These days, the usual refrain when it comes to women working topless in bars, in the sex industry or otherwise being sexually objectified at work, is that it’s about a woman’s right to choose this treatment and that it can even be a sign of empowerment. The increasingly extreme objectification of women and the normalisation of violent sexual practices, far from being condemned, are increasingly apologised for, even by supposed anti-sexists, as women “<a href="https://www.theage.com.au/culture/music/sabrina-carpenter-s-new-album-cover-has-sparked-uproar-here-s-what-you-need-to-know-20250612-p5m6up.html">taking ownership</a>” and being “active agents” in their sexual life, or savvy entrepreneurs. 
Back in the late 1970s and early 1980s, it was a different story. Many young adults had had some experience of fighting to win women’s rights against hostile authorities, or of confronting other social injustices. They were also much more likely to be members of a union—the rate of union membership was much higher than today, and more workers had some experience of industrial action. This demonstrated in practice to many the importance of unity and solidarity, and gave workers a sense of their own power to shape and change the society around them. There was an understanding that something practical could be done about social or economic injustices, and that they weren’t simply moral concerns. This applied to the discriminatory treatment faced by women and included the sexualisation they were subject to in the workplace. 
A particular battleground was the hospitality industry. Denis Evans was a militant and organiser in the industry and recently spoke to Red Flag about this campaign. After doing a variety of jobs, Evans became a shop steward at a winery, after which, around 1969, he went to work at the Carlton and United Brewery in Melbourne. It was there that he “soon learned the benefits of militant union action”. 
Between 1975 and 1982, Denis worked as an organiser with the Liquor Trades Union (now United Workers Union). In 1979, the union faced a new scourge—a management push to have more women bar workers and wait staff working topless. As soon as it was notified of this development by some of the bar workers, the union took up the fight. 
The union’s women and men organisers had worked in the hotels before becoming organisers and knew immediately what this would mean for working conditions and occupational health and safety. Denis recalls that the feeling was “someone had to stop it”, or the exploitative practice would only spread. Women who refused to comply with management’s demand to work topless and who objected to working alongside topless co-workers were sacked and quickly replaced by women brought in by the criminal-run employment agencies. 
It was going to take a serious union campaign to defeat the power of the hotel industry, known at the time for its strong criminal links. As Denis explains: “Organisers [including Denis] visiting these shonky premises were routinely threatened with violence, knives held to their throats, or in two incidents two organisers taken out the back of the premises and guns drawn and held to their heads, women organisers threatened with rape or worse”. Despite the threats, the organisers went around the pubs telling hotel bosses to stop their discriminatory practices, which were not only demeaning to the women involved, but made their work more dangerous. 
A problem the union faced was that sexism was so profitable that the bosses were willing to pay women well over the going rate to work topless, “up to five times the rate”, according to Denis. But for the union, it was a matter of principle—higher wages should be won based on industrial power, not by individuals unilaterally giving up important conditions and dignity at work. This, Denis argues, left “other hard-working women to survive on the hard-won wages and conditions fought for by them, and the union”, and undermined solidarity.
Stepping up the campaign, the union went to the brewery workers who supplied the hotels, calling for support. At stop-work meetings in every brewery, the workers passed resolutions of support for the bar workers, promising to take their own industrial action. 
After a negotiation between the union and management at the Tarmac Hotel in Melbourne’s west, the publican refused to stop using topless bar staff and to stop showing pornographic movies in the bar, deriding Denis as a prude. This didn’t worry Denis: “I couldn’t wait to let our members at the brewery know about my failed talks with management at the Tarmac Hotel. The instant reaction was one of solidarity with the female workers, and the passing of a resolution confirming the planned industrial action”.
The union’s motto became, “No porn, no top, no beer!”, Denis says. “All the Sunday papers were on to it, five topless women turned up in the union office the next day organised by the criminal element in the hotel industry and the sensationalist media in tandem. Fronting up at the front desk, I was summoned to face the women with cameras flashing and videos whirring; they were hoping my face would be flushed with embarrassment.” 
But Denis didn’t react in quite the way they were hoping. “Well, you could have knocked me over with a wet tram ticket; they continued the theme in the headlines of the newspapers that I was a 40-year-old prude, with photo, mind you. The shame, the ignominy! How was I going to hold my head up in the trade union movement for attempting to wipe out this insidious practice?” 
Denis exposed the hypocrisy of the bosses’ justifications of the practice by asking them whether they would employ their wives or girlfriends as topless bar staff, or do such work themselves. He described their response: “How dare you even suggest that we would subject our loved ones to such a display of semi nudity in public? Well then, [Denis countered] how about you publicans doing a few hours with your penis hanging out, just make sure it goes nowhere near the drip tray. The reaction was apoplexy!”
The first target of the industrial campaign was the Tarmac Hotel. “I told them to consider filling the cellars with coal, because the brewery workers were not going to supply any beer sourced by their labour from that point, and a cellar full of coal might help them survive the coming winter”, remembers Denis. After that, “The victories came fast and furious. Every hotel employing topless bar attendants or waiters was now on a final warning to cease this practice or answer to union members employed at the brewery. It’s called cap in hand. The cellars were soon running low on the amber liquid, and bosses who previously had refused to take down their pornographic movies or sack the women prepared to break down hard-won union conditions for a price, soon mellowed.” The result was that a conga line of publicans “beat a path to the union office to offer their sincere condolences for putting profit before people in an already lucrative business”.
Denis gives most credit to the tremendous work of the rank-and-file women and men in the industry for shutting down the practice at the time. He also points out that it was a warning shot across the bow to other employers who were thinking of employing topless sandwich makers, hardware assistants, hairdressers and the like, that their businesses would get the same treatment. He quipped “Thankfully we were able to cease the practice before seeing topless parliamentarians or, worse still, half-naked bosses”.
It is, however, an ongoing battle. The action taken by the brewery workers, thanks to former Prime Minister Bob Hawke and the ACTU-ALP Accord of the 1980s, is now illegal. Known as secondary boycotts, such solidarity action today incurs huge fines, which are a significant deterrent. 
The battle against sexualisation at work likewise is ongoing. In 1991, liquor trades and retail workers, along with bodies such as women’s refuges and legal groups, set up Women Against Sexual Exploitation in Training. It was followed by the inclusion of a statement of condemnation in the ACTU’s Working Women’s policy. Today, the normalisation of the sex industry and associated practices has broken down consciousness of sexism and the need to take it on industrially as well as in broader society. 
Now in his 70s, Denis still believes it should be a priority of the union movement to stand up for women’s rights and end sexualisation at work. Using occupational health and safety provisions is an obvious basis to object to such practices, but, Denis insists, this has to be combined with industrial action to actually shut down this demeaning, unsafe and exploitative practice, which must be understood as a blatant profit grab. 
The rhetoric of “empowerment” to justify appalling sexism, along with a weakening of the unions and with them class consciousness, means sexual exploitation at work is rife today. It is therefore more important than ever that we remember the history of the workers’ movement fighting back against this, and, in this case, winning.

Liz Ross

When the workers’ movement took on sexual objectification

Even before vice-chancellors started <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/religion/australian-universities-free-speech-right-to-protest/105164636?utm_campaign=abc_religion_fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR5PnBd0b7_RLoBzYiWAwBHbdJrEtIP-aAfolH8RTWzk3qFht8aDmd3KU1C6TA_aem_dhGiVX7WxtZwQWBgpTDeww">savagely limiting</a> what students and staff could say, studying or working at a university was nothing like the romantic notion of life in the “ivory tower”.
There are myths that universities are places to pursue knowledge for the joy of it, where students can learn how to help others and make the world a better place, while on the path to great jobs.
The reality is quite different. Unfortunately, students have minimal say about the content of inflexible courses. Progress through units and degrees depends on jumping through assessment hoops, as universities continue the “hidden curriculum” of the school system, which is at least as important as the overt curriculum. The hidden curriculum teaches students that success, measured in marks (a proxy for dollars), depends on doing what you’re told and not challenging what teachers say—excellent training for dictatorial workplaces.
Universities have increasingly geared their offerings to the needs of business and governments, and their own profitability. That does not include learning how the wellbeing of most of the world’s population requires radical social changes, let alone how to make revolution.
Courses—and even whole departments—have been <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-11-05/university-of-wollongong-cuts-academic-jobs-international-cap/104560250">axed</a>
because they don’t satisfy those needs or bring in sufficient money. The jobs that most university graduates go into are overwhelmingly white-collar, working-class positions, in which employees, like other workers, have very limited or no control over what they do. Such jobs are subject to the vagaries of the labour market, capitalism’s boom-bust cycles and governments’ whims.
Unis are increasingly just glorified high schools. Students are sausages in its digestive tract, chewed up, dissolved in acid and shat out at the end with a degree, while the funding they bring is sucked out into the universities’ profits.
Outside the ranks of management, the situation of the roughly two-thirds of <a href="https://www.education.gov.au/higher-education-statistics/staff-data/selected-higher-education-statistics-2024-staff-data/key-findings-2024-higher-education-staff-statistics">university employees</a> who are not academics is equally gloomy. They are blue- and white-collar workers subjected to inadequate pay, attacks on their working conditions and frequent restructures. 
What about academics? Such jobs appear to offer scope to read and write about things you’re interested in, to tell others about those things, and lots of autonomy. The jobs are rewards for having a big brain and a way to get a public profile (for your big brain). And the jobs have “tenure”—they are secure—and you get to work in your own office.
The academic life is very different. The workloads of most academics today are punishing. Time to conduct and write up research is restricted. Career progress, and even keeping your job, depends on publishing in prestigious—that is conservative—journals. There’s pressure to do research that is “outside funded”, overwhelmingly by businesses or governments and according to their priorities.
Over the past twenty years, university bosses have dramatically tightened their control over academics’ research and teaching. Courses must go through time-consuming bureaucratic procedures, through which managers shape content and assessment methods and can even veto them. Anyone involved in teaching can tell you that marking is a horrible aspect of the job, humiliating for the marker and the markee. Teachers and students alike are subject to stressful time pressures. Most students are inadequately prepared for university. A teacher reading an essay whose first two sentences are clear and grammatical will think, “Wow! This should be much better than most of the others”.
To get an academic job, you must jump through many educational hoops and therefore go through a very sustained hidden curriculum: at school and in undergraduate and postgraduate study. Then, you must anticipate what the people who interview you want. Interview panels are dominated by universities’ most senior members, who are managers.
This promotes the “big brain syndrome”: the idea that your own unique talents are the key to your wellbeing at work and career advancement. That’s why academics tend to be poor unionists, compared with other university employees. They are even more prone than most workers to the illusion that their individual merit rather than collective action is the most important route to improve pay and conditions.
The “big brain syndrome” also affects some academic unionists who think of themselves as left wing, leading them to believe that sophisticated tactics in dealing with university bosses (and top union officials) can substitute for the unglamorous effort of detailed workplace organising or the crudity of strike action.
A public profile for you and your research? Only if the mainstream media are interested.
As for job security, most academic jobs are now casual, low paid and not paid for all hours actually worked. As a casual, you don’t even get the cubbyhole individual office that is increasingly standard for other academics.
Even continuing academic jobs are no more secure than continuing jobs anywhere else. Tenure is ancient history.
Initially, thanks to a disastrous policy of the National Tertiary Education Union, universities created “teaching-focussed” jobs, which allow no or laughably little time for research. Yet career progression is very difficult without an extensive publishing record. There are more and more of these jobs.
Academics who don’t supervise anyone or for whom that is a very small part of their duties (the majority) are just workers, gut flora in universities’ digestive tracts.
Why is there such a gap between the myths and realities of university life?
Universities have always been institutions that help to maintain, defend and develop systems of class rule. Initially, they provided administrators, clergy and lawyers who maintained the feudal order. Those graduates justified the hierarchy of feudalism as divinely ordained or in accord with “natural law” or assisted its smooth operation by overseeing its legal system and state.
With the rise of capitalism, through to the Second World War, universities remained elite institutions, whose graduates generally went on to be managers in business and government, increasingly with scientific and engineering expertise, as well as middle class professionals, especially lawyers and doctors.
Universities became mass institutions after the war. Today, most people who get degrees become skilled workers who can generally be relied on to do what they’re told.
The spread and production of ideas that serve capitalist interests are still significant university functions. Thomas Müntzer was a priest in the sixteenth century who took the side of peasants and artisans in the massive uprising against the old feudal order in Germany, known as the “Peasants’ War”. His observation in July 1524 is still a pretty good description of an aspect of universities’ ideological roles today: 
“[In biblical times] clever soothsayers and interpreters of dreams ... said only what the lords wanted to hear, just as our academic scribblers do nowadays, for they have a taste for the choicest morsels at court.”
Contemporary lords of capital don’t want to hear only tried and trusted apologies for the way things are, but also more up-to-date variations and even innovations around that fundamental theme. When an academic or journalist hits the right note, they can count on politicians, spokesthings for the state or business and the mass media to amplify it and boost their career. Think of Jordan Peterson, the Canadian psychologist who promotes far-right ideas, including racism and sexism.
University research generates genuine insights into how people behave, societies function and the nature of the material world: science. These can improve our lives and understanding of reality.
But the lens of class politics tends to affect all aspects of the production of ideas, including sciences. It shapes universities as workplaces and biases research priorities. Scientific advances can often be used by corporations and state institutions to improve their control and manipulations of consumers, workers and citizens. They can help businesses develop new products or production processes that improve profitability, <a href="https://www.techtransfer.org.au/news-item/17346/finalists-announced-for-the-2024-kca-awards">from</a>
controlling fires to lithium refining, disinfection technologies to “<a href="https://www.sydney.edu.au/news-opinion/news/2025/03/31/sydney-spinout-deteqt-secures-backing-for-diamond-on-silicon-sen.html">quantum sensing</a>”.
The creation of new ideas depends on academics having some autonomy, not just parroting dogmas. The degree of this autonomy can vary dramatically. In some cases, it has even allowed Marxists to get jobs in social sciences or arts. But the structures of universities and career paths in them mean that academics often produce ideas and analyses without attention to the contexts of the phenomena they are trying to grasp. There is a wonderful word in German for this: Fachidiotismus. Literally it means the idiocy of academic disciplines: knowing more and more about less and less.
Universities are bureaucratic organisations like corporations or public service agencies. As capitalist enterprises, universities are there to make profits for themselves and their <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/national/highest-university-executive-pay-packets-revealed-as-crackdown-looms-20250101-p5l1i1.html">top managers</a>. They make profits by producing workers and developing ideas that are useful for the state and other capitalists, and are fundamentally committed to the maintenance of capitalism.
Although universities make profits through educating workers and developing ideas that are useful to the state and other capitals, and are fundamentally committed to the maintenance of capitalism, their senior managers can act in ways that contradict interests of the capitalist class as a whole. The dumbing down of courses over recent decades, and the consequent decline in the average abilities of graduates, is an example. But such conflicts, in which universities pursue their own sectoral interests, do not make them different from any other section of capital.
In some places, the student movements of the late 1960s and early 1970s led to some reforms that included students and non-professorial staff in the decision-making processes of the whole university, faculties, schools and departments, to a limited extent. Since then, managers, encouraged by politicians and businesspeople, have either eliminated this representation or rendered it purely tokenistic. Appointed managers have replaced elected heads of departments or schools and deans of faculties. The powers of appointed top managers have increased.
Most members of university councils or senates—their boards of directors—are appointed by governments or existing members and are thoroughly reliable servants of capitalist interests.
Although there are profound myths about the nature of universities, they can be sites of resistance against capitalism. That’s true of all workplaces but there’s an additional element that leads to this possibility in universities.
The main raw material that goes into its production process is students. They come to universities with an optimism about the world that hasn’t been worn down by years of wage labour, and they generally have more free time to engage in political activity than people with full-time jobs and families. They have more scope to explore ideas and engage in political activity, if they want to.
While socialists regard the working class as the only force that can bring down capitalism and create a new society, winning more people to active socialist politics is important, especially workers but also workers-in-the-making at schools and universities.
Rick Kuhn worked in academic jobs for 28 years and is a life member of the National Tertiary Education Union.

Rick Kuhn

Life in the cardboard tower: the university experience today

Workers at the Star Brisbane made history on 4 July, striking for the first time in the casino’s history and for the first time in an Australian casino in sixteen years. Star employees are the worst-paid casino workers in the country. They walked out after the company offered a new contract that would leave them even worse off and cut their Sunday penalty rates. 
During the strike, workers voted to strike again during the State of Origin decider on 9 July and again during a poker tournament later that week. The State of Origin strike was a huge success, and the tournament was subsequently cancelled, a big win for the workers.
Workers walked off the job at 6pm on 4 July and were met by hundreds of cheering supporters. 
“This is a company that always manages to find millions and millions of dollars in bonuses for the executives, but when it comes to paying us, they’re suddenly going broke. Well, I think they’re full of it”, said Kaine Kennedy, a delegate with the United Workers Union, addressing the assembled workers and supporters. 
A group of women who have been with the company for many years as cleaners and cashiers were the angriest, waving their union flags and breaking out into chants: “Sunday rates! Sunday rates!”
One made a speech: “I’ve been here for 30 years, and this is the worst agreement that we’ve ever had. We need to keep our Sunday rates due to the cost of living and for our wellbeing and mental health. We work twice as hard on the weekends”.
Another told Red Flag: “All the tables and pits are closed! They’re going to lose so much!”
Workers say the cleaners have to do the work of two or three people and are denied a sewage allowance after cleaning up shit. Apparently, it’s too hard for the Star to pay fair wages to the workers—but the CEO of Star Entertainment gets a $10 million salary package.
It’s not just Star workers getting a crap deal. It’s a similar story all across Australia. Bosses have unchecked power at work and do whatever they think they can get away with, all to make more money. 
But when workers strike, that begins to change. As Kaine put it:
“Everywhere you look in Australia, there’s a boss trying to save a couple bucks by screwing over their workers. That’s why we need more of this. We need more workers standing together, fighting back and saying we’re not going to take it. We’re not going to let you make another cent until you pay us what we deserve.”

Jessica Abbo

Historic strikes at Brisbane’s Star Casino

Donald Trump is on a rampage against workers in the United States. According to the 2025 Global Rights Index, published by the International Trade Union Confederation, the world’s largest trade union federation, the new administration has “taken a wrecking ball to the collective labour rights of workers”. Trump has stripped protections and bargaining rights for tens of thousands of public sector workers and paralysed the National Labor Relations Board, which protects employees’ rights to organise and join unions. And he’s just getting started.
The US union movement is historically weak. Strike rates remain at decades-long lows. Union density has steadily declined from a peak of 35 percent in 1954, recording a new low in every decade since then. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, just 10 percent of all workers are now in unions. This obviously poses challenges for the workers’ movement, particularly for workers who want to organise against Trump’s reactionary agenda.
Red Flag’s Ryan Stanton spoke to Joe Burns—a labour lawyer, union activist and bargaining negotiator since the 1990s—about where the US union movement has gone wrong and what needs to change. Burns recently completed negotiations for 27,000 United Airlines employees and Association of Flight Attendants members. He has written three books on labour organising: <a href="https://www.igpub.com/strike-back/">Strike Back</a>, <a href="https://www.amazon.com.au/Reviving-Strike-Working-Transform-America/dp/1935439243">Reviving the Strike</a>, and <a href="https://shop.redflag.org.au/products/class-struggle-unionism">Class Struggle Unionism</a>.
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What is the state of the American labour movement in the era of Donald Trump?
It’s obviously a difficult period with Trump in office. He has unleashed attacks on immigrant workers and workers in the federal government. But the problem is much bigger than just Trump. The United States has seen a decline in the percentage of workers who belong to trade unions. Only six out of 100 private sector workers now belong to unions. While there are flashes of success here and there, the reality is that the labour movement has been stuck for decades.
This is in large part because we’ve abandoned the principles of class struggle unionism. We put a lot of money into organising, but we’ve been unable to convince workers to join our weak and ineffective unions. We were told that when Democrats like Biden got in and we had a new NLRB [National Labor Relations Board], things would be different. But the similarities between presidential administrations over the last few decades outweigh the differences. The decline in union membership has continued at an equal rate under both Republicans and Democrats. All the Democrats have done is change some rules around the margins. 
We’re not going to revive the labour movement this way. The union reform movement and the left within the labour movement are the weakest that I’ve seen in decades. Certain sectors of the economy and certain states are better organised, but I think the crisis is pretty much throughout the labour movement in the entire country. There are a lot of fuzzy ideas about teaching organising approaches, as if that’s our problem. 
We really need a complete revamp of approach. Labour’s decline is not fundamentally a product of one party or another—they are both capitalist parties. It reflects a deeper problem with the labour movement. What we really lack are the principles of class struggle unionism and how we fight both inside and outside of our unions to take on the capitalist class. And I think it starts with the left of the labour movement coming to grips with the crisis that we face and what it’s going to take to move forward. That’s the fundamental problem. 
My first two books focused on reviving the strike in both the public and private sectors. My most recent book, Class Struggle Unionism, focuses on the internal problems within the labour movement, including our inability to confront the shifting regimes of labour law, the legal restrictions on the right to strike, worker self-activity and so on. Although my knowledge of the Australian union movement is somewhat limited, I do try to follow things over there and it seems that both union movements face similar problems. 
How have the unions approached the Trump administration?
Well, obviously Trump is doing this sort of right-wing populism thing. He’s certainly won over a base with his tariffs and protectionism, which have an appeal to auto workers and steelworkers, who have been decimated by decades of neoliberal attacks and the elimination of protections for workers. Many liberal labour leaders are aghast that Sean Fain from the UAW [United Auto Workers] and others support the tariffs. However, we spent a lot of the 1990s fighting against the North American Free Trade Agreement and other free trade agreements that were geared towards allowing corporations to shift manufacturing jobs overseas without regard for workers. These agreements allow capitalists to exploit workers around the world, while eroding manufacturing unionism. 
So, it’s not surprising to me that some of these unions support tariffs. It’s economic nationalism, but it’s also rooted in material reality in which workers have faced job losses. They’ve felt the effects of an era of neoliberalism that was spearheaded in many ways by the Democratic establishment. However, the tariffs are not going to fix things. To the extent you support them and take a narrow, sectional point of view, you cut yourself off from your natural allies and move away from class struggle unionism. In the worst case, you end up like the Teamsters [one of the largest unions in the US], who have been cosying up to Trump. This is an abandonment of working-class principles. 
Has there been much opposition to the Trump administration from the union movement?
For the most part, the union leaders oppose Trump—at least rhetorically. To be fair, while the UAW came out with qualified support for Trump’s tariffs, they have fought him on other issues. Although we’ve seen some protests, there hasn’t yet been the same kind of opposition we saw during his first term. I think he came on so ferociously that it put people on the back foot. While the union movement is participating in smaller, localised protests, I wouldn’t say they are doing much to seriously oppose Trump. 
What is the relationship between the US union movement and the Democratic Party? 
The union movement allied itself with the Democratic Party through the 1930s, ’40s and ’50s. The unions deluded themselves into thinking they had an important role in business and government. They have the trappings of power, but not real power. Over the years, the labour movement has allowed itself to be incorporated into the Democrats and become increasingly dependent on the state for its existence. In doing so, we’ve accepted of a lot of restrictions on unions and the right to strike. 
However, despite what we are commonly told, the Democratic Party is no ally of the labour movement. We have to keep in mind that Trump is not the first president to attack migrants or attempt to gut the federal workforce. Democratic governors called out the National Guard in the 1980s to break the Hormel meatpackers’ strike in Minnesota, where I’m originally from. Democratic President Bill Clinton and his vice president, Al Gore, got rid of 400,000 federal worker jobs in the 1990s, probably more than they’ve cut so far with Elon Musk and DOGE. 
The problem isn’t just that the labour movement spends a tonne of money supporting Democrats, money that could go into organising. And the problem isn’t just that this offers a false path and defrays the real issues affecting workers. The real problem is that it reflects the entry of capitalist ideology into the labour movement. As Tony Mazzocchi, the leader of the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers International Union, who tried to start a labour party in the 1990s, used to say: the bosses have two parties, it’s time for workers to have one. The Democrats are a wholly corporate-funded and controlled political party. It was the Democrats’ anti-working-class policies that provided the basis for Trump’s rise to power. 
In your book Class Struggle Unionism, you loosely define three approaches to modern trade unionism: business unionism, liberal unionism and class struggle unionism. What do you mean by these terms? 
For the first 100 or so years of trade unionism, the fundamental divide was between what I call business unionism and class struggle unionism. Business unionism tended to be a narrower trade unionism, often focused on representing a group of workers under a particular employer or industry. Business unionists didn’t see themselves as having a broader role in society, and certainly not a role of transforming the relationship between workers and employers. Their slogan can be famously summed up by the slogan, “A fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work”. 
In contrast, we have a long, rich history of class struggle unionism, which takes a fundamentally different point of view. It recognises that the source of power and privilege in society is exploitation in the workplace. Whether you’re at Starbucks, Amazon or Ford, your labour creates value during your shift. You get paid a portion of that value in wages, and the rest flows upwards to a handful of people. That’s how we get billionaires in society; that’s the source of power and privilege. 
So, if you truly want to take on the billionaire class, you have to start in the workplace by challenging exploitation. When I talk about class struggle unionists in the United States, I think of the Industrial Workers of the World, or the Wobblies as they are better known, in the early 1900s. I think of the folks around the Communist Party in the Trade Union Unity League of the 1920s. I think of Farrell Dobbs and the Trotskyists who led the Teamsters rebellion of the 1930s. I think of the powerful, left-led international unions that came out of the 1930s, who were then decimated in the red scares of the late 1940s and early 1950s. 
In the 1970s, thousands of anti-war and student activists joined the new communist movement. Many of those people then joined the labour movement with a conscious viewpoint of class struggle unionism. They went into the labour movement to transform it and put it on a fighting class struggle basis. They saw the working class as critical to a broader transformation of society. A lot of those leftists who went into the labour movement in the 1970s engaged in a lot of good struggles. They were probably a bit ultra-left and spent too much time fighting each other, but I think a lot of good struggles came out of their efforts. 
However, in the 1980s, we faced a withering attack on trade unionism. We saw a wave of legal restrictions on the right to strike and on solidarity action, and the permanent replacement of striking workers. Great Britain, Australia and the United States shifted to restrain the sort of worker self-activity that had built a powerful labour movement, especially solidarity, cross-class and class-wide trade unionism. We were getting pummelled. This was one of the factors that led to the implosion of the socialist left in the late 1970s and early 1980s in the United States. A lot of these people drifted away into labour education, and some of them entered the mid-levels of the labour movement. This is when we saw the rise of the “third way” of labour liberalism in the 1980s. It was somewhat rooted in this grouping of people who were ideologically progressive or even socialist, but who began to turn away from class struggle unionism.
They hoped to straddle the two worlds of business unionism and class struggle unionism. They focused on things like the “corporate campaign” and the “organising approach”. A lot of this is rooted in the technical expertise of these sorts of mid-level staffers in the labour movement. Their politics flips from idea to idea. One minute we need social unionism, then we need broad community campaigns, then we need more trained organisers and so on. Unions have developed all sorts of alternatives to the strike, and they’ve begun to look more like NGOs than actual fighting organs of the class. In many ways, they have just walked away from the fundamental root of the crisis. 
A good example is the Service Employees International Union, which has led well-promoted campaigns to organise fast food workers. But this was all bullshit. They would lead “industrial action” that would have like 50 staffers and a handful of fired workers pretending that the workers were on strike. Some of the recent Amazon strikes were like that, too. There’s a real proliferation of these types of actions—what I call publicity strikes. Even groups such as Labor Notes talk less about the reform and how fucked up the labour movement is, and a lot more about the “secrets of the successful organisers” and “what are the techniques that organisers need?” 
Well, the problem isn’t the techniques. What we need is class struggle unionism. We need more fights with the bureaucracy that doesn’t want to engage in the sort of militant struggle that’s necessary to revive the labour movement. These bureaucrats don’t want to break with the Democratic Party or the state apparatus by violating injunctions and doing all the things that we would need to do to win and to attract workers to our movement.

Ryan Stanton

Class struggle unionism in the USA: an interview with Joe Burns

Hundreds of teacher unionists rallied outside the Queensland parliament on 24 June to demand a decent pay rise from the state government. 
Teachers’ real wages have gone backwards by more than 6 percent in the last three years, but the government is offering an insulting 8 percent pay increase over the next three years, while annual inflation sits at 2.4 percent.
The teachers also want workloads to be reduced. High school teachers’ planning time has not increased since the 1970s, but there has been a dramatic increase in the required work—assessing, marking and writing new unit plans. All of this work is unpaid and unacknowledged by the government. 
“I don’t feel like there’s much time to get everything done”, Danielle, a secondary school teacher, told Red Flag at the rally. 
Mina, a primary public school teacher, said she thinks teachers deserve a 30 percent pay rise—the rate that rank-and-file network Queensland Teachers Fightback <a href="https://qldteachersfightback.org/our-wages-vs-inflation-vs-state-gov-wages-policy.html">is arguing for</a>. 
Mina told Red Flag that she supports taking strike action next term, “to get the point across that change is needed, a pay rise is needed, and we need to be acknowledged for the role we play in young kids’ lives”. Queensland public school teachers haven’t taken statewide industrial action in sixteen years. 
If teachers struck, they’d receive support. Construction workers from different job sites rallied alongside the teachers outside parliament. They agreed that teachers deserve the solidarity of other trade unions as they fight for their pay and conditions. 
One construction union member said attending the rally was important “to show the QTU [Queensland Teachers’ Union] is not alone. It’s a symbiotic relationship we have with all trade unions”. 
The QTU voted last year to support construction workers, whose union has been put into administration by the federal Labor government. Rank-and-file activists in both unions believe that, when one section of the workforce stands up to the bosses, they show all workers the power they have. 
Public sector workers are being left behind. Queensland teachers, nurses and firefighters are due to negotiate new contracts this year. But the Crisafulli state government has made it clear that, while there’s money for Olympic stadiums and cops, there’s little to nothing for the working class. 
Teachers will have to fight, and take industrial action, to win what they and their students deserve.

Isabella Foley

Queensland teachers fight back against insulting pay offer

“We are here today because we are fighting for what is right!”
Striking Grill’d workers and their supporters protested in front of the burger chain’s Rundle Street store in Adelaide on 28 June, handing out flyers explaining why they were taking action against the company. They argued to people who tried to enter the store that they should boycott Grill’d while workers struck. Would-be customers were cheered when they walked away from the restaurant’s entrance.
After a few hours of protesting, the picketers took to the streets of Adelaide. “Support Grill’d workers—don’t eat the burgers!” they chanted as they spread the word throughout the city. Many of the workers have never taken industrial action before, and were buoyed by the experience. “Look, it’s our street—Union Street”!, one quipped while marching back to the store. 
The founder and CEO of Grill’d, Simon Crowe, wants <a href="https://thewest.com.au/business/retail/grilld-chief-executive-simon-crowe-says-the-burger-group-can-more-than-double-its-size-in-the-next-five-years-c-13698323">to double the company’s size by 2029</a>. Crowe, with a reported net worth of more than <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/business/companies/they-slowly-strangled-me-grill-d-store-owner-lost-shop-days-before-christmas-20191206-p53hir.html">$450 million</a>, has grown rich off the backs of his workers.
Meanwhile, Grill’d workers struggle to make ends meet. The current agreement increases wages by just 1 percent per year. Once inflation is factored in, staff have gone backwards at a rate of knots.
An analysis from the Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees Association (SDA, the union covering the workers) has found that those on the current enterprise agreement are up to <a href="https://grilldworkersunited.org/terminate2020">37 percent worse off than if they had been on the award wage</a> instead.
So, across South Australia, Victoria and Queensland, Grill’d workers were out for better pay and conditions. Some of their demands include wage increases that account for inflation, appropriate pay for staff with more responsibilities, and guaranteed hours for permanent contracts.
Many of the workers reported to Red Flag that they are overworked and understaffed, and often unable to call in sick or take breaks.
Outside the Rundle Steet Grill’d, a supporter remarked: “See how ridiculously priced [the] burgers are? Surely, they can spare a few extra dollars for the workers here ... We all deserve fair living wages, so why not?”
One young worker said she was earning $600 working 50 hours a week, having just turned 18. “I didn’t know any better. This was my first job, and I took it because I was desperate”, she said, adding that while working at Grill’d and studying at university, she collects bottles to help pay for groceries and does DoorDash on the side.
At a time when strike rates are at a historic low and wealth inequality is soaring, these workers are showing what needs to happen. As one said defiantly, “Our efforts today will help the higher-ups see we are not to be taken advantage of, and we deserve to have an agreement where we are actually better off!”

Jordan Armstrong

Grill’d workers turn heat on boss

Roughly two dozen construction union (CFMEU) members, crane operators and riggers, are on indefinite strike at the Port of Brisbane. They’ve been out for nearly a month now and don’t show any sign of giving in. One delegate told Red Flag that they are “committed to being here as long as we need”. Workers have set up a television, cooking equipment and decorations, as well as a couch—important comforts for a long fight. 
Their employer is Qube, Australia’s largest logistics company. Qube owns part of Patrick Corporation, an infamously anti-worker outfit. In 1998, in an attempt to cripple the Maritime Union of Australia, Patrick fired its entire wharfie workforce. This kicked off the famous <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/waterfront-war-shook-australia">war on the waterfront</a> dispute. 
True to form, the Brisbane strike kicked off after Qube sacked workers, including a union delegate, who took part in an initial two-day strike in early May. They were laid off using a dodgy “restructuring”: boss language for union busting. One of the workers quit in protest but is still down at the picket line each day: “These boys are in for a fight; I’ve got to stand alongside them”, he told Red Flag. 
Along with the right to strike, the workers are fighting for better pay and conditions. They say their enterprise bargaining agreement was “substandard” even when it was signed in 2019. Their wage currently sits $4 an hour below the industry standard, which they are fighting to meet. They’re also demanding proper redundancy pay, income protection and travel pay. The small amount of travel pay they are owed is often unpaid; one worker is still waiting on a claim he made a year ago. Another demand is for a meal allowance, which is standard in the industry but not paid here. 
Not everyone experiences this poor treatment at Qube. “They look after their corporate people very well”, said one of the workers. Qube’s managing director, Paul Digney, made $4.14 million in the 2023-24 financial year. Digney recently complained in an interview with the Australian that when his workers “don’t turn up for work, the economy stops”. Too right. According to the workers, their frustrated managers often drive past the picket, occasionally giving them the middle finger. Taking these arrogant fat cats down a peg won’t go in a log of claims, but it is a worthy reason to keep fighting. 
The CFMEU members aren’t up against only their own bosses, but also a <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/labor-set-to-impose-dictatorial-powers-over-construction-union">government-appointed administrator</a>. The administrator has <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/attack-on-democracy-in-the-act-cfmeu">sacked officials</a> and destroyed democracy in the union. In response to a High Court ruling that gave the go-ahead to this undemocratic disgrace, hundreds of CFMEU workers walked off the job last week. Queensland Socialists secretary and teacher unionist Bec Barrigos spoke at their rally, arguing for more strike action to take on the administration. She also pointed out the connection between the fights of workers in every industry. 
The workers at Qube are similarly keen to point out this connection. “If we just leave it and they get away with screwing us over, other workers will have to deal with it”, one of the delegates said. But “if we win here, it's a win for the next worker”. Touch one, touch all, as the old union saying goes. Another saying is well worn among these workers: “If you don’t fight, you lose”. Amid a generational cost-of-living crisis, attacks on unions, growing inequality and stagnant wages, theirs is a message worth remembering. 
Contribute to the Qube workers’ strike fund:
QUBE financial hardship fund
BSB: 064 000
ACC: 165 702 38

Connor Knight

Queensland CFMEU members fight back

The public mental health system in Victoria is a disaster. Mental health workers across the state are demanding that the state government fix it. In the past week, allied health and nurse members of the Health and Community Services Union (HACSU) struck and rallied outside state parliament during a statewide day of action, to insist that the ALP address the sector’s underfunding.
Successive ALP governments have created a severely understaffed, degrading and dangerous mental health system. Low wages, disgusting conditions and burnout are the daily reality for workers. People seeking care and treatment confront an exhausting and too often traumatic battle to receive grossly inadequate support that is overly medicalised and demeaning. The 2019 Royal Commission into Mental Health in Victoria confirmed as much and recommended broad reforms.
In response, the ALP in 2022 promised an additional 800 full-time positions in the public mental health sector. In reality, at least 2,000 additional workers are needed. The government has since backflipped. 
The latest offer proposes cuts to pay for allied health workers and no increase to overall staffing. It is attempting to divide the workforce by giving a long-overdue pay rise to mental health nurses, while cutting paid entitlements and offering a pathetic pay rise of 3 percent to long underpaid, overwhelmingly women workers. The offer proposes to cut a yearly retention payment and slash some penalty rates, which, taken together, would result in an overall pay cut for allied health workers.
General nurses in Victoria won a 28.4 percent pay rise last year, after union members rejected a government offer of a 3 percent annual pay rise. When mental health nurses, who have the same qualifications and training as general nurses, but are employed under different enterprise agreements, demanded the pay rise awarded to general nurses, the ALP initially suggested it would not extend pay parity. It has since backed down and agreed. The catch is that allied health workers are being thrown under the bus.
Either nurses or allied health workers can staff many roles in the public mental health system. The offer from the ALP would result in nurses, in some instances, being paid $40,000 more than allied health workers for doing exactly the same job. In a recent poll conducted by HACSU, 97 percent of respondents said they would leave the public mental health sector if the government did not pay them more, and fairly. 
There is enormous and cumulative anger and disillusionment among mental health workers across Victoria. Decades ago, workers, including senior clinicians, regularly talked about “a crisis in mental health”. The ALP has been in government for more than a decade and turned the crisis into a full-blown disaster. The Allan government would have us believe there is no money and that hospitals have to cut budgets.
The lie that Australian governments have no money to provide high-quality public health services is becoming an increasingly enraging and hollow cliché. Australia is one of the wealthiest countries in the world. 
Healthcare workers are getting angrier and more determined to take on the Labor government’s destruction of our public services. The more it refuses to fix them, the harder we should fight. 
HACSU members want genuine pay increases for allied health members, pay parity with nursing colleagues and no cuts to current entitlements. The enterprise bargaining campaign continues and should accept no less. The ALP, meanwhile, should deliver much more.

Simone McDonnell

Mental health workers versus Victorian Labor

Public school staff in the Victorian branch of the Australian Education Union (AEU) have been gathering at regional log of claims meetings across the state to discuss the changes we want to see in the Victorian Government Schools Agreement (VGSA), which determines our pay and conditions over the next few years.
We desperately need a better VGSA. Our last agreement, which was <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/big-no-vote-step-forward-school-staff">narrowly voted up</a> despite considerable pushback from members, has left us worse off. Our real wages <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_O83eLz-imC8uYDBNB_hzvXyK9Z4BB2kRMV3bBE8GQ0/edit?usp=drivesdk">have fallen by 11 percent</a>, which means graduate teachers are paid $8,489 less per year ($162 per week) than if our pay had kept up with inflation. Starting teacher salaries in Victoria are now the lowest in Australia, and almost $10,000 behind those in New South Wales.
Our current agreement’s modest reduction in face-to-face teaching hours has failed to put a serious dent in our unmanageable workloads. According to a Monash University report, staff are still working a staggering 12.5 unpaid hours each week on average. 
Union members are sick and tired of our profession being undervalued. That’s why, in log of claims meetings, we’re voting for ambitious claims that put forward a positive vision for what our jobs and our schools could be. 
A top priority for members is a big pay rise to win back the value we’ve lost under the current agreement, and then future pay rises that bring our wages into line with similar professions. Some regions are pushing for an immediate 30 percent boost followed by 5 percent every six months, for a total of around 60 percent over the life of the agreement. We also want retention payments that help keep our most experienced teachers in the job. 
Many of the other claims are about addressing our crushing workloads. These include requiring at least one education support (ES) staff in every classroom, additional staff to assist with teachers’ administrative tasks, a limit on meetings to one hour per week, a hard limit on class sizes at 18 students, a reduction in face-to-face teaching hours to 17 in the first year and 16 in the second, and nine professional practice days each year (two for report writing, two at the start of the year for set-up, four for whole school professional learning and one to complete compulsory online units).
For ES staff, there is the claim (left out of the last agreement) for paid lunch breaks, one hour of self-directed preparation time each day for classroom support ES and four professional practice days each year. There are also claims to clarify the different ES roles and to make progression more streamlined, as it is for teachers. 
These claims, if won, would completely transform our jobs and our schools. Staff would get the support and time we need to do our jobs and meet the complex needs of our students. We’d be paid at a rate that means we are better able to cope with the rising cost of living. And this would help ensure vacancies are filled, particularly in working-class, outer-suburban schools, which currently struggle to attract staff. 
Claims approved by regional union meetings now go to the union’s state conference in early August for discussion and approval, ahead of the expiry of the current agreement at the end of this year. We know from experience that these changes will not come easily. Our last log of claims in 2021 included a series of <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/victorian-school-staff-need-fight-workloads-and-wages">commendable claims</a>, but there was no strike action to pressure the government into accepting them. The result was an agreement that has left us significantly worse off on pay and did very little on workload, and which because of this has failed to solve the crisis of teacher retention. 
We can expect the Victorian government to resist our demands again. Recent revelations in the Age show that the government is <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/politics/victoria/teachers-on-collision-course-with-state-government-over-school-funding-20250512-p5lyhn.html">withholding almost $3 billion</a> in funding that it previously promised our schools. It will likely use supposed budgetary constraints to claim that “the money isn’t there” for our demands.
But the money is there. Around $1.6 billion of it is going to “back in Victoria’s new bail laws” with new and expanded prisons, presumably to deal with those falling through the cracks in our decaying education system. The new $1.19 billion prison in Lara, the Western Correctional Facility, will <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-05-13/prison-victoria-state-budget-bail-reform/105284224">offer sign-on bonuses of $8,000</a> to draw in new staff. 
The money is there, but what’s in poor supply is the political will to use it to fund schools. That means union members need to take matters into our own hands. We need meetings at all our schools to establish our minimum expectations or “red lines”, and if those claims are not included in any proposed offer, we will vote “no” and fight for something better. 
Victorian nurses received their 28.4 percent pay rise only by voting “no” to an initial offer of 12 percent. Though their industrial campaign was brief, the fact that nurses had already shut down hospital beds and surgeries, coupled with their high-profile rejection of the proposed settlement, created a plausible threat of a major, politically damaging industrial dispute for the state government. This was enough to eventually win an improved offer. Teachers in New South Wales went on a series of strikes in 2021-22, eventually winning an immediate pay rise of almost $10,000. 
Where workers have refused to be pressured into accepting sub-par offers and have struck for something better, they have been successful. To win anything close to our ambitious demands, it’s highly likely we will need to do the same. 
The AEU has called a protest outside Victorian Education Minister Ben Carroll’s electorate office in Keilor at 4:15pm on Thursday 19 June. Join us in demanding the state government keep their promise to fund our schools.

AEU members

Victorian teachers demand dignity, but won’t get it without a fight

Thousands of local government workers in Melbourne have signed on to bargain collectively, across 10 councils, for better pay and conditions. This is an early test of recent changes to the Fair Work Act by the federal government that should enable unions to more easily bargain—and take legally protected industrial action—across multiple employers. 
According to Tash Wark, secretary of the Australian Services Union (ASU), “this is the largest worker-initiated multi-employer agreement proposed in Australia”. The ASU intends to use an industrial and political campaign across multiple councils to put pressure on the state Labor government to modify or scrap the neoliberal “rate capping” policy that limits council budgets. 
In response, local government employers have <a href="https://www.asuvictas.com.au/VICTAS/News/ASU_multi-employer_bargaining_update.aspx#:~:text=This%20has%20the%20practical%20effect,by%20the%20Fair%20Work%20Commission.">gone on the offensive</a>. From Brimbank to Darebin to Yarra to Port Phillip, employers are launching sham (non-union) single enterprise “negotiations”. These are designed to pave the way for non-union ballots to keep bargaining at a council level, thus avoiding multi-employer bargaining. Employers are also mounting legal challenges against the ASU, despite similar challenges <a href="https://www.heraldsun.com.au/leader%2Fballarat%2Ffederal-court-rejects-central-goldfields-shires-appeal-of-multicouncil-bargaining-with-ararat%2Fnews-story%2F66f6c2c1b3797b2c670c6ffa3cf6fdb7?amp&amp;nk=95c7c698a7cc5f92b3b45e378f1ce6d3-1749453407">losing at the Federal Court</a> earlier this year.
Local government workers provide a wide range of essential services that keep our communities running. From removing waste, cleaning streets and beaches, maintaining parks and roads, to running libraries, immunising and educating children, and providing in-home care for elderly and disabled community members. 
But over the past few years, these essential workers have been falling behind—their wages consistently failing to keep up with inflation. Since 2021, council workers across Melbourne have lost anywhere from 5 to 10 percent of the real value of their wages. The vast majority of us are now hundreds of dollars a fortnight (thousands of dollars a year) worse off than we were in 2020.
There’s one exception to this: senior council executives. Council CEOs across Melbourne <a href="https://www.councilwatch.com.au/general-5">typically earn more than $400,000 a year</a>. That’s on par with federal government ministers ($403,000) and the Prime Minister of the UK (£172,153 or $360,335). Last year, it was revealed that Alison Leighton, CEO of the City of Melbourne, pockets a whopping $534,000 annually—almost as much as the prime minister. These are the same people crying poor and threatening job cuts in response to workers’ demanding a liveable wage.
In the face of real wage declines, increasing numbers of local government workers have been <a href="https://www.heraldsun.com.au/leader%2Fnorth%2Fdarebin-council-workers-begin-strike-taking-protest-to-the-streets%2Fnews-story%2F3c6d0399f41489f72f46ce32377890e5?amp&amp;nk=95c7c698a7cc5f92b3b45e378f1ce6d3-1749443789">going on strike</a>. Despite heroic efforts from workers, <a href="https://brunswickvoice.com.au/council-industrial-dispute-ends-as-staff-vote-yes-to-pay-offer/">gains have been minimal</a>. This is partly because a few hundred workers in a single local government area have limited industrial power. The Victorian government’s rate cap also provides an excuse for management to cry poor. And previous bargaining strategies of the ASU have failed to challenge these limitations. 
Multi-employer bargaining represents, at least potentially, a means to change all that. There’s certainly sentiment for a fight. At a packed meeting of council workers from across Melbourne recently, one worker put it this way: “We are the ones who run this city. If we stop work, the city stops: bins overflow, services disappear, streets and beaches get trashed, parks and sporting fields become overgrown. Imagine what we could achieve if council revenue begins to dry up, if small businesses start to suffer, and if state infrastructure projects grind to a halt.” 
Council workers are coming together to <a href="https://www.asuvictas.com.au/VICTAS/News/MEB_update_Have_your_say_on_our_draft_Log_of_Claims.aspx">demand</a> a 22 percent pay rise over four years—consisting of a 10 percent “recovery payment” in the first year and 4 percent in the following years. This will go some way to redressing the decade-long decline in council workers’ real wages. Most of us haven’t seen a pay rise of more than 2 or 3 percent for 10 years—since the re-introduction of rate caps in 2016. That’s why, as part of this round of bargaining, we’re gearing up to rally against the Victorian state government’s neo-liberal rate capping policy.
The rate cap dates back to the Kennett government of the 1990s. Liberal premier Jeff Kennett directly copied this neoliberal measure from former UK prime minister Margaret Thatcher, who used it to coerce local councils into implementing local austerity, regardless of the wishes of the people who elected them. Compulsory competitive tendering of all council services, with councils legally obliged to accept the lowest bid, was used by both Thatcher in the UK and Kennett in Victoria as a way of cutting workers’ wages and essential services to the bone. 
Though rate capping was abolished when Kennett was thrown out of office in 1999, it was reintroduced by Daniel Andrews’ Labor government in 2016. The current system limits councils’ ability to raise revenue, including through measures such as charging higher rates for major corporations and property developers that are making millions in our communities.
The consequences? As the <a href="https://australiainstitute.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Putting-a-Cap-on-Community-WEB.pdf">Australia Institute reported</a>, less than half of Victorian local government workers now have permanent, full-time jobs, as councils respond to the cap by outsourcing and casualising work. For too long, the rate cap has functioned as a wage cap for local council workers—and it’s about time it was seriously challenged. 
Multi-enterprise bargaining is the means workers are hoping to use to mount this challenge. Australia’s top CEOs are <a href="https://www.afr.com/policy/economy/top-ceos-lash-multi-employer-bargaining-20221218-p5c79c">hostile</a> to it for a reason. If paired with a militant union strategy, they know multi-enterprise bargaining has the potential to put money and power back into the hands of ordinary workers. They say they’re worried about <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/70s-werent-bad">“a return to the 1970s”</a>—a time when wages in Australia consistently outpaced inflation and workers enjoyed a much higher share of national income.
No wonder council employers are <a href="https://www.asuvictas.com.au/VICTAS/News/Fair_Work_update_Metropolitan_Melbourne_multiemployer_bargaining.aspx">doing everything in their power to divide us</a>. They know multi-employer bargaining could help shift the goal posts by giving workers in our sector greater industrial power. Last Friday, Brimbank council won a fierce campaign to get a non-union single enterprise “agreement” voted up before their employees’ multi-enterprise bargaining application could be authorised by the Fair Work Commission. 
Workers at Brimbank reported intimidation and standover tactics from management, with managers going as far as <a href="https://www.asuvictas.com.au/VICTAS/News/Brimbank_literally_called_the_cops_to_prevent_you_hearing_about_your_rights.aspx">calling the police</a> on union officials, censoring communications, and <a href="https://www.theservicesunion.com.au/VICTAS/News/Brimbank_Aquatic_Centre_employee_targeted_for_speaking_up_about_No_Vote.aspx">sacking employees</a> for communicating with their co-workers about management’s offer. Thanks to Brimbank council’s <a href="https://www.asuvictas.com.au/VICTAS/News/Vote_No_to_Brimbanks_single_EA_Fight_for_a_better_deal_through_MEB.aspx">dirty tactics</a>, 1400 workers there are likely to fall further behind the cost of living and their colleagues in local government for years to come. 
While it’s a disappointing outcome, Brimbank workers never would have received a 4 percent pay rise this year (their highest in 13 years!) if it weren’t for the threat of large-scale industrial action via multi-enterprise bargaining. “I have no doubt in my mind,” said a Brimbank worker, “that once a multi-employer agreement gets up in local government, everyone will want in. We know that taking large-scale industrial action is the only way for us to claw back wages. We just need an opportunity to demonstrate that we can win. It’s up to workers in the nine other councils now to lead the way.” 
Like Brimbank, employers at City of Darebin, Yarra, and Port Phillip are currently preparing to put non-union single enterprise offers out to vote in the coming weeks and lock their employees out of multi-enterprise bargaining. Workers at all of these councils need to mobilise members and non-members to vote no to any employer ballot aimed at dividing council workers.
In good news, at Maribyrnong council, a non-binding ballot organised by the employer saw a thumping majority of workers vote for multi-enterprise bargaining, rejecting the employer’s attempt to split the workforce away. And just a week later, on 12 June, news came in that 74 percent of eligible City of Melbourne employees had voted in a non-binding ballot organised by the employer. Management was hoping for a rejection of multi-employer bargaining. Instead, an amazing 80 percent of those who voted wanted to stick with the union campaign. This puts the lie to the managers’ claims that workers are being “tricked” into supporting multi-enterprise bargaining. A majority of workers at Maribyrnong and Melbourne have now voted for it twice!
If Brimbank teaches us anything, it’s that our side needs to be better organised. We need to mobilise our members, we need to be more proactive in countering management’s bribes, scare tactics and misinformation, and we need to patiently explain to our co-workers what’s at stake. 
This is not just about cutting better deals in our individual work areas for the next three years. Knocking back employer efforts to keep us divided in our individual councils is an act of solidarity. It’s saying that we’re prepared to use our industrial power to win a solid pay rise for childcare and day care workers, for clerical staff and librarians, for parking officers and garbos all over Melbourne. 
Over the coming weeks, the employers will aim to wear us down and convince us that what they’ve got to offer is the best we can hope for. But we know better. Ten thousand local government workers, acting together, have significant industrial and political power. 
A multi-enterprise bargaining campaign, paired with an industrial strategy that uses mass action to pressure the state government to loosen its hold on council purse strings, could potentially win a very different outcome. This will not be an easy fight. But we owe it to ourselves, our colleagues and our communities to pursue this course. 
After all, if we don’t fight, we lose.

When the workers’ movement took on sexual objectification

Life in the cardboard tower: the university experience today

Historic strikes at Brisbane’s Star Casino

Class struggle unionism in the USA: an interview with Joe Burns

Queensland teachers fight back against insulting pay offer

Grill’d workers turn heat on boss

Queensland CFMEU members fight back

Mental health workers versus Victorian Labor

Victorian teachers demand dignity, but won’t get it without a fight

Council workers battle to bargain together

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