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.

By highlighting the movement’s role in actively constructing neoliberal society, Humphrys points to a future in which labour can unmake neoliberal society. If the complicity of the working-class was required to make Australia what it is today, then those same agents of history can withdraw their consent.

Sam Wallman reports from the pavement outside the Chemist Warehouse during the (ongoing) picket in Preston.

Last week, people gathered around the Opera House in Sydney, disgusted by how politicians had allowed a World Heritage public space to be sold off to the destructive and predatory gambling industry. As the protest swelled, it was reported how ‘the whole kitchen staff from the Bennelong restaurant gathered at their windows and gave the protesters a standing ovation.’ While a worker takeover of the Opera House seems unlikely, it also seems instinctively no less fair to give them a say in how their workplace is run.

In a speech on 21 March at the National Press Club, ACTU Secretary Sally McManus read the riot act to the Australian ruling class. If you forgive a couple short forays into lazy jingoism (‘the Australian Way of Life’), she presented an incisive and wide ranging attack on the ingenious ways that the powerful and rich have made conditions very good for themselves and increasingly difficult for the rest of us. It was a call to action addressed to all workers.

Earlier this year, the Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC) issued a directive that under the national construction code, building sites will not be allowed to display ‘images generally attributed to, or associated with an organisation, such as the iconic symbol of the five white stars and white cross on the Eureka Stockade flag.’ This seems like a good time to remember what the flag meant at its inception, and that its contemporary meaning is in fact deeply contested.

On 1 May 2017, May Day – International Workers’ Day – Australian dairy giant Murray Goulburn announced that they were shutting factories across Victoria and Tasmania, slashing jobs and devastating communities. Faye and Julie, two National Union of Workers delegates working at the Edith Creek site in North-West Tasmania, shared their responses to the closure.

After the Fair Work Commission’s decision in February to cut Sunday penalty rates for hospitality and retail workers, it was virtually impossible to scroll through Facebook without seeing a post urging angry workers to join their union. Union membership was presented as the means to resist not only the Commission’s decision, but all of the industrial woes of our time. However, there is a striking dissonance between the portrait of union power painted by our Facebook feeds, and the material reality.