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.

It’s often the very same forces that are making our wages stagnate and our work become increasingly insecure that are working to prevent us from taking serious action on climate change. It’s clear now this is a fight that will have to be waged by unions and their members.

The battle to save Kelly’s Bush – a public open space on the banks of the Parramatta River at Hunters Hill – is legendary, and was the catalyst that launched Mundey on a path that would bring him international fame, and guarantee him a place in the history of Australian urban political thought.

In Australia, as elsewhere, the challenge to workers now could scarcely be greater after three decades of neoliberalism bearing down on them in the form of (in)human resource management and anti-union governments. Even the global financial crisis of 2008–2009 gave workers little respite – indeed, neoliberalism was, paradoxically, strengthened and emboldened as there appeared to be no mainstream alternative to it. Now the country is facing a crisis in which the worst is yet to come, for Australia is several weeks behind the European epicentres of the likes of Italy and Spain.

Breaking away from the traditional model of unionism to become a movement embedded in broader struggles for social justice will not be easy, but this is the task at hand. As organised capital finds new and effective ways to transfer risk onto individual workers – such as through new forms of precarity, climate catastrophe, and far right movements – we must be prepared to take greater risks if we are to win.

As industrial organiser Jerome Small once said: ‘I’m not a robot and I’m not a donkey, so I should be able to stop working when I choose to’. Sadly, going out on strike is all but outlawed in Australia, thanks to some of the most restrictive laws surrounding workplace action in any OECD nation.