“Defend the unions, defend the CFMEU. Demand your union stand in solidarity with the CFMEU. Join the workers’ campaign to defend their union.” Ten things workers need to know about the CFMEU — with words by Sarah Missen and illustrations by Sam Wallman.

Nurses and midwives do difficult, skilled, and socially necessary work every day. Although our leadership was at pains to stress that any greater improvements to pay increases would be “too expensive” and that it was important to keep our claim within the supposed limits of budget funding, our union represents one of the few mechanisms available to working people to actually force the government’s hand to invest in healthcare.

It feels necessary to say something about the crisis at the CFMEU.

It's not enough to complain or "call out" your union. Lousy unions can be captured and dragged into militancy. And, on the flip side, fighting unions can turn to shit and become business unions. Unions are only as good as we make them.

It is essential that Australian unions join global efforts to build material and political solidarity with Ukrainian workers. This is not just in keeping with our movement’s long history of struggle and solidarity with international struggles against imperialist oppression, but so we can maximise our ability to put pressure on the Australian government and its imperialist allies against their efforts to transform Ukraine into a neoliberal ‘paradise’.

Get close to the workers—stay close to the workers. Tell workers 'it's your union' and then behave that way. Don't do for workers what they can do. The union is not a fee for service—it is the collective experience of workers in struggle. The union's function is to assist workers in making a positive change in their lives.

'What these bosses don't understand is that in attacking us, they bring us together.' (Paddy Crumlin, Maritime Union of Australia, Svitzer Rally November 2022)

We discovered Bargain Hunters: The Curtin NTEU EBA Podcast as our own university, Monash, and the local branch of the NTEU) enter their own bargaining round. After years of workers bearing the burden of rapid COVID changes, cost of living pressures, overwork and decades of growing job insecurity, this bargaining round feels different: an opportunity for workers to articulate a vision of the university against the neoliberalised, corporate managerialism that dominates the sector and most workplaces in the country.

I’m not saying wage theft cases are a waste of time—they aren’t. I don’t know what kind of payout I’ll receive, but something’s better than nothing. In a few cases I’ve heard of, back payments for marking have come to as much as ten thousand dollars. And the avalanche of wage theft cases have shone a spotlight on the abusive employment practices that have the become standard practice at universities.

Three weeks ago, students at the University of Melbourne passed a motion in solidarity with Palestine and with the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. Since then, the student union (UMSU) and the students involved with drafting and passing the motion have come under sustained pressure from Zionist individuals and organisations, including a class action lawsuit threatening to take the union to court if it does not retract the motion.

An interview with Eirene Tsolidis-Noyce and Zachary Doney, foundational members of the Renters and Housing Union.

Every unionist should mark down 1 April 2022 as an historic day. Amazon warehouse workers at JFK8 in Staten Island, New York, voted 55 per cent in favour of union recognition at their 8,000-worker strong warehouse. It has been decades since workers have won contested recognition at such a significant facility for one of the United States’ leading corporations. It is a sign that, in North America at least, early spring has returned for the labour movement. These victories has echoed through the world, and have implications for the movement in Australia.

Just as today the question is who should pay for the Covid-19 recession, it was basic class antagonism over who should pay for the Great Depression that led to the mass unionisation of Hollywood studios.

The May 18 general strikers asked for boycott because it ‘can directly help to throw a wrench in the economy of settler colonialism’. Deciding whether to support them isn’t some boutique, special-interest question, but a question of how far we’re prepared to contribute to a global struggle for justice for a viciously oppressed and dispossessed people – one that has brought hundreds of thousands of people onto the streets around the world.

Tapping into a deep history, in May 2021 Italian dockworkers refused to load weapons onto a ship headed for Israel. A few days later, Palestinians held a general strike across all industries, the largest since 1948. Only 150 of 65,000 Palestinian construction workers in Israel showed up to work.

While union membership is at its nadir, the RAFFWU v Tantex judgement is a small but important victory that shows the enormous possibilities of unionism. Young workers organising hints at the future of a resurgent labour movement. This is a development we desperately need, especially in the industries most affected by Morrison’s industrial relations law changes – industries such as fast food, retail, and hospitality, which are already rife with casualisation, wage theft, and unhealthy and unsafe conditions.