Daring to win: a teacher’s message of solidarity with the CFMEU

Bec Barrigos is a workplace delegate with the Queensland Teachers Union. She’s spent years building union power and radical politics as a unionist, an activist with the rank-and-file group QTU Fightback and a member of Socialist Alternative.

Bec successfully moved a motion in solidarity with the CFMEU at the QTU’s quarterly State Council meeting in August. She followed up with this speech to 5,000 striking construction workers in Brisbane on 17 September, explaining what’s at stake for every unionist in the current attack on the CFMEU.

The Queensland and Northern Territory ETU has posted a video of Bec’s speech on its YouTube channel. This is a slightly edited transcript.

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I’m a rank-and-file member and activist of my union, who thought that the most important thing that we could do last month when my state council met—the highest decision-making body of my union—was to move a motion of solidarity with CFMEU members.

I saw it as a responsibility of all unionists in this moment to extend that solidarity. Because this attack that the Labor government has launched on the CFMEU is a precedent-setting attack on democracy and all unionists in this country, and it must be resisted.

Support for democracy for union members should be unionism 101 in this country, but unfortunately, it isn’t. Honestly, as a rank-and-file delegate, I can say that my union is too wanting on this front, with officials who have been too often prepared to collaborate with bosses, too prepared to accept shitty deals that cut against the interests of our members, too prepared to make excuses for governments that have shown no interest in workers’ rights and to ignore ballots from members for strike action when we need it to fight for our conditions—and that’s a shame.

For decades in this country, workers’ interests have come last in our industrial landscape. Our rights definitely don’t rate in the disgusting scum media! If you needed evidence of that, you can see them opportunistically attacking unions in this country to line up with the bosses and their profits—shame on you! [Cheering and applause]

It’s been the bosses who have been able to set the agenda of industrial relations. And the Labor governments and politicians—when the bosses say we want to attack workers, they just lie down and say how high can we jump for you! Shame on you! [Applause]

They’re meant to be on our side, aren’t they? The truth is that we need more democracy for union members in this country: we need more democracy to safeguard our industrial rights and unions that will defy the bosses and their industrial courts in the interest of our rights. We’re only going to win it if we fight for it, and that’s what this fight is about.

I’m also extremely proud to say that the QTU is the only teachers’ union that I know of in this country that has put a vote to their members about whether or not we side with the CFMEU. That was me who moved that motion and my members in my union said yes we’re with you all the way! [Applause]

I couldn’t stand before you as a union militant and a teacher militant without recognising that last week there were some disgraceful comments made by women union leaders like Sally McManus [boos] and the so-called federal education union officials of my great industry. Those women unionists shamefully lined up with the administrator using the rhetoric of support for women to attack unions, and attack the CFMEU—shame on you. [Applause]

I’m a unionist from a women-dominated industry, and I can say with confidence that the only way to defend women workers’ rights is to build fighting unions that will challenge the bosses who benefit from our oppression. They benefit from the gender pay gap, they benefit from the poor conditions at work, the conditions that compromise our safety.

For too long education unions have shied away from a fight for their members’ rights . And we’ve seen our conditions worsen precisely because of what’s at stake now—[because of] class collaboration, obeying the industrial courts and accepting subpar pay offers from our employer, the government.

New South Wales nurses: I want to shout out to them today as well because they’re another women-dominated industry, and this week they’ve gone on strike for the second time this year to demand a 15 percent pay increase they deserve. And those women workers who are prepared to strike—to disobey the official establishment, the industrial courts, the framework of the government and the bosses—they’re showing the way! Because they show us that if we don’t fight, we lose. They show us that bad laws need to be broken, and the only way workers in this country have ever won our rights is where we’ve been prepared to use our industrial muscle, withdraw our labour and strike. [Applause]

And on that note, I want to give a massive shout out to our comrades on the Cross River Rail project. [Applause] You comrades have been fighting a battle for months for an agreement to secure equal pay and safe work conditions, to prevent deaths on site. And I want to reiterate the solidarity that was in our motion for the QTU rank and file today, and say we are with you in that fight. Thank you for showing the way.

We all have a lot to learn from you comrades, because it’s about common interest, isn’t it. That’s what’s at stake. It may not look to a lot of people on the outside—definitely not in the media—like we have common interests. Me and you. White-collar workers, blue-collar workers. Teachers, construction workers. But we do have common interests, make no mistake.

Public school teachers are workers whose safety is under threat every single day on the job—and our employer, the government, has done nothing to improve those conditions.

So the solidarity we extend to you is not just words—it’s about recognition that we’re in a common fight to secure the safety of workers in Queensland. That’s a fight that depends on safeguarding our democratic rights to use our industrial muscle and strike when needed, and to elect officials who will pull the trigger and stop work to save their members’ lives—that’s in all of our interest.

I want to end by saying that the only response to a historic attack on unions has to be a historic battle of resistance. For those of you wondering what I teach, I’m a history teacher as well as an English teacher. And one thing I do know is the history of trade unionism and of workers’ rights in this country shows us: that when we dare to struggle as a class together, we dare to win. And we dare, don’t we? We dare.

Thanks comrades, solidarity to you.