On 10 September, workers from the social and community services sector will walk off the job to demand action on the genocide in Gaza. 
The action is being led by unionised workers in the Australian Services Union across several community legal services. The key demand is for the Federation of Community Legal Centres and the Victorian Council of Social Services—the industry peak bodies—to use their profiles to put pressure on the Australian government to sanction and cut ties with Israel. 
Many of the workers will be taking unprotected strike action, while others will find other ways to take time off in solidarity. At a union meeting at my workplace, which is part of the social and community sector, a motion was passed in support of the strike, and many of us will be taking leave to join the rally. This action is an example of the kind of action that can be taken by rank-and-file workers to increase the pressure on the government to go beyond gestures and end its material support for Israel. 
Almost two years into the genocide, with horrific images of starving Palestinians filling our newsfeeds and Israel openly planning the final stage of its ethnic cleansing, increasing numbers are finding it unbearable to go on with “business as usual” as if nothing is happening. This is particularly the case for those of us in the social and community services sector, whose work in these “values-based” organisations is purportedly about pursuing social justice and upholding human rights. There is increasingly a dissonance between what our CEOs and organisations proclaim about their values and their silence on a horrific genocide that the Australian government is providing ideological and material support for and that many in the communities we serve are affected by. 
As Louisa Bassini, a community lawyer and organiser of the walk-out, put it, “It’s absurd that we’re meant to dutifully work through a genocide when, as a class, we have the collective power to stop it. The strike reflects what so many of us want to do—get up, walk away from our desks and workplaces and disrupt everyday life—to stand against the horrors being committed by Israel. More than that, it shows that, with determination and organisation, it can be done”. 
This didn’t come out of nowhere—in fact it is the second unprotected strike organised in this sector in solidarity with Palestine. Workers in the community legal centres were well placed to take this action, having previously organised to fight for better pay and conditions in their enterprise agreement in 2022 and 2023. When Israel’s offensive in Gaza started, activists and unionists were already in touch and better placed to organise to do something about it. 
These strikes, as well as the growth of rank-and-file union groupings such as ASU for Palestine, have shown that there are substantial numbers of workers in a range of sectors who want to put up a fight around this issue. And when given a lead, they are prepared to act. 
Michal Kedem, an ASU delegate and strike organiser, reflected on how the strike “got people talking about historical political strikes like the Dalfram dispute [when, in 1938, unionised wharfies refused to load pig-iron headed for Japan, which had invaded China]”, adding that “rank-and-file workers across workplaces and unions are giving everything they can to organise for Palestine”.
In a positive development, the head office of the ASU has given its endorsement to the protest section of the walk-off. It needs to back these workers all the way. Social and community sector workers are showing what can and should be done in the union movement today.
For those in Melbourne—join workers on 10 September at 1pm at the State Library. For more information follow <a href="https://www.instagram.com/clcworkersunited/">clcworkersunited</a> and <a href="https://www.instagram.com/asu4palestine_vic/">asu4palestine_vic </a>on Instagram.

ASU member

Community sector workers to walk out for Palestine again

Blue-collar public sector workers across Queensland took to the streets on Monday to demand a 36-hour work week from the state government.
Construction workers from QBuild, QHealth and the Department of Transport and Main Roads (TMR)—members of the Electrical Trades Union, the Plumbing and Pipe Trades Employees Union, the Australian Workers’ Union, the Australian Manufacturing Workers’ Union and the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union—walked off the job in Brisbane, Cairns, Townsville and Rockhampton. 
In Brisbane, they rallied in Queens Gardens before marching to 1 William Street, the corporate head office for much of the public service. Their demands include higher wages and increased overtime rates from time-and-a-half to double time. One construction worker told Red Flag: “The reason we have decent pay in this industry, compared to the rest of the world, is because we’ve stood up for it time and again”.
Joining them were engineers, who are members of Professionals Australia, a white-collar union. They staged a two-hour work stoppage in solidarity, attending the rallies side by side with construction workers. <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/queensland-engineers-strike-for-the-first-time-in-decades">The engineers are in the midst of their own campaign</a>: their enterprise agreement has expired, and they recently held a statewide stoppage of engineers and technicians—the first in decades.
There has been a slight uptick in industrial action in Queensland in recent months. <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/schools-out-thousands-of-queensland-teachers-strike-for-better-pay-and-conditions">Teachers staged their first strike in sixteen years</a>. Nurses have been applying work bans. Engineers have launched rolling stoppages. Monday’s strike added construction workers to the list. 
But while these actions are important, they are still isolated. They are not the kind of mass strike wave capable of forcing the government to retreat and give better pay and conditions to workers in Queensland.
Premier David Crisafulli’s government is trying to impose an 8 percent deal across the public service. <a href="https://www.qnmu.org.au/Web/Campaigns/Recruit_Retain_Respect/Web/Campaigns/Recruit_Retain_Respect.aspx?hkey=060df36f-f9b5-48ce-9158-f0d9de44d4b7">Nurses are poised to accept 11 percent</a> over three years, which the union leaders claim as a nation-leading victory. They have promised that <a href="https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/politics/queensland/qld-teachers-guarantee-no-strikes-in-current-term-as-nurses-accept-govt-s-offer-20250830-p5mr45.html">there will be no further strike action</a>. Meanwhile, engineers at TMR—demanding 20 percent to bring their pay into line with colleagues at other state agencies—have been offered nothing serious.
To call 11 percent a “win” is dubious. The last three-year contract also delivered 11 percent, but inflation peaked at more than 7 percent a year during that time. In real terms, the agreement delivered a pay cut. Nurses deserve much more to compensate them for the significant losses imposed by the last deal.
The lesson from Monday is clear. Workers are willing to fight. But isolated actions, divided by sector, will not win what’s needed. The only way to beat Crisafulli and the state’s wages policy is with more strikes—bigger, longer, and united across the public sector.

QLD public sector strikes show potential, but more is needed

“Victorian Socialists aims to bring socialism from the fringes of the political landscape back into the mainstream”, Mick Clune, a member of the Victorian Socialists executive, told more than 200 people gathered at the Uniting Church Hall in Northcote on 30 August to launch the Socialist Workers’ Caucus. “Workers make the world run, but we think workers should run the world”, Mick continued. “And to do that, we need to get organised. The SWC aims to be that vehicle.”
The three keynote speakers at the event—Jerome Small, Louisa Bassini and Madi Roof—all discussed the need for socialist politics and organisation to address workers’ problems.
“We have lofty aims, but we need to start from where we are at”, Jerome Small, who has been a socialist and trade unionist since the 1980s, told the audience. He said there are two markers of where the trade union movement currently stands: the unwillingness of trade union leaders to mount a fight back against the cost-of-living crisis and the failure to lead any industrial action against Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
“This is in a country that set records for industrial militancy in the 1970s and was justly famous around the world for the international solidarity that it showed on a regular basis”, Jerome continued. “The slogan of the left wing of the anti-war movement in the Vietnam War was ‘Stop work to stop war’. And hundreds of thousands of workers over time actually did that. We were famous for the bans initiated as part of the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa.”
How did we get from the highs of the 1970s to the current lows? Trade union officials and the ALP have imposed the politics of class collaborationism—the idea that workers and bosses have shared interests—on the workers’ movement since the 1980s. 
Louisa Bassini, an Australian Services Union rank-and-file member, helped lead a strike in support of Palestine in February 2024 (the only one that has taken place in Australia). Louisa and her workmates at a community legal centre in North Melbourne are now organising another strike on 10 September and are calling on all workers and unions across Melbourne to join them. Louisa told the audience: “This is a message to our union leaders: we want a fighting union movement, and we are prepared to build it”. 
Madi Roof, who has been central to organising call centre workers across Melbourne and was part of launching the SWC when it was first established by a group of VS members in 2024, spoke about the impact that small numbers of socialists can have in their workplaces and across their unions. 
“When Woolworths tried to introduce labour hire at distribution centres in 2015, it was socialists who helped coordinate a four-day walkout by 500 workers”, Madi said. “It was socialists who organised NTEU Fightback in 2020: the largest rank-and-file rebellion in the union movement in decades.”
More recently, it was a Victorian Socialists member who organised and led the first industrial action taken by Grill’d workers earlier this year. “Socialist politics doesn’t just tell you who the enemy is—it gives you a blueprint for how to fight back”, Madi explained.
Several Victorian Socialists members, including teachers and nurses, also spoke from the floor about their organising work and the need for socialist politics and organisation. 
“The union leaders and the ALP have their politics of class collaborationism”, Jerome told the audience. “We have our politics of class struggle and socialism. Those politics have had an incredible amount to contribute to the working-class movement. And we can do it again today.”

Robert Narai

Victorian Socialists launch Socialist Workers’ Caucus

A rank-and-file meeting of freelance journalists, perhaps the largest ever in the history of the Media Entertainment &amp; Arts Alliance, has voted overwhelmingly (without dissent) to stand up for Palestine.
MEAA members from the Victorian Socialists drafted a series of motions to support journalists being slandered by Israel’s supporters in Australia and to honour more than 270 news workers killed by the Israeli military in Gaza. The meeting, held on Wednesday, also endorsed the nationwide March for Palestine on Sunday, 24 August.
The meeting had been called to discuss an important MEAA campaign to raise freelancer rates and job conditions. Some good work has been done here. The union is trying to get individual employers to agree to a <a href="https://freelancers.org.au/charter/">Freelance Charter of Rights</a> with minimum pay rates for writers and photographers and clauses about intellectual copyright. A couple of media companies have signed on, but many more, including so-called progressive outlets, have not.
It was an important step in the MEAA campaign to have a members’ meeting endorse the freelance campaign. However, the meeting was notable for two other reasons.
First, its size. More than 300 people RSVP’d (the most ever for a freelancers’ meeting), and at least 162 people participated. Second, the timing of the meeting coincided with the historic collapse in Israel’s legitimacy in the eyes of millions of people and as public opinion has shifted firmly in favour of the Palestinians, as illustrated by the history-making March for Humanity on 3 August.
Wednesday’s meeting was an opportunity too good to miss. But it wasn’t easy. There was a significant conservative “do nothing” pushback from the freelancers’ de facto delegate committee. Despite every member of the committee saying that they supported the Palestinians and were regular attendees of Palestine solidarity rallies, they argued that union members weren’t ready to take action, that the union’s “official channels” were working on their own campaign plan and that putting up motions for Palestine would be divisive.
On the day of the meeting, I argued with the committee all day in our WhatsApp chat group. They didn’t like it. But we were confident that MEAA members were ready to take action. We were right.
The MEAA leadership has already taken a public position on Gaza. Federal officials endorsed the March for Humanity on 3 August and the 24 August nationwide March for Palestine. And they had already <a href="https://www.meaa.org/mediaroom/stop-killing-journalists-australian-media-figures-take-a-stand-as-death-toll-continues-to-rise/">issued a media release condemning the murder of journalists by Israel</a> and calling on the killing to stop. That should have given committee members the confidence to support us, but it wasn’t enough.
I argued to the committee that if they supported some formal motions—in line with their private opinions—the meeting could be handled simply with a couple of speakers for and against and then a vote. This is exactly what happened in the end. There was no fuss, no drama, no blowup. It was just a simple exercise in union democracy and letting the membership voice an opinion.
We had three motions prepared for the meeting.
First, we made a public statement that freelance members of the MEAA support our colleague Mary Kostakidis, who is fighting the Zionist Federation of Australia in the federal court after the pro-Israel group accused her of breaching the Racial Discrimination Act. The federation’s attack on Mary was made at a time when Israel’s supporters felt emboldened and were attacking journalists, artists and academics daily with false accusations of antisemitism.
The MEAA head office has been sitting on Mary’s case and has refused to make any public statements for months. Mary told after the meeting that union officials were basically trawling through her social media feed to make their own determination about antisemitism. This is an appalling and stupid thing for MEAA officials to be doing. Now the union and the public know that Mary has the overwhelming support of her freelance colleagues.
Second, we added our voices to the union’s public position of opposing the genocide and the murder of news workers in Gaza. By doing so, we want to signal that there is a ground swell of pro-Palestinian sentiment inside the union.
Third, we endorsed the 24 August national Palestine solidarity demonstrations. By doing so, we’ve signalled that we don’t want to only talk about Palestine, but act.
This was a great outcome. And, like everything related to Palestine solidarity, it required a fight to get the right result.

Marty Hirst

Freelance journalists in Australia vote for Palestine solidarity

The Queensland Teachers’ Union, one of the largest public sector unions in Queensland, took strike action on 6 August for the first time in sixteen years. In the lead-up, the union gained 2,000 new members, and staffrooms were full of discussion and debate. 
Queensland Teachers Fightback, a rank-and-file network of union members, held a gathering before the strike meeting with dozens of teacher activists. We marched into the Brisbane Convention Centre together, picking up teachers on the way. 
The vibe inside was electric. Four thousand teachers filled the meeting hall; hundreds more spilled into the lobby. Another 5,000 packed out more than 30 regional locations to take part in the mass meeting. Unionists from the Electrical Trades Union greeted us on the steps of the Convention Centre along with a crowd featuring the flags of many other unions. 
After the meeting, we marched to the parliament. Students cheered from the sidelines, and it wasn’t hard to convince them to join us. Construction workers downed tools and cheered us on from their job sites as we marched past. 
This is the kind of action that socialists and Queensland Teachers Fightback activists have been advocating for years. Teachers walked away from the rally feeling a foot taller; the confidence we felt on the day will not soon be forgotten.
Strike action tips the scales in favour of workers when it comes to improving our conditions. This strike should not be a one-off event; more will be needed to address our deteriorating conditions.
The latest offer from the state government includes an 8 percent wage increase over three years. Regarding workload, we’ve been offered an insulting single student-free day for the last day of the year, a meaningless concession when most schools run alternative programs for that whole week. The government claims its Red Tape Reduction strategy will reduce workload for teachers, but it’s mostly targeted at school management red tape (not teachers) and includes more than twenty initiatives that begin with words like “investigate” and “consider”. 
We need money for public schools to raise wages and hire more teachers to facilitate smaller classes and more planning time. Instead, it’s being spent on subsidising the mining industry and private schools. Our campaign is up against an intransigent, anti-worker government, and needs to be escalated.
Unfortunately, the union leaders have not proposed any escalation. The mass meeting did little to clarify where to from here, or to meaningfully involve rank-and-file teachers in the process. Four resolutions were put to the meeting, but union members were told there would be no debate and no space to move amendments. One resolved to conduct another 24-hour stoppage “on a date to be determined”. 
One of the union’s few explicit demands is for teachers and principals to be deemed “public officers” within the criminal code. This would mean that students who assault staff would face criminal penalties. 
The LNP may be willing to legislate for more punitive measures rather than create better learning environments. But this would hardly improve teachers’ conditions. The union’s demand will only lead to more funds going to police and prisons, while our schools continue to be underfunded by billions of dollars.
We became teachers because we care about our students. We didn’t become teachers to become cops. Genuine improvements to educational environments—such as significantly reduced class sizes and more specialist teachers, social workers, guidance officers and psychologists—would go a long way to reducing behaviour incidents, protecting teachers and students, and improving workloads. 
Giving us more time would help with the administrative burden of dealing with antisocial behaviour and improve local decision-making regarding abusive behaviour. Having a more confident, combative union movement would be another big step towards addressing student behaviour. 
It’s claimed that “we are already in a teacher shortage”, so we cannot fight for these improvements. But taking this attitude will only mean the problems will never disappear, and it will remain difficult to recruit new teachers. 
Fundamentally, one day of strike action is not going to put the industrial pressure on the Crisafulli government that’s needed. They may budge on some things, but that won’t be enough to address the public education crisis created by successive governments, Labor and Liberal, for more than a decade.
Education Minister John-Paul Langbroek met with the union the day after the strike and has discussed adjusting his paltry offer. Will the union leaders accept a few crumbs? Years of neglect can’t be turned around in 24 hours. We need much more than the government is offering. To win it, we need to escalate the campaign.

QTU member

‘School’s out!’ Thousands of Queensland teachers strike for better pay and conditions

Queensland teachers are gearing up for a 24-hour strike, and it’s about time! After a rally of 500 teachers and supporters in Brisbane, the action has been backed by an overwhelming majority of Queensland Teachers’ Union members.
Teachers are overworked, underpaid and burnt out. This is hardly surprising when full-time teachers in Australia report working <a href="https://www.aitsl.edu.au/research/australian-teacher-workforce-data/atwd-reports/national-trends-teacher-workforce-jun2025">50 hours a week</a>. Teachers also require a minimum of three years at university, yet on graduation are <a href="https://www.nswtf.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/From-bad-to-worse-to-what-NSW-Teachers-Pay-2020-2022-and-beyond-Buchanan.pdf">paid less</a> than sales representatives, real-estate agents and police, none of whom require a degree.
The strike was called after the state government’s insulting pay offer of 8 percent over three years, after real wages had been driven down in recent years. While the Liberal National Party government is spending $147.9 million on police equipment and $3.8 billion on venues for the Olympics, teachers can’t afford to live in the suburbs where they teach. 
The QTU’s strike action is an excellent step forward. Part of the demand is “nation-leading salaries”, but the union leaders have refused to put a figure on what they’re pursuing in negotiations. A seven-year teacher on the Gold Coast earns $20,000 less than a seven-year teacher 30 minutes away in New South Wales. With all teachers being underpaid across the country relative to other qualified professions, there’s much to fight for. 
This problem didn’t begin with the newly elected LNP state government. Under the previous Labor government, our wages fell 6.5 percent behind the Brisbane Consumer Price Index. 
Workloads have been a feature of every negotiation over the past decade, but they’ve only gotten worse. A key reason has been that the union leaders refused to call strikes against the Labor government despite majority votes of union members favouring action.
Strikes demonstrate how critical workers are to the system. Withholding our labour is our most important weapon to fight bosses and governments. The Education Department is scrambling to pretend like it’s “business-as-usual” at schools this week. But with tens of thousands of union members set to strike, the government will be hard-pressed to keep schools open. 
Premier David Crisafulli is in for a serious showdown with public servants—many workplace agreements are due for renegotiation. Firefighters are balloting for strike action, while nurses are getting ready to <a href="https://www.qnmu.org.au/Web/Media_and_Publications/News/News_items/2025/Are_you_ready_to_strike_for_EB12.aspx">escalate to work stoppage</a> as well. Who’s going to treat the patients? Extinguish the fires? Teach the students? Not David Crisafulli. 
It will take more than one day to challenge the government, but this is a great start.

Queensland public school teachers set to strike

Transport engineers and technical workers across Queensland at the Department of Transport and Main Roads (TMR) walked off the job in a statewide strike on Monday, the first in many decades. Up to 450 workers stopped work for twelve hours in Brisbane, Cairns, the Gold Coast, Mackay, Rockhampton, the Sunshine Coast, Townsville, Toowoomba and elsewhere.
Significant growth in union membership made the strike possible. In just a few months, Professionals Australia membership at TMR has tripled to 450. One engineer in Brisbane spoke of new pride that has developed: “Standing with my colleagues, I’m confident we can make a change through the power of being in a union.”
The action was in defiance of the state Liberal government’s wages policy. Engineers rejected an offer of an 8 percent wage rise over three years—the same at- or below-inflation deal offered to nurses and teachers. At rallies across the state, engineers demanded 20 percent.
Queensland is experiencing a record wave of infrastructure investment as the Brisbane Olympics approach. Major projects rely on public engineers, but low pay is leaving roles vacant. Many at TMR earn 20 to 30 percent less than their counterparts at Queensland Rail and Powerlink, even when working on the same projects.
“This action isn't solely about salary”, one Cairns engineer later told Red Flag via WhatsApp. “It's about fair compensation and preserving the knowledge base within TMR. We used to lead infrastructure design; now we’re becoming a contractor management department.”
That transformation away from in-house expertise and toward privatisation was a recurring theme on the day. “Our jobs are being contracted out at higher rates, and our conditions are well behind those in the industry performing the same work”, said another engineer in Rockhampton to Red Flag via WhatsApp. 
Tensions escalated last week when TMR sent hundreds of engineers home without pay for implementing minor work bans—including bans on working more than 36.25 hours per week, completing introductory training, and submitting or approving timesheets. The retaliation only pushed more workers towards strike action. Engineers also linked their fight to those of others across the public sector. As one Brisbane engineer put it in a speech: 
“Teachers are striking on Wednesday, and nurses have been taking action too. The bosses are watching us. If we settle for less, it tells others they’re worth less — and tells the bosses they can get away with it. But if we fight and win, it shows what union power can achieve.”
These are mostly older, white-collar, relatively well-paid professionals — the kinds of workers many assume would never strike. But with political leadership and ambitious demands, engineers are proving that, like all workers, they can fight back.

Queensland engineers strike for the first time in decades

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.”

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