is designed on similar lines to the profit-driven childcare and aged-care sectors. A funnel of government money flows to private operators, with light-touch neoliberal “regulation” putting no constraint on private enrichment.
Unsurprisingly, the NDIS is starting to attract similar headlines to the well-documented capitalist-made disaster zones of child care and aged care.
Even Murdoch’s tabloids <a href="https://mobile.x.com/Johnkehoe23/status/1804355727932428578/photo/1">reported</a>
last year on the NDIS being transformed into “an ATM for the mega-rich”. Australian retail boss Brett Blundy seems typical of these new operators. Blundy is the 38th-richest person in the country, according the annual Australian Financial Review Rich List, with an estimated wealth of $3.95 billion. Having made his pile in retail, Blundy has recently bought into Independent Living Specialists, which supplies aids such as modified furniture and mobility scooters to NDIS customers. 
Sixty-three of the 67 ratings for Independent Living Specialists on the “<a href="https://au.trustpilot.com/review/ilsau.com.au?page=2">trustpilot</a>” website are one star, with feedback to match: “Negative star—absolute worst experience”; “Bad service, greed-driven, overpriced products”; “This company should be shut down”; “Shameful company. Dishonest. Should be banned from using NDIS logo”; “PREY ON SICK AND INJURED—AVOID”.
While people needing mobility aids for family members put up with endless delays and poor products, Blundy buys and sells luxury super-yachts with <a href="https://www.commercialrealestate.com.au/news/billionaire-retails-big-ticket-items-1196789/">reported</a>
price tags of around a quarter of a billion dollars. It’s business as usual in Australia’s grotesque, profit-driven care sector.

Aged care and disability: ‘opulence’ for the owners, at our expense

Twenty years ago, Eddy Groves blazed a trail as the first of Australia’s childcare industry capitalists to make the annual Rich List. As Groves’ portfolio of childcare centres ballooned, so did his personal wealth—from a hundred childcare centres and $40 million in 2002, to a thousand childcare centres in Australia, a similar number overseas, and a fortune of $260 million in 2006. By this stage, Groves owned a ranch in Nevada, a house in France and the Brisbane Bullets basketball team.
Groves’ empire collapsed in 2008. But he had proved in practice that it was possible for cashed-up operators to make a fortune in care industries governments were retreating from. So long as there is a steady flow of government money, rapid expansion of the corporate footprint, poorly enforced regulation and a ruthless, cost-cutting approach to staffing and conditions, there is money to be made. 
Just look at Pejman Okhovat, the CEO of G8 Education. His total remuneration was $3.3 million in 2024, up from $3 million the year before. G8 Education is the biggest childcare provider in Victoria, with 130 centres across the state. An <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/victoria-s-largest-childcare-chain-repeatedly-failed-to-protect-children-20250805-p5mkg0.html">investigation</a>
by the Age following a major alleged child abuse scandal reveals a chronic shortage of trained staff in multiple centres and a failure to report incidents in which a child was harmed or at risk of serious harm: “One mother said she believed it was ‘painfully obvious’ the childcare giant prioritised its reputation over providing adequate care”. 
Child care today is highly profitable. The public financial advice website <a href="https://www.finexia.com.au/blog/the-ultimate-guide-to-the-average-profit-of-daycare-centers-in-australia#:~:text=Average%20Profit%20of%20Daycare%20Center,explore%20in%20the%20subsequent%20sections.">Finexia</a>
claims that a profit margin of 10 to 20 percent is typical—which is significantly more than Woolworths’ reported profit rate of around 6 percent of sales. 
But the big money comes from accumulating the centres themselves, which ensures larger streams of government cash. News.com <a href="https://www.news.com.au/finance/real-estate/revealed-the-cashed-up-players-making-millions-from-childcare-centres/news-story/5c5075f0aed1143a007795d20b399b09">carried a story</a> in March this year profiling just a few of the characters who have enriched themselves in this way. The list includes Brendan McAssey, who sold off his “Only About Children” childcare chain to private equity company Bain Capital in 2016 for $400 million. The deal set him up for a $22.5 million luxury home at Noosa and (according a <a href="https://bigsteps.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/spitting-off-cash-uwu-report.pdf">report</a>
from the United Workers Union in 2018) a “44 metre superyacht, helicopter, private jet and $17 million mansion at Balmoral Beach on Sydney Harbour”. 
Vijay and Phyllis Narula sold their 14-centre Little People’s Places childcare business for $40 million in 2021. This cash funds what news.com describes as their “opulent lifestyle played out online with pictures of their beachfront mansion, Lamborghinis, and first-class global travels, regularly updated on social media”.
Adrian Fonseca already owned a $14 million mansion in Sydney’s eastern suburbs. Selling his 12 childcare centres to Affinity in 2022 for around $40 million no doubt helped him find the $15.6 million needed for the mansion next door in 2023. 
We could continue the list, but even this is all chickenfeed. The big players in the industry aren’t motivated by luxury lifestyles, though they no doubt enjoy them. The real game is capital accumulation, on a spectacular scale. 
This is enabled by steady government money and a regulator uninterested in creating barriers to private enrichment. In 2016, the model was attractive enough to entice private equity firm Anchorage to buy Affinity Education, one of Australia’s biggest childcare operators, for $210 million. Anchorage achieved an extraordinary return on this investment, tripling their money in just five years by selling Affinity off to Quadrant, another Sydney private equity company, for $650 million in 2021. 
The executives at incoming owners Quadrant were then faced with the task of squeezing even more money out of Affinity Education. The <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/the-big-money-behind-childcare-operator-at-the-heart-of-alleged-sex-abuse-scandal-20250717-p5mft7.html">plan</a>
seems to have been a simple one: load up on debt, crack down on costs, expand the corporate footprint by buying up more centres—and then cash in. 
The ABC’s reporting shows that breaches of mandated legal minimums on staffing—and intense pressure on staff to leave regulatory breaches unreported—are part and parcel of this business model.. Loretta Dodwell was one of the childcare workers who <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-05-12/video-shows-childcare-worker-hitting-baby-at-affinity-education/105268298">spoke to the ABC</a> in May about what she’d seen while employed by Affinity Education. “The cost cutting and the lack of staff really caused serious incidents in the centre”, she said. “They were also putting on lots of trainees, like young trainees that were cheap to employ and that put a lot of pressure on the qualified staff ... They [Affinity] are just not suitable to be in the childcare industry because they are just so greedy ... They cut staff, they put the staff under so much pressure ... they’re just a big company that wants to make money out of children.”
The head of this “big company that wants to make money out of children” is Chris Hadley, the executive chairman of Affinity Education’s current owner, the private equity firm Quadrant. Hadley is a legend in Sydney money circles. He’s probably a billionaire, although, as the Australian Financial Review <a href="https://www.afr.com/companies/financial-services/inside-the-dog-eat-dog-world-of-australia-s-most-successful-pe-firm-20230822-p5dyf6">reported</a>
in 2023, Quadrant’s “labyrinthine corporate structure” makes it impossible to be certain. 
For the workers, it is a different story. “Food or rent. I can’t afford both.” This is how one member of the United Workers Union responded to a union <a href="https://www.fwc.gov.au/documents/sites/am2024-19/am202423-sub-uwu-020625.pdf">survey</a>
of early childhood educators last year. Others reported working a second job, not being able to afford essentials, or not being able to afford a holiday with their kids. 
This is the reality of caring being left to the market. Capitalism has always seen care as a high fixed cost that generates no direct profit, and that therefore should generally be cut to the minimum. This counts double for those too old to make a profit for a boss, or too young, or with a disability that makes someone less profitable to employ. So even before our current neoliberal age with its mania for privatisation, aged care, childcare and other community care facilities were often overcrowded institutions with underpaid and overworked staff. 
But it’s also true that all of these problems have become dramatically worse as the Chris Hadleys and their ilk moved in. Instead of local councils providing the bulk of aged care and child care, with some basic level of political and legal accountability, the profiteering wannabe billionaires (and actual billionaires) are interested only in making a buck. 
Tripling your corporation’s wealth, as Anchorage private equity did with Affinity child care in five years, and as Quadrant hope to do, is the highest mission for any capitalist. More than a hundred and fifty years ago, Karl Marx explored the desperation of capitalists to multiply their capital in volume one of Capital, quoting the British trade unionist Thomas Dunning: “With adequate profit, capital is very bold. A certain ten percent will ensure its employment anywhere; twenty percent certain will produce eagerness; fifty percent positive audacity; hundred percent will make it ready to trample on all human laws; three hundred percent, and there is not a crime at which it will scruple, nor a risk it will not run, even to the chance of its owner being hanged”.
The quote sums up the ethos of capital perfectly. The only difference today is that there’s no chance of any of the childcare profiteers being hanged for their crimes. In fact, it’s an absolute rarity for any of them even to be prosecuted, let alone convicted. Modern day neoliberal “regulators”, in child care and anywhere else, are generally no impediment at all to companies systematically breaching the regulations in pursuit of profit. 
So back in the day, Eddy Groves walked free despite leaving over $1 billion in bad debt. And 20 years later, Affinity look to be following in his footsteps. Adele Ferguson and Chris Gillet <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-05-12/video-shows-childcare-worker-hitting-baby-at-affinity-education/105268298">reported</a>
on the ABC in May this year that, despite constant pressure on staff not to report regulatory breaches, between 2021 and 2024 Affinity childcare centres “were hit with more than 1,700 regulatory breaches, averaging more than one a day” in New South Wales alone. “Despite this”, Jones and Gillet reported, “the NSW regulator issued just nine infringement notices, totalling less than $2,000 in penalties.”
Labor’s reforms, at best, tinker at the edges of this grotesque system—a system that they’ve helped to create since the 1990s, and which they have no interest in transforming. 
In the wake of Eddie Groves’ spectacular implosion, academic and gender equity advocate Deborah Brennan outlined Labor’s track record on child care, writing in the Sydney Morning Herald: “How did we get into this mess? Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard has blamed John Howard for ‘letting the market rip’, but it was the Hawke government, in 1991, that introduced market forces into the sector. It did this by extending child-care assistance to the users of for-profit care and then by changing the structure of Commonwealth funding to encourage private provision and marginalise the community sector ... The Howard government intensified Labor's market focus, ending operational subsidies to community-based care in 1997”.
This whole architecture needs to be scrapped. ABC investigations are important, but far from sufficient to drive this level of change. In aged care, for instance, there have been incremental improvements to wages and staffing since the royal commission triggered by a shocking 2018 Four Corners investigation. However, the fundamental structure of the industry remains untouched and, with it, many of the problems. 
For more far-reaching reforms, the crisis in child care will have to be transformed into a political crisis for the government and the profiteers. The actions of workers in the sector—which we saw a glimpse of in the Big Steps campaign of walk-offs and protests organised by the UWU—can be crucial in this. 
We should be fighting for a society that puts human dignity first—in early childhood education, disability, aged care and far beyond—and relegates the profiteers, their Lamborghinis and their obscene, dog-eat-dog system to history.

The profiteers plundering child care

Socialist Alternative’s record of workplace organising

1. Because the super-rich in Australia are taking the piss—and the piles of cash 
Back in 1983, the wealth of the hundred richest people in Australia totalled $3.2 billion. If that wealth had increased in line with inflation, today it would be nearly four times more—an obscene $12.5 billion. 
But this would be viewed as chickenfeed by today’s super-rich. The wealth of the one hundred richest people last year was 163 times greater than that of the richest 100 in 1983, according to the Australian Financial Review—an extraordinary $524 billion. 
If we include the AFR’s full annual “Rich List” of the 200 wealthiest people in the country, we get to $624 billion, 24.7 percent of Australia’s annual gross domestic product. 
To call this wealth “stratospheric” is a massive understatement. If piles of $100 notes were stacked up to the value of $624 billion, they would reach 878 kilometres into the sky: the stratosphere runs out after about 50 km. And as Red Flag
has <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/annual-rich-list-200-ugly-faces-australian-capitalism">pointed out</a> in the past, the wealth of the billionaires is only the very public tip of the iceberg of wealth that the capitalist class accumulates from the labour the rest of us perform.
If Gina Rinehart and Twiggy Forrest took a month off, or a year, their money would continue to accumulate. This is because it’s the work of others—in the mines these billionaires own, but also the vast network of communications, transport, education, finance and health, throughout the country and around the world—that creates the vast fortunes of the rich. So no-one would notice if Rinehart et al. dropped off the planet—but if enough of those workers stopped working for just a few days, the flow of wealth would stop stone cold dead. 
What’s the correct word for those who accumulate this sort of wealth from the labour of others? “Capitalists” is accurate. So is “parasites”. And it’s about time they faced a serious challenge.
2. Because the rest of us are sick of being ripped off
As Albo and his treasurer sprinkled a few crumbs on budget night to a standing ovation from Labor MPs, and most of the rest of us scratched our heads wondering just how we’ll spend our $5 weekly tax cut from the middle of next year, Victorian Socialists crunched the numbers. As our <a href="https://www.facebook.com/share/p/18g2mgZsmo/">budget reply</a> stated: 
“In 1974, Australian workers (aka the people who create all the wealth) received 55.9 percent of GDP in wages. Today it's 47.9 percent. If that share increased back to 1974 levels, it would mean workers would, collectively, be $220 billion better off (more than $15,000 per employee, per year). Keep that in mind when Labor politicians are spruiking $5 a week tax cuts, 5 cents off a pint of beer, or modest cuts to HECS debts.”
And imagine what we could do with that $220 billion—equivalent to around $10 per hour for every employee. Maybe we could take a well-deserved pay raise and a greater share of the wealth we create. Or maybe we could take some of that wealth back in the form of transformative public infrastructure. A massive new hospital costs <a href="https://www.vhba.vic.gov.au/health/hospitals/new-footscray-hospital">$1.5 billion</a> to build; <a href="https://www.afr.com/policy/energy-and-climate/energy-transition-will-likely-need-400b-renewables-marshall-plan-20230719-p5dph9">official estimates</a> of what the country is spending on our criminally slow transition to a renewables-powered electricity grid are currently around $10 billion per year. You can work out the maths from there. 
3. Because housing for profit means people without homes
It’s obscene, but it’s true: as far as anyone can tell, there are more empty houses than homeless people in this country. On census night in 2021, there were a million empty houses in Australia—eight times the estimated number of people experiencing homelessness. 
Of course, even during the lockdowns of 2021 some homes would have been empty due to people travelling or visiting or being in hospital. But a much more conservative 2023 <a href="https://www.prosper.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Prosper_SpecVac11_July2024-web.pdf">estimate</a> by the think tank Prosper Australia found 27,000 houses in Victoria didn’t use any water at all for the entire year—so were almost certainly empty for the whole year. 
This pretty much matches the estimate of 30,000 people experiencing homelessness in Victoria right now. Prosper points out that another 70,000 houses appear to be entirely or very largely vacant, judging from a level of water use consistent with a couple of dripping taps, or a bit of watering from an occasional visiting gardener. 
Similarly, the Tenants Union of Tasmania has used water use data to <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-06-29/census-finds-1-million-empty-houses-amid-affordability-crisis/101190794">show</a> that 2,000 homes in that state have been unoccupied for three years or more—pretty much matching the official homelessness figure of 2,350. 
It’s no mystery why: there’s no profit to be made from matching empty houses with people who desperately need them. 
Many investors find it more convenient to leave a house empty while the value steadily rises, rather than renting it out as a home. The law of the land allows this outrageous situation, even encourages it through tax incentives. Property—and profits—are sacred, while people are left to sleep rough (or pay through the nose for a <a href="https://www.shitrentals.org/">shit rental</a>). 
The solution? Do what Victorian Socialists candidate Jordan van den Lamb (aka purplepingers) <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/DHXkKUNTkya/?hl=en&amp;img_index=7">advocates</a>: take over houses left vacant for twelve months or more and use them as homes. And we should shift Australia’s construction sector to building public housing rather than ever glitzier shopping malls.
Once we remove the profit motive and organise ourselves to do what’s needed, everything becomes a whole lot simpler.
4. Because we need more strikes
There. We’ve said it. No-one else apart from the socialists are stating this blindingly obvious fact. 
If we don’t fight, we lose. The figures from recent decades show that, over the last few decades, the less we’ve fought, the more we’ve lost.
So while the mainstream parties either denounce industrial action, or perhaps drop in to a picket to murmur some polite nothings for a few minutes, or post an Instagram or two, socialists do our best to turn up, in numbers, when it matters most. 
One example was Victorian Socialists bringing a couple of hundred members and supporters to the pre-dawn picket line at Dandenong South in Melbourne during the Woolworths strike in December last year.
Other parties see parliament as the be-all and end-all of politics. In contrast, socialists want to use election campaigns and any representation we win to build active participation by ordinary people in activities that can actually change things: protests, activist campaigns and strikes.
5. Because bigotry and oppression: capitalism counts the cash 
Some of the benefits that capitalists get from sexism, racism and other forms of oppression are staring us in the face. 
A swathe of Australian employers get a massive cash discount on wages due to the gender pay gap. If we use Australian Bureau of Statistics <a href="https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/labour/earnings-and-working-conditions/employee-earnings-and-hours-australia/latest-release#data-downloads">figures</a> for non-managerial employees, a gender pay gap of $4.10 per hour translates to a $700 million cash discount on wages for employers every week. This is more than $36.5 billion in discounted wages each year, straight to the bosses’ bottom line, due to sexism. 
Unpaid labour in the home to raise the next generation of workers, estimated at up to half of GDP, is disproportionately done by women—another handy cash benefit for the ruling elite, flowing from the sexist oppression that affects half the population. 
Other benefits for our rulers from bigotry and oppression are harder to measure exactly, but no less real for that. For instance, it’s hard to quantify the benefit the system gets from having young men buy into the foul, blatant sexism of Andrew Tate. Tate’s gross objectification and contempt for women is the central plank of his thoroughly dog-eat-dog world view. The point of life, according to Tate, is to be out for yourself: everyone else on the planet, and especially women, are just objects to be used. It’s impossible to put a dollar value on the benefit to the rich and powerful from this perfectly pro-capitalist world view being propagated—but it’s substantial.
Similarly with racism. It’d be a difficult task to calculate the “worth” to Australia’s bosses from having <a href="https://grattan.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Migrants-in-the-Australian-workforce.pdf">at least 7 percent</a> of Australia’s working class on some sort of inferior or insecure visa status, generally bound to their employers and therefore reluctant to speak up about <a href="https://www.migrantworkers.org.au/lives_in_limbo">wage theft</a>, health and safety or a punishing pace of work.
It’d be possible to put a dollar value on all the straight-up theft of land from Indigenous people (e.g. the estimated $700 million owed to the Gumatj people in the Northern Territory for a bauxite mine imposed on them in the 1960s, according to a recent High Court <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/mar/14/high-court-native-title-ruling-may-affect-compensation-claims-nationwide-experts-say">decision</a>). But it’d be much harder to calculate a figure for the value our rulers derive from the racist political campaign drummed up against Aboriginal people around the Voice referendum—which has helped Dutton drive politics in this country in a more right-wing, dog-eat-dog direction, undermining solidarity to the benefit of the capitalist class.
Which gets us to Trump.
6. Because fuck Donald Trump and the horse he rode in on 
The modern world has never seen a more blatant example of the rule of the rich. The thirteen billionaires appointed to cabinet posts by President Trump are <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-net-worth-cabinet-billionaires-b2654841.html">reported</a> to be worth US$340 billion—more than the annual gross domestic product of well over 100 countries. 
This government by the obscenely rich, for the obscenely rich, tells us a lot about what capitalism, at its core, is all about. 
It’s about whipping up bigotry and fear. Just one example is the extraordinary US$215 million that Trump and his allies spent during last year’s presidential election campaign whipping up hatred against trans people—<a href="https://truthout.org/articles/republicans-spent-nearly-215m-on-tv-ads-attacking-trans-rights-this-election/">calculated</a> at US$143 for every trans person in the US. 
It’s about vicious anti-migrant politics and the repression of democratic rights: snatch squads from Immigration and Customs Enforcement stalk the streets of US cities, grabbing pro-Palestine activists and whoever else they can for deportation. University administrations and media outlets have rushed to drop any pretence of seeking the truth without fear or favour, in compliance with Trump’s directives.
Of course, a government of billionaires is about trashing workers’ rights: Trump’s <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2025/02/15/business/nlrb-trump-musk-workers/index.html">gutting</a> of the National Labor Relations Board is the start of rolling back the legal protections won by workers in the 1930s. This is a gift of love to Amazon owner Jeff Bezos (the second-richest person in the world), and to every other employer who has been troubled by their workers forming new unions in recent years.
And perhaps the most terrifying of all—behind the chaos of Trump’s economic and tariff policy is the cold hard logic of rebuilding US industry to rapidly prepare for war with the US’s fast-rising imperialist rival, China.
And in Australia? Billionaires like Gina Rinehart and Anthony Pratt love Trump just as much as their US counterparts. The Liberals want to copy as much of his agenda as they can. Labor can’t bring itself to make even token criticisms, sending Foreign Minister Penny Wong to applaud Trump and his billionaire sieg-heiling mates at the presidential inauguration. 
Why is this an argument to vote socialist? Because it’s only the socialists who say that every single one of these policies—and the whole system and logic behind them—have to be rejected. And it’s only the socialists who are consistent about building a politics of hope and resistance based on the one power that, throughout history, has shown itself capable of challenging the rule of the rich: ordinary people, and in particular workers—organised, mobilised and armed with radical politics. 
The world needs a socialist movement as a living, breathing, organising, fighting opposition to Trump and to the system he rode in on. 
This means plenty of hard work over the next five weeks, and far beyond. But <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/victorian-socialists-putting-socialism-on-the-political-map">putting socialism back on the political map</a> during the current campaign is an important contribution to the movement that we need.

Six reasons to vote Socialist

Socialism is a state of affairs in which the working class governs society over the whole of the Earth. The people whose labour produces the vast bulk of the wealth— the people who build, operate and maintain the extraordinary productive network that spans our globe—will rule. 
As soon as we describe such a society, it’s clear that it will never come into existence by merely voting for it. Regardless of the outcome of elections, the Gina Rineharts, the Elon Musks, their political servants like Albo or partners like Trump and the totalitarian rulers of China, are not going to simply hand power to the billions of workers who work to create the wealth they control.
So if elections aren’t going to usher in socialism, what’s the point of socialists participating in them?
Measuring forces, building forces
Good ideas don’t just grow legs and start wandering around in the world, changing things for the better. History, for good and for ill, is made by organised political forces. Helping to build such a movement that can fight for socialism is one important reason for running electoral campaigns.
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels talked about socialists participating in elections in order to “measure our forces”. This is good advice in general, but there’s not a great benefit in following it if our forces are small enough to fit into a single, not-very-large room. And more fundamentally, there’s something that isn’t quite captured by the idea of elections being a passive “measuring” of socialist forces or a “thermometer” of the class struggle, as Engels put it.
Part of the joy of Victorian Socialists is that the party involves enough dedicated socialist campaigners to actually win a credible vote. Most recently, we won 7.2 percent in the by-election in the Victorian state seat of Werribee, with booth results as high as 14 percent.
This matches our results from the 2022 Victorian state election. We won an average of 6.2 percent of votes in the eleven seats in Melbourne’s north (8 percent in Broadmeadows, 7.7 percent in Thomastown, and 8.1 percent in Brunswick), and 5 percent in the eleven seats in Melbourne’s west (including 6.6 percent in St Albans, 6.8 percent in Kororoit, and 9.3 percent in Footscray). In the upper house, we won more than 50,000 votes: our two main candidates won more primary votes than several successful upper house candidates in other parts of Victoria, though both of us missed out on a seat on preferences.
The fact that a socialist electoral project could win this sort of vote—the highest number of votes for a socialist outside of Labor since the 1940s—has been an important contribution to the project of hauling socialism off the margins of political life in this country and into the daily and weekly political discussions of many thousands of people.
Our federal campaign is now kicking off in earnest and is already clearly having the same effect—both through our campaign activities, and through engagement with many of those familiar with our excellent Senate candidate Jordan van den Lamb (aka Purplepingers), the scourge of every scumbag landlord through his shitrentals.org site.
All of our campaigning—letterboxing, doorknocking and talking with voters wherever we can—plays a role in normalising socialist campaigns and building support for socialist political positions. This activity also gives essential training for the campaigners themselves as we engage with all sorts of people with a listening ear and a socialist message of hope and resistance.
In other words, we run in election campaigns not just to “count our forces” but to build socialist political forces. Victorian Socialists has been quite successful in doing so, as the growth of the project—already by far the largest socialist political project in this country in decades—continues to show.
What would a socialist member of parliament do?
Victorian Socialists’ purpose in winning a parliamentary seat is not to be first in line for the daily buffet in the parliamentary dining room, nor to rain socialism down upon a grateful public. In keeping with a long-held socialist principle, our elected representatives will take only the wage of an average worker, with the rest going to build community and worker campaigns.
One of the main jobs of our elected representatives will be to build every act of workers’ struggle and collective resistance outside the parliament. And inside the parliament? We’ll be there to take on the major parties, not just to make pious speeches.
Though socialist MPs are a rarity in Australian history, we can get some idea of what’s possible from past practice.
Percy Brookfield was elected to the New South Wales parliament as the representative for the militant mining town of Broken Hill in 1917, during the greatest social and political revolt in Australia’s history. Expelled from Labor in 1919, he was re-elected as an independent in 1920 despite a statewide red scare against him.
Brookfield worked tirelessly to support the NSW general strike of 1917, and the epic eighteen-month “Big Strike” for shorter hours by 4,000 Broken Hill miners, which started in May 1919. He was outspoken in support of the Russian Revolution of October 1917 and was part of the discussions that led to the formation of the Communist Party of Australia.
In addition to building strikes and socialist organisations outside of parliament, Brookfield used his position in parliament to build the class struggle. He used parliamentary privilege to reveal how police had fabricated evidence against the IWW Twelve, members of the militant Industrial Workers of the World who had been jailed in a frame-up case.
When Labor needed his vote to stay in government after the 1920 election, Brookfield made his support conditional on Labor releasing the IWW Twelve and meeting the strikers’ demands for shorter hours in the ongoing Big Strike in Broken Hill. Both demands were achieved within six months—thanks to months and years of organising and struggle involving many thousands of people, and aided by Brookfield putting his political weight on the scales at a crucial time.
Two decades after Brookfield, in 1944 Fred Paterson became the only member of the Communist Party elected to a parliament in Australia. Paterson represented the seat of Bowen, south of Townsville, in the Queensland parliament. Bowen at this time included major coal centres, a large meatworks, sugar plantations, rail and ports—and twelve CPA branches.
Paterson was on the central strike committee of the massive Queensland rail strike, which started in February 1948, helping to coordinate the distribution of 850,000 leaflets supporting the strikers and visiting the pickets each day before attending parliament. When police tried to disperse the pickets, Paterson pointed to a loophole that allowed the pickets to remain as long as they kept moving.
The Queensland Labor government rammed an anti-strike law through parliament; they described it as the “Paterson bill” because it was designed to undermine the legal strategies he had advised. Paterson returned the compliment, describing the new law as “the greatest scab-herding strike-breaking piece of legislation ever introduced by a Labor government anywhere in Australia”.
On 17 March 1948, while observing workers being dispersed by the police, Paterson was bashed unconscious from behind by a cop. Paterson’s bashing sparked a Brisbane rally of 15,000 to 20,000 in support of the strikers. Protests, stop-works and meetings were held in Townsville, Bowen and Collinsville, and coal miners in NSW struck for 24 hours. The rail strike was settled a few weeks later, with the government conceding wage rises of 77 percent of the initial claim for trades workers and 95 percent for labourers.
Our short roll call of socialists outside of the Labor Party who have been elected to Australian parliaments should also include George Petersen. Petersen was part of a Trotskyist group when he became active in Labor Party politics in Wollongong and was elected to the NSW parliament in 1968. One of the most radical members of an Australian parliament, Petersen was an agitator for homosexual law reform, abortion law reform and prisoners’ rights. He used parliamentary privilege to expose the reign of terror exercised by guards in NSW prisons. Petersen campaigned to expose the frame-up of the alleged Hilton bombers in 1978 and was a staunch supporter of the Palestinian struggle.
Petersen worked closely with union members in the Illawarra, and his reminiscences contain plenty of thoughtful reflections. Petersen developed a political relationship with Brian Phipps, an electrician who was secretary of the Combined Mining Unions committee at Huntley Colliery in Petersen’s electorate of Illawarra. Petersen recalled of Phipps:
“He is a militant socialist and we worked together harmoniously for seventeen years promoting the cause of these workers, and, in return, receiving their total support ... I often thought that the relationship between Brian and me was the relationship I would like to have with all worker militants. That would have required me to be a member of a Leninist-type party, combining my work in a bourgeois parliament with that of fellow party members who occupied the same sort of position in the trade union movement as Brian did at Huntley Colliery. My great problem was that there was no such party to which I could belong.”
In 1987, Petersen voted against the Unsworth Labor government’s attacks on the NSW workers’ compensation scheme. Automatically excluded from the Labor caucus, Petersen contested his seat as an independent but lost despite a spirited campaign.
Of course, circumstances in Victoria in the 2020s differ in various ways from the examples above. Notably, the reformist and Stalinist political forces that dominated working-class politics for the past century have decayed or collapsed. For this reason at least, any newly elected, radical socialist MP will have to focus on building socialist political forces rather than just providing expression to pre-existing forces.
All of this lies in the future, along with the many challenges and opportunities that having a socialist MP will bring. In the meantime, no-one in Victorian Socialists plans to just sit around waiting for a socialist movement to rebuild itself. Rather, this is our central project.
Like many political campaigns and projects, Victorian Socialists includes revolutionaries (such as Socialist Alternative members) as well as non-revolutionaries who are just sick of Labor’s sell-outs, and many people engaging with socialist politics for the first time. We’re an electoral front in which no-one has to hide their politics and in which anyone who wants to help rebuild a socialist political current is welcome to join.
Our party program popularises socialist political positions—for the right to strike, for pulling out of the US alliance, for a punitive tax on billionaires to fund the services we need, for taking over empty houses to ease the housing crisis. Many of us are knee-deep in community campaigns, worker organising and other socialist political projects.
All of us are serious about fighting for the socialist future we need: joining Victorian Socialists and getting active is a positive contribution to that project.

Why do socialists run in elections?

Victorian Socialists (VS) is the largest-scale socialist political project in Australia for decades. There is no other project in which hundreds of socialists—including members of Socialist Alternative and many others—have conversations with literally thousands of working-class people and all comers, over a period of weeks in election campaigns like the one the party just waged in the western Melbourne electorate of Werribee. 
We get some idea of how those conversations have gone by looking at the party’s vote. In the case of Werribee, it was high enough to leave pundits and rival political parties scratching their heads. What unfathomable secret, they wonder, can explain how an area with close to zero history of serious socialist political activity could deliver a very creditable 7.1 percent of the first-preference vote to VS’s Werribee candidate Sue Munro (up from 3.7 percent in the 2022 Victorian state election)? 
The final tally of 3,010 votes was fewer than 200 behind the Greens, who had the benefit of a political profile established over decades (as well as, in the case of Werribee, getting the donkey vote—the number one spot on a ballot paper listing twelve candidates in total). At a couple of booths VS scored 14 percent of all votes cast, coming third behind Labor and the Liberals. “It’s not all great for the Liberals, the socialists got a bigger swing”, the Australian Financial Review moaned in an <a href="https://www.facebook.com/share/p/15ndxHKFYj/">online headline</a>
reflecting on the Werribee result. 
Melbourne’s Age newspaper described our decent result as a “<a href="https://x.com/vic_socialists/status/1888178135075803397">surprise packet</a>”. But it’s no surprise to anyone involved with VS that a socialist message of rage, hope and resistance can strike a chord among thousands of people in the working-class heartlands of Melbourne, and beyond. 
Campaigning for Victorian Socialists gets us into conversations with rage-filled healthcare workers about the state of our hospitals and the slide to privatised health care; with voters appalled at Israel’s genocide in Palestine and Labor’s complicity in it; and with union members disappointed by the lack of fight from what should be the strongest organisations our side has. 
A minority are already committed socialists, delighted to encounter a party that takes working-class politics and working-class people seriously. Many more have never met an active socialist before but can relate to our sincerity, our political conviction and our basic propositions: that it’s crazy that billionaires keep doubling their wealth when it’s working-class people who do all the work around here; that we shouldn’t tolerate being sold out by Labor, which keeps the capitalists’ profits piling up while throwing crumbs (at best) to the rest of us; that everything is the wrong way up in this society; and though we’re not promising to solve every problem, we’re serious about helping working-class people organise and fight back. 
Our Werribee result was no one-off. In Victoria’s 2022 state election, more than 52,000 people voted for VS in the upper house and 48,000 in the lower house. You have to go back to the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1943_Victorian_state_election">1940s</a> to find a socialist electoral campaign in Victoria that got anywhere near that number of votes. As the lead VS candidate in the Northern Metro upper house region in 2022, I received just 300 fewer primary votes than the eventual winner of the final of five seats. In the Western Metro region, VS candidate Liz Walsh came even closer to being elected, though both of us missed out after preferences. 
Given how far socialist ideas have been pushed to the margins in this country, this was a real achievement—and a solid contribution to bringing socialism back into everyday political life. We built on our 2022 campaign in last year’s local council elections—winning 67,296 first preference votes, with an average vote share of 10.8 percent for each ward we ran in. Owen Cosgriff was elected as a VS councillor in Bendigo with more than 40 percent of first preferences.
Our goal in winning positions in local councils and parliaments is not to rain socialism down upon a grateful and passive public. Rather, it’s the opposite: we aim to use those platforms to promote every strike, protest and act of collective resistance, and to build the politics of intransigent opposition to capitalism and to the exploitation, wars and oppression that the system produces and feeds off. 
It’s not like we’re waiting around to win parliamentary seats to play a positive role in the resistance though. In 2022, <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/reproductive-freedom-precondition-equality-interview-liz-walsh">15,000 people</a> answered a call-out from VS Western Metro candidate Liz Walsh to rally for abortion rights after the US Supreme Court scrapped Roe v Wade. We’ve been <a href="https://victoriansocialists.org.au/campaigns/palestine">active in solidarity</a> with the people of Palestine throughout Israel’s Gaza genocide. When Woolworths workers put out a call for <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/politics/victoria/protesters-block-entry-to-woolworths-warehouse-as-grocery-shortages-continue-20241202-p5kv0m.html">picket line support</a> during their recent strike, a couple of hundred Victorian Socialist members and supporters <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/DDDp0_3Tbhm/?img_index=4">joined</a> the pre-dawn picket line at Dandenong South. 
All this activity sits alongside Victorian Socialists’ success in waging large-scale and effective electoral campaigns, as a contribution to rebuilding socialist political forces. Our next major opportunity to do this is in the rapidly approaching federal election. 
High-profile housing activist Jordan van den Lamb (aka purplepingers) has become the hero of renters and the scourge of Australia’s landlords through his <a href="https://www.shitrentals.org/">shitrentals.org</a>
website and his viral <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@purplepingers?lang=en">tiktoks</a>. Victorian Socialists is proud to have Jordan as our lead Senate candidate. Anyone across the state of Victoria can play a role in the <a href="https://pingers4parliament.com/">pingers4parliament</a> campaign. We’re also running lower house candidates in the seats of Fraser in Melbourne’s west, Cooper and Scullin in the north, and the regional seat of Bendigo.
We’ve already kicked off the campaigning. Whatever your level of experience, there’s an important role for everyone—letterboxing, doorknocking and helping organise events. <a href="https://victoriansocialists.org.au/join">Signing up to be a member of Victorian Socialists</a> is the best way to contribute and to get involved. Find an event on our <a href="https://victoriansocialists.org.au/join">website</a>
or <a href="https://www.instagram.com/vic_socialists/?hl=en">socials</a>, and bring your friends.
Anyone serious about fighting for socialism needs to take opportunities to expand the reach of socialist ideas, to inspire more resistance to capitalism and to convince more people to become active socialists. Victorian Socialists makes a valuable contribution to each of these projects—so jump on board and get active!

Victorian Socialists: putting socialism on the political map

Woolworths workers strike a blow against corporate power

It’s a sight for sore eyes. 
For the past two weeks, a news cycle usually dominated by trivia, tragedy and paid talking heads has featured an unusual sight: striking workers. The people whose labour makes society function, who are most of the time ignored and invisible, are walking out of their workplaces, into the streets and onto the nightly news. 
There have been <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-11-27/thousands-rally-queensland-against-qld-governmnet-suspend-bpic/104652842">construction workers</a> in Brisbane and <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/politics/nsw/nurses-took-to-the-streets-after-insulting-pay-offer-next-stop-court-20241113-p5kq80.html">nurses</a> in New South Wales taking action. But, more than anyone else, it’s the 1,800 warehouse workers striking in Victoria and NSW who have pushed working conditions, corporate greed—and, crucially, workers’ power—onto the political agenda. Organised by the United Workers Union, these workers have seriously disrupted the super-profitable “business as usual” of Woolworths supermarkets—one of the biggest, most ruthless, and fiercely <a href="https://thenightly.com.au/business/coles-woolworths-continues-fall-from-grace-to-now-be-among-nations-top-three-distrusted-brands-c-16973063">hated</a> companies in the country. 
Two weeks into the strike, the outcome still hangs in the balance. But win lose or draw, the warehouse workers’ strike is likely to be the most significant industrial dispute in Australia this year. As Red Flag has <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/woolies-distribution-workers-strike-for-everyone">argued</a>, every worker in the country has a stake in its outcome. 
Perhaps the most powerful moment of the strike so far came on Monday 2 December. Up until that point, management’s policy seemed to be one of sucking the energy and momentum out of the dispute. Management locked the gates of the strikebound facilities on day one, ramped up alternative supply chains, harassed workers by phone and text, and waited for demoralisation to set in. But faced with significant and growing gaps in supermarkets, and gaping holes in the stock at Dan Murphys, management decided to take a chance. 
On Sunday 1 December, Woolworths CEO Amanda Bardwell put out a statement claiming that only a minority of workers at the giant Melbourne South Regional Distribution Centre in Dandenong South were union members; that the vast majority of workers were keen to scab on the strike; that management had reached a deal with the Shop Distributive and Allied union (which is notorious for undercutting other unions, and even <a href="https://redflag.org.au/node/5320">legal minimums</a>, in their enterprise agreements); and that as a result, full production would resume at South Dandenong from 6am Monday morning. 
Anyone aware of Woolworths management’s commercial practices, such as allegedly <a href="https://www.accc.gov.au/media-release/accc-takes-woolworths-and-coles-to-court-over-alleged-misleading-prices-dropped-and-down-down-claims">lying about their own prices</a>, will not be surprised to learn that this statement was, to put it mildly, a little shy of the truth. Out of slightly more than 300 workers at the Dandenong centre, the UWU have a membership of more than 240 (and growing). The SDA, by contrast, have seven members at the facility. Unsurprisingly, Bardwell’s statement neglected to mention this relevant fact.
Perhaps Bardwell and team believed their own bullshit. Perhaps they thought that one day of transparent PR spin would be enough to demoralise the workers and their supporters. If so, management were in for a shock. By 5am on Monday, a crowd of around 100 workers and more than 200 community supporters—a large number of them mobilised by Victorian Socialists—were assembled, ready to turn back any scabs. 
An hour passed. Then another. And then another. 
Spirits were high on the picket as workers, students and well-wishers chatted, chanted, and practiced our picket drills. Rumour was that the would-be strike breakers had been put on a bus, then taken off, then put back on, then taken off. 
It wasn’t until 12 hours after management’s supposed start time that a tiny crew of would-be scabs turned up, only to be turned away from the facility with no great drama. Management’s grand reopening turned out to be just another Woolworths fake news story. 
As word of the victory spread, workers on other pickets celebrated. Rhys, a worker at the Erskine Park distribution centre in Sydney, told Red Flag, “Hearing about this big Melbourne story on Monday. They [management] failed, you know, this morning they failed. And today they’re trying to get an injunction through Fair Work to open that site. And it just makes you laugh. You know, it’s not scary. It’s just funny.”
Workers mercilessly mocking their management as the company flail around looking for a way to neutralise worker power and worker solidarity, is an unparalleled, and much too rare, joy. 
Of course, the future is unwritten and so far, though the company has moved on some issues, the strikers are yet to fully win their main demands. It’s encouraging though that some heavy artillery of the union movement is taking an interest, with the Victorian Building Industry Group of unions <a href="https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1Do4MDWWWU/">declaring</a> that they will support the striking warehouse workers “industrially, politically, and financially until these workers win this dispute”. But with pressure increasing on all sides, it’s impossible to tell how the dispute will resolve. 
Even at this stage though, the strike—as with any serious dispute—has shone a revealing light on politics and society. 
Predictably, the Liberals, though willing to <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/dutton-to-supermarkets-rein-in-prices-or-we-ll-force-you-to-sell-off-stores-20240702-p5jqh1.html">mouth off</a> once in a while about a “big stick” approach to taking on the big supermarket companies, have not uttered a single word to support the people actually taking on these same companies—the striking workers. 
Labor politicians have barely been more visible, with Cabinet ministers’ <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-12-04/woolworths-union-dispute-government-uwu-woolies-shelf-dan-murphy/104682096">reported comments</a> falling well short of any actual support for the workers’ demands. The Victorian Greens have finally crept out of witness protection on the issue, posting two Instagram <a href="https://www.instagram.com/victoriangreens/">reels</a> in support of the strike in the past day or so. 
By far the most prominent political party supporting the strike has been Victorian Socialists. The party’s support extends not just to social media <a href="https://www.instagram.com/vic_socialists/?hl=en">posts</a>, but to party members and supporters doing one of the most important things in politics: turning up. The Melbourne Age (in a rare <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20241202092230/https:/www.theage.com.au/politics/victoria/protesters-block-entry-to-woolworths-warehouse-as-grocery-shortages-continue-20241202-p5kv0m.html">sympathetic report</a>) noted the presence of many VS supporters at Monday’s early morning picket: 
“Activist and Victorian Socialists federal Senate candidate <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20241202092230mp_/https:/www.theage.com.au/link/follow-20170101-p5k5fq">Jordan van den Lamb</a>—known as purplepingers online—issued a call-out to followers on social media on Sunday, urging them to attend Monday’s action in Dandenong South. Party member Ryan Stanton said activists, students and trade union members were among those who turned out with the party to support Monday’s protest. ‘Woolworths is one of the main drivers behind the cost-of-living crisis,’ Stanton said. ‘They’ve been price gouging...but what a lot of people don’t know is that they’re also doing their best to make working lives harder for the workers who actually pick the stock that goes to the stores.’”
It’s no surprise that socialists, for whom workers’ struggles are at the centre of social change and the vision of a new world, are also some of the most active supporters of those struggles when they erupt. 
But the strike reveals much more than the real values of political parties. Like any major dispute, the strike makes it obvious who does all the goddam work around here—and who doesn’t. Without workers’ labour, it turns out, none of us have toilet paper, pasta, frozen goods, chilled goods, beer—or anything else. Anyone who doubts this can wander through one of hundreds of Woolworths supermarkets or liquor stores in Australia’s most populous states. The strike shows anyone who cares to look that even in this automated age, workers and our labour underpin everything. 
What a contrast to Woolworths management. 
Throughout the strike, Bardwell and her extensive team of executives, HR goons, lawyers and spin doctors are no doubt working as hard as they ever do. The stream of dishonest press releases, legal threats and fake-welfare harassing phone calls to striking workers is testament to that. But nothing at all of any value to human beings results. The billable hours rack up, but not one extra roll of toilet paper gets to the stores.
To put it plainly: this layer of CEOs and executives and their well-paid flunkies is parasitical. They contribute nothing of value to society, but feed off the rest of us. In even simpler terms: they need us, but we don’t need them. 
The Brad Banduccis, the Amanda Bardwells and their bought-and-sold servants in politics and the media can wander around as if they’re the most important people on the planet. A major strike, however, makes it abundantly clear whose labour really matters—and who would have nothing without it. 
The essential nature of the work millions of workers do every day, to society and to the capitalists’ profit-based “business as usual” set-up, gives workers enormous power. But it’s obvious that this power can only be exercised collectively. 
This mundane fact has important consequences. Any strike points in the direction of solidarity and collective action, and an ethos directly at odds with the dog-eat-dog individualism fostered by the system. Even a quick look at the scope of the warehouse strike, and its demands, shows this. 
Everyone on strike knows that warehouses commonly shut after 20 years, sometimes more, sometimes less. Each time this happens, Australia’s current system of enterprise-by-enterprise bargaining (introduced by Labor in the early 1990s) allows a company like Woolworths to set up a new shelf company, and dictate a new enterprise agreement on favourable terms. The gains won by previous rounds of struggle are largely wiped out, and workers in the new facility (many of whom have come from an older facility) have to start on lower pay. 
This is why one of the strike’s main demands is for a national agreement or at least for a series of nationally applied minimums, which Woolworths has to meet for existing and new sections of its supply chain. A minimum pay rate of $38 per hour is one key part of this. 
In other words, each of the Woolworths strikers knows that the only way to secure their own long-term interests in having decent wages, is by fighting for many thousands of workers they have never met to get a minimum pay rate of $38 an hour. A secure victory for one, it turns out, can only be achieved by a victory for all.
Not just the demands of the strike, but also its scope, show the same dynamic of expanding solidarity. If one warehouse goes on strike, it’s a major hassle for Woolworths management. But this impact is multiplied, and multiplied again, with each warehouse that joins in the action. 
This is why the elected officials, organisers, delegates and members of the UWU have put years of effort into lining up the expiry dates of the enterprise agreements covering the distribution networks of the major supermarkets. “United we stand, divided we fall” is not just a pleasant-sounding slogan. It reflects a class logic: the logic of working-class people in struggle for their own interests is to fight in ever-widening circles of solidarity. 
And this logic intensifies once the actual strike starts. Ask a striking worker about their experience of the strike. You’ll get an answer about how great it is to see and feel their own power in the flow-on effects from their strike. You’ll get an answer about the joy of forming a bond with people who share the same workplace and the same task but who have never had a chance to meet and talk, let alone establish a connection in common struggle. 
And you’ll get an answer about overcoming the sort of “divide and conquer” between shifts and job roles that management thrives on and promotes. Rhys, one of the strikers at Sydney’s Erskine Park distribution centre, explained to Red Flag how significant it is to see one of the main divisions in the shed—between day shift and afternoon—simply dissolve during the strike. “To see how together we are, it’s like it’s not two shifts, there’s just one shift” he said, “There’s just one way out—and it’s great to see that it’s everyone supporting everyone”.
This logic of working-class struggle, the logic of “everyone supporting everyone”, can extend beyond shifts, and beyond sheds. Far beyond, in fact.
One of the most generous and moving acts of solidarity with the warehouse strikers comes from refugees, a group of people who have been vilified and demonised in Australia for decades. A large group of refugees recently held an epic 100-day protest camp outside the Department of Home Affairs in Melbourne’s Docklands area, demanding the dignity and security that Labor promised them ahead of the 2022 election. 
This extraordinary protest received invaluable support from the UWU, whose Victorian office is located nearby. Many of the refugees involved are now returning that solidarity in the most practical way imaginable: by assisting the strike kitchen. As the refugees explain on their <a href="https://www.facebook.com/RefugeeWAVE">Facebook page</a>:
“Striking workers are heroes. They challenge the divisions created by bosses and prove that unity can overcome the barriers keeping us apart. Their struggle inspires us all to fight for a more equal and just society. In solidarity with these workers, Rathy and Maki have decided to start a Strike Kitchen called Meals for Equality. Starting Monday, they will prepare meals for the striking workers, showing that refugees and migrants stand united with the workers. When politicians like Dutton and Albo blame refugees and migrants for problems they created, we must counter this divisive narrative.” 
This is not just a gift to the striking workers. It’s a concrete example of solidarity that in months and years to come we can throw back in the face of anyone who buys into the lie that migrants and refugees are a threat to workers in this country. This example proves the exact opposite: while one of the biggest companies in the country was trying to starve and bully striking workers back to work, refugees were on the pickets, helping to keep the strikers fed. 
This sort of industrial action, and the solidarity it inspires, is far too rare in Australia today. In the 1970s, Australian workers had one of the highest strike rates in the world. Millions of workers struck to win decent wages and conditions, and an important minority of militant, political unionists led industrial campaigns to support other workers, to preserve low-cost housing, to win equal rights for women, against the Vietnam War, for Aboriginal Land Rights and against Apartheid in South Africa. 
This tradition of industrial action was deliberately <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/node-7266">broken</a> by the Labor governments of the 1980s. The result of this defeat has been the decline in union density and living standards. Along with that, the low level of strikes had led to a breakdown in the sense of solidarity and common interest on display at the picket lines outside distribution centres right now.
It is this solidarity that, when able to develop fully, points to a new and different sort of society, one which puts ordinary people in the driver’s seat. Workers can become so used to accepting society’s injustices and atrocities because they feel deprived of the power to change it. Strikes, and the solidarity they spark, can lead in the other direction, by demonstrating in practice that workers actually do have power, and that there is an alternative to this resignation. Any serious strike shows this potential power of our side. And once conscious of this power, workers are not necessarily content to stop at a wage rise or better conditions. 
The outcome of the warehouse strikes is still in play. But it’s clear that the warehouse workers and their struggle are an inspiration, and an education, to us all.

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