Public school staff in the Victorian branch of the Australian Education Union (AEU) have been gathering at regional log of claims meetings across the state to discuss the changes we want to see in the Victorian Government Schools Agreement (VGSA), which determines our pay and conditions over the next few years.
We desperately need a better VGSA. Our last agreement, which was <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/big-no-vote-step-forward-school-staff">narrowly voted up</a> despite considerable pushback from members, has left us worse off. Our real wages <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_O83eLz-imC8uYDBNB_hzvXyK9Z4BB2kRMV3bBE8GQ0/edit?usp=drivesdk">have fallen by 11 percent</a>, which means graduate teachers are paid $8,489 less per year ($162 per week) than if our pay had kept up with inflation. Starting teacher salaries in Victoria are now the lowest in Australia, and almost $10,000 behind those in New South Wales.
Our current agreement’s modest reduction in face-to-face teaching hours has failed to put a serious dent in our unmanageable workloads. According to a Monash University report, staff are still working a staggering 12.5 unpaid hours each week on average. 
Union members are sick and tired of our profession being undervalued. That’s why, in log of claims meetings, we’re voting for ambitious claims that put forward a positive vision for what our jobs and our schools could be. 
A top priority for members is a big pay rise to win back the value we’ve lost under the current agreement, and then future pay rises that bring our wages into line with similar professions. Some regions are pushing for an immediate 30 percent boost followed by 5 percent every six months, for a total of around 60 percent over the life of the agreement. We also want retention payments that help keep our most experienced teachers in the job. 
Many of the other claims are about addressing our crushing workloads. These include requiring at least one education support (ES) staff in every classroom, additional staff to assist with teachers’ administrative tasks, a limit on meetings to one hour per week, a hard limit on class sizes at 18 students, a reduction in face-to-face teaching hours to 17 in the first year and 16 in the second, and nine professional practice days each year (two for report writing, two at the start of the year for set-up, four for whole school professional learning and one to complete compulsory online units).
For ES staff, there is the claim (left out of the last agreement) for paid lunch breaks, one hour of self-directed preparation time each day for classroom support ES and four professional practice days each year. There are also claims to clarify the different ES roles and to make progression more streamlined, as it is for teachers. 
These claims, if won, would completely transform our jobs and our schools. Staff would get the support and time we need to do our jobs and meet the complex needs of our students. We’d be paid at a rate that means we are better able to cope with the rising cost of living. And this would help ensure vacancies are filled, particularly in working-class, outer-suburban schools, which currently struggle to attract staff. 
Claims approved by regional union meetings now go to the union’s state conference in early August for discussion and approval, ahead of the expiry of the current agreement at the end of this year. We know from experience that these changes will not come easily. Our last log of claims in 2021 included a series of <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/victorian-school-staff-need-fight-workloads-and-wages">commendable claims</a>, but there was no strike action to pressure the government into accepting them. The result was an agreement that has left us significantly worse off on pay and did very little on workload, and which because of this has failed to solve the crisis of teacher retention. 
We can expect the Victorian government to resist our demands again. Recent revelations in the Age show that the government is <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/politics/victoria/teachers-on-collision-course-with-state-government-over-school-funding-20250512-p5lyhn.html">withholding almost $3 billion</a> in funding that it previously promised our schools. It will likely use supposed budgetary constraints to claim that “the money isn’t there” for our demands.
But the money is there. Around $1.6 billion of it is going to “back in Victoria’s new bail laws” with new and expanded prisons, presumably to deal with those falling through the cracks in our decaying education system. The new $1.19 billion prison in Lara, the Western Correctional Facility, will <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-05-13/prison-victoria-state-budget-bail-reform/105284224">offer sign-on bonuses of $8,000</a> to draw in new staff. 
The money is there, but what’s in poor supply is the political will to use it to fund schools. That means union members need to take matters into our own hands. We need meetings at all our schools to establish our minimum expectations or “red lines”, and if those claims are not included in any proposed offer, we will vote “no” and fight for something better. 
Victorian nurses received their 28.4 percent pay rise only by voting “no” to an initial offer of 12 percent. Though their industrial campaign was brief, the fact that nurses had already shut down hospital beds and surgeries, coupled with their high-profile rejection of the proposed settlement, created a plausible threat of a major, politically damaging industrial dispute for the state government. This was enough to eventually win an improved offer. Teachers in New South Wales went on a series of strikes in 2021-22, eventually winning an immediate pay rise of almost $10,000. 
Where workers have refused to be pressured into accepting sub-par offers and have struck for something better, they have been successful. To win anything close to our ambitious demands, it’s highly likely we will need to do the same. 
The AEU has called a protest outside Victorian Education Minister Ben Carroll’s electorate office in Keilor at 4:15pm on Thursday 19 June. Join us in demanding the state government keep their promise to fund our schools.

AEU members

Victorian teachers demand dignity, but won’t get it without a fight

Thousands of local government workers in Melbourne have signed on to bargain collectively, across 10 councils, for better pay and conditions. This is an early test of recent changes to the Fair Work Act by the federal government that should enable unions to more easily bargain—and take legally protected industrial action—across multiple employers. 
According to Tash Wark, secretary of the Australian Services Union (ASU), “this is the largest worker-initiated multi-employer agreement proposed in Australia”. The ASU intends to use an industrial and political campaign across multiple councils to put pressure on the state Labor government to modify or scrap the neoliberal “rate capping” policy that limits council budgets. 
In response, local government employers have <a href="https://www.asuvictas.com.au/VICTAS/News/ASU_multi-employer_bargaining_update.aspx#:~:text=This%20has%20the%20practical%20effect,by%20the%20Fair%20Work%20Commission.">gone on the offensive</a>. From Brimbank to Darebin to Yarra to Port Phillip, employers are launching sham (non-union) single enterprise “negotiations”. These are designed to pave the way for non-union ballots to keep bargaining at a council level, thus avoiding multi-employer bargaining. Employers are also mounting legal challenges against the ASU, despite similar challenges <a href="https://www.heraldsun.com.au/leader%2Fballarat%2Ffederal-court-rejects-central-goldfields-shires-appeal-of-multicouncil-bargaining-with-ararat%2Fnews-story%2F66f6c2c1b3797b2c670c6ffa3cf6fdb7?amp&amp;nk=95c7c698a7cc5f92b3b45e378f1ce6d3-1749453407">losing at the Federal Court</a> earlier this year.
Local government workers provide a wide range of essential services that keep our communities running. From removing waste, cleaning streets and beaches, maintaining parks and roads, to running libraries, immunising and educating children, and providing in-home care for elderly and disabled community members. 
But over the past few years, these essential workers have been falling behind—their wages consistently failing to keep up with inflation. Since 2021, council workers across Melbourne have lost anywhere from 5 to 10 percent of the real value of their wages. The vast majority of us are now hundreds of dollars a fortnight (thousands of dollars a year) worse off than we were in 2020.
There’s one exception to this: senior council executives. Council CEOs across Melbourne <a href="https://www.councilwatch.com.au/general-5">typically earn more than $400,000 a year</a>. That’s on par with federal government ministers ($403,000) and the Prime Minister of the UK (£172,153 or $360,335). Last year, it was revealed that Alison Leighton, CEO of the City of Melbourne, pockets a whopping $534,000 annually—almost as much as the prime minister. These are the same people crying poor and threatening job cuts in response to workers’ demanding a liveable wage.
In the face of real wage declines, increasing numbers of local government workers have been <a href="https://www.heraldsun.com.au/leader%2Fnorth%2Fdarebin-council-workers-begin-strike-taking-protest-to-the-streets%2Fnews-story%2F3c6d0399f41489f72f46ce32377890e5?amp&amp;nk=95c7c698a7cc5f92b3b45e378f1ce6d3-1749443789">going on strike</a>. Despite heroic efforts from workers, <a href="https://brunswickvoice.com.au/council-industrial-dispute-ends-as-staff-vote-yes-to-pay-offer/">gains have been minimal</a>. This is partly because a few hundred workers in a single local government area have limited industrial power. The Victorian government’s rate cap also provides an excuse for management to cry poor. And previous bargaining strategies of the ASU have failed to challenge these limitations. 
Multi-employer bargaining represents, at least potentially, a means to change all that. There’s certainly sentiment for a fight. At a packed meeting of council workers from across Melbourne recently, one worker put it this way: “We are the ones who run this city. If we stop work, the city stops: bins overflow, services disappear, streets and beaches get trashed, parks and sporting fields become overgrown. Imagine what we could achieve if council revenue begins to dry up, if small businesses start to suffer, and if state infrastructure projects grind to a halt.” 
Council workers are coming together to <a href="https://www.asuvictas.com.au/VICTAS/News/MEB_update_Have_your_say_on_our_draft_Log_of_Claims.aspx">demand</a> a 22 percent pay rise over four years—consisting of a 10 percent “recovery payment” in the first year and 4 percent in the following years. This will go some way to redressing the decade-long decline in council workers’ real wages. Most of us haven’t seen a pay rise of more than 2 or 3 percent for 10 years—since the re-introduction of rate caps in 2016. That’s why, as part of this round of bargaining, we’re gearing up to rally against the Victorian state government’s neo-liberal rate capping policy.
The rate cap dates back to the Kennett government of the 1990s. Liberal premier Jeff Kennett directly copied this neoliberal measure from former UK prime minister Margaret Thatcher, who used it to coerce local councils into implementing local austerity, regardless of the wishes of the people who elected them. Compulsory competitive tendering of all council services, with councils legally obliged to accept the lowest bid, was used by both Thatcher in the UK and Kennett in Victoria as a way of cutting workers’ wages and essential services to the bone. 
Though rate capping was abolished when Kennett was thrown out of office in 1999, it was reintroduced by Daniel Andrews’ Labor government in 2016. The current system limits councils’ ability to raise revenue, including through measures such as charging higher rates for major corporations and property developers that are making millions in our communities.
The consequences? As the <a href="https://australiainstitute.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Putting-a-Cap-on-Community-WEB.pdf">Australia Institute reported</a>, less than half of Victorian local government workers now have permanent, full-time jobs, as councils respond to the cap by outsourcing and casualising work. For too long, the rate cap has functioned as a wage cap for local council workers—and it’s about time it was seriously challenged. 
Multi-enterprise bargaining is the means workers are hoping to use to mount this challenge. Australia’s top CEOs are <a href="https://www.afr.com/policy/economy/top-ceos-lash-multi-employer-bargaining-20221218-p5c79c">hostile</a> to it for a reason. If paired with a militant union strategy, they know multi-enterprise bargaining has the potential to put money and power back into the hands of ordinary workers. They say they’re worried about <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/70s-werent-bad">“a return to the 1970s”</a>—a time when wages in Australia consistently outpaced inflation and workers enjoyed a much higher share of national income.
No wonder council employers are <a href="https://www.asuvictas.com.au/VICTAS/News/Fair_Work_update_Metropolitan_Melbourne_multiemployer_bargaining.aspx">doing everything in their power to divide us</a>. They know multi-employer bargaining could help shift the goal posts by giving workers in our sector greater industrial power. Last Friday, Brimbank council won a fierce campaign to get a non-union single enterprise “agreement” voted up before their employees’ multi-enterprise bargaining application could be authorised by the Fair Work Commission. 
Workers at Brimbank reported intimidation and standover tactics from management, with managers going as far as <a href="https://www.asuvictas.com.au/VICTAS/News/Brimbank_literally_called_the_cops_to_prevent_you_hearing_about_your_rights.aspx">calling the police</a> on union officials, censoring communications, and <a href="https://www.theservicesunion.com.au/VICTAS/News/Brimbank_Aquatic_Centre_employee_targeted_for_speaking_up_about_No_Vote.aspx">sacking employees</a> for communicating with their co-workers about management’s offer. Thanks to Brimbank council’s <a href="https://www.asuvictas.com.au/VICTAS/News/Vote_No_to_Brimbanks_single_EA_Fight_for_a_better_deal_through_MEB.aspx">dirty tactics</a>, 1400 workers there are likely to fall further behind the cost of living and their colleagues in local government for years to come. 
While it’s a disappointing outcome, Brimbank workers never would have received a 4 percent pay rise this year (their highest in 13 years!) if it weren’t for the threat of large-scale industrial action via multi-enterprise bargaining. “I have no doubt in my mind,” said a Brimbank worker, “that once a multi-employer agreement gets up in local government, everyone will want in. We know that taking large-scale industrial action is the only way for us to claw back wages. We just need an opportunity to demonstrate that we can win. It’s up to workers in the nine other councils now to lead the way.” 
Like Brimbank, employers at City of Darebin, Yarra, and Port Phillip are currently preparing to put non-union single enterprise offers out to vote in the coming weeks and lock their employees out of multi-enterprise bargaining. Workers at all of these councils need to mobilise members and non-members to vote no to any employer ballot aimed at dividing council workers.
In good news, at Maribyrnong council, a non-binding ballot organised by the employer saw a thumping majority of workers vote for multi-enterprise bargaining, rejecting the employer’s attempt to split the workforce away. And just a week later, on 12 June, news came in that 74 percent of eligible City of Melbourne employees had voted in a non-binding ballot organised by the employer. Management was hoping for a rejection of multi-employer bargaining. Instead, an amazing 80 percent of those who voted wanted to stick with the union campaign. This puts the lie to the managers’ claims that workers are being “tricked” into supporting multi-enterprise bargaining. A majority of workers at Maribyrnong and Melbourne have now voted for it twice!
If Brimbank teaches us anything, it’s that our side needs to be better organised. We need to mobilise our members, we need to be more proactive in countering management’s bribes, scare tactics and misinformation, and we need to patiently explain to our co-workers what’s at stake. 
This is not just about cutting better deals in our individual work areas for the next three years. Knocking back employer efforts to keep us divided in our individual councils is an act of solidarity. It’s saying that we’re prepared to use our industrial power to win a solid pay rise for childcare and day care workers, for clerical staff and librarians, for parking officers and garbos all over Melbourne. 
Over the coming weeks, the employers will aim to wear us down and convince us that what they’ve got to offer is the best we can hope for. But we know better. Ten thousand local government workers, acting together, have significant industrial and political power. 
A multi-enterprise bargaining campaign, paired with an industrial strategy that uses mass action to pressure the state government to loosen its hold on council purse strings, could potentially win a very different outcome. This will not be an easy fight. But we owe it to ourselves, our colleagues and our communities to pursue this course. 
After all, if we don’t fight, we lose.

ASU member

Council workers battle to bargain together

The Pacific Australia Labour Mobility (PALM) scheme between Australia and nine participating Pacific island nations is supposedly mutually beneficial. Australian industry fills labour gaps by bringing in Pacific islanders on temporary working visas. Struggling Pacific economies get a boost from the money workers send home. The only catch is that tens of thousands of temporary visa workers are denied basic labour rights, and that it is Australian bosses who are reaping all the benefits. 
The more than 30,000 PALM workers currently in Australia are assigned to specific employers, primarily in rural and regional areas. Seventy percent work in the meat industry. Taufa, a PALM participant in an abattoir freezer room, described his working life to <a href="https://www.rmit.edu.au/news/bhright/exploitation-of-palm-scheme-workers-in-aus-meat-industry">researchers</a>
from RMIT: “Each day is a race against time to meet our quotas ... if the order says packing/palletising for 500, we need to complete that 500 by day’s end. It’s a tough job ... we lift entire boxes onto pallets, sometimes stacking the equivalent of three or four cows on a single pallet. Despite the cold, you end up feeling the heat, sweating through the workload”. 
Few would undertake this sort of work if they had other options. The PALM scheme trades on poverty to find people who have no choice but to endure it. PALM workers who arrive in Australia and find that they hate the work, or the employer isn’t paying the expected wages, are not allowed to quit. Instead, they need permission from their boss or the government department that oversees the scheme to find another job. 
Bosses also often control where PALM workers live, especially in remote areas. Rent can be deducted from workers’ wages for often substandard and overcrowded accommodation provided by employers, with paternalistic rules banning alcohol and drugs. 
A May <a href="https://devpolicy.org/publications/reports/kanan-reproductive-justice-palm-scheme.pdf">report</a>
from the Development Policy Centre exposed that women workers in the PALM scheme are required to undergo pregnancy tests before departing their home country and have resorted to covert abortions while working in Australia. They fear deportation for getting pregnant. In Wagga Wagga, a women’s health clinic estimates that a quarter of women seeking abortions are migrant workers, many on the PALM scheme. Trudi Beck, who runs the clinic, <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-06-02/migrant-workers-face-pregnancy-discrimination-barriers-abortion/105337020">told the ABC</a> on 2 June, “While I support a woman’s right to choose, I have a moral issue with visa structures that mean a woman has to choose between a pregnancy and supporting her family at home”.
The extreme control bosses hold over PALM workers has drawn rightful comparisons to <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-09-23/palm-visa-scheme-exploitation-modern-slavery/104382194">slavery</a>. No wonder more than 7,000 PALM workers have <a href="https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/palm-scheme-workers-at-risk-of-exploitation/61ytu2mt0">run away from the job</a> over the last five years, ending up “undocumented” and even more vulnerable. 
These conditions are no secret. The PALM scheme has had numerous iterations stretching back to 2008, and each one has been criticised for enabling rampant exploitation. <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-05-04/supermarkets-food-outlets-exploit-black-market-migrant-workers/6441496">Farms</a>
and <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-06-17/foreign-workers-exploited-at-baiada-plant-investigation-reveals/6554570">abattoirs</a>
have repeatedly been the subject of exposés revealing abhorrent working conditions for mostly migrant workers. 
As the Australasian Meat Industry Employees Union pointed out in their February submission to the NSW inquiry into modern slavery, “The attraction to employers of a system of temporary visas for unskilled or semi-skilled foreign workers is precisely because such schemes produce the opportunity to exploit workers and circumvent labour standards”. 
Australian bosses make money from underpaying migrant workers and skimping on entitlements citizens would expect. RMIT researchers found that PALM workers comprise almost a quarter of Australia’s meat industry, which had a turnover in the 2021-2022 financial year of $75.4 billion. 
The Australia Institute estimated in 2024 that PALM workers spend close to $1 billion per year on living expenses and taxes, compared to sending home only around $468 million. <a href="https://australiainstitute.org.au/report/palm-visas-superannuation-and-tax/">As the report says</a>, “In other words, Australia benefits twice as much from the scheme as the Pacific countries providing it with cheap labour”. 
Successive Australian governments have had a particular interest in temporary worker schemes targeting the Pacific islands. These economic arrangements are part of Australia leveraging influence in what it sees as its backyard. The Pacific islands rely on foreign aid more than any other region on earth, and Australia is its largest donor. Pacific island governments, then, sometimes willingly, sometimes begrudgingly, acquiesce to Australian demands.
Under Albanese, the PALM scheme has been expanded into aged care and child care, sectors populated by notoriously abusive employers. Instead of heeding recommendations of the <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/deaths-and-profits-pile-aged-care">Royal Commission into Aged Care</a> to improve working conditions and end privatisation, Labor has chosen to add slave labour to the noxious mix.
In 2024, Albanese mandated that PALM workers must be paid at least 30 hours per week and has piloted allowing 200 workers to bring family to Australia and access Medicare. But PALM workers remain bonded to a particular employer and are denied full access to government entitlements. Bosses will continue to exploit this vulnerability. 
Even less useful has been Labor’s 2024 appointment of the country's first ever anti-slavery commissioner, a political response to media revelations and outrage regarding migrant working conditions. The commissioner’s <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/deaths-and-profits-pile-aged-care">website</a>
explains that “The Commissioner cannot investigate, or resolve, complaints concerning instances or suspected instances of modern slavery”. The commissioner can, however, “make observations regarding systemic issues based on his engagement with victims and survivors and the broader community”. The anti-slavery commissioner’s office has not issued a single press statement about the PALM scheme, despite complaints about the scheme being an important catalyst for the NSW modern slavery inquiry. 
Labor is helping bosses treat Pacific workers like slaves.

Priya De

Labor’s PALM scheme is modern slavery

Victorian public sector workers are taking on the useless union leadership in elections to be held next month. The state branch of the Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU) has repeatedly failed to stand up for its members. The challengers’ election team, called A Voice for Members, wants to rebuild a fighting, member-led union. 
This is the first time in more than 30 years that all executive positions (secretary, assistant secretary, president and two vice-presidents) will be contested. The current state secretary, Karen Batt, was first elected in 1993, when Jeff Kennett was premier. 
Last year, CPSU leaders excluded members from any meaningful involvement in enterprise bargaining negotiations. They eventually pushed through an agreement that includes a real wage cut. <a href="https://avfm.au/cpsu-rank-and-file-news/edition-7-wages-cap/">By the time the deal expires in 2028, real wages are expected to have returned to 2018 levels</a>. 
The union leaders insisted that there was no point in trying to push the government on its “wages cap”, as it would not budge from its three percent per year offer. But they were proven completely wrong when the paramedics’ union and the nurses’ and midwives’ union won pay increases of 17 and 28 percent, respectively, over four years. Firefighters are also pushing for a 25 percent pay increase.
The CPSU leaders have long hampered members’ ability to organise: they do not hold members’ or delegates’ meetings, and members frequently report difficulty finding other members, or even their workplace delegates. During last year’s negotiations, for example, most members did not even see, let alone vote on, the union’s proposed list of demands. 
The seed for the rank-and-file electoral challenge was planted during CPSU for Palestine meetings, which provided a rare space for members to get together and organise, given the union’s lack of democratic structures. 
At first, A Voice for Members was established as a progressive caucus inside the union, recognising that a union’s power comes from its members, not its paid officials. Consistent with this goal, the group will continue fighting for a democratic, member-led union, regardless of the election result. 
When Treasurer Jaclyn Symes in February announced <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-02-20/vic-govt-public-sector-job-cuts-spending-review-budget/104958948">Labor’s plan to slash 3,000 public sector jobs</a>, A Voice for Members immediately called a rally opposing the cuts. Longtime union members are hard-pressed to recall the last time the CPSU made such a call. But, four days later, undoubtedly feeling threatened by the campaign, union leaders called a separate rally, scheduling it for the day before the rank-and-file rally.
Under Batt, the CPSU’s membership has languished at around <a href="https://avfm.au/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/AVFM-policy-platform.pdf">15,000 for decades</a>. This is understandable: why would anyone be motivated to join a union that doesn’t stand up for its members? 
But A Voice for Members is taking action to rebuild a union that’s worth joining, that’s ready to take industrial action to defend living standards, that thinks it’s union business to take a stand against genocide, and that opposes laws restricting workers’ ability to organise and take collective action. We are holding regular organising meetings, public events, and rallies, and conducting daily workplace leafleting to recruit more workers and mobilise existing members. 
To learn more about AVFM, the candidates, and to join the fight, visit <a href="https://avfm.au/">the website</a>. You can also <a href="https://chuffed.org/project/a-voice-for-members-cpsu">donate to the campaign</a>.

CPSU member

Rank and file group set up in Victorian public sector union

The following is is an edited and abridged extract from <a href="https://shop.redflag.org.au/collections/trade-union-organising/products/striking-ore-the-rise-and-fall-of-union-power-in-the-pilbara">Striking Ore: The Rise and Fall of Union Power in the Pilbara</a>, a new book by Red Flag contributor Alexis Vassiley published by Monash University Publishing. 
--------------------
When Harry Hoskin came to the Pilbara in 1968, the mine superintendent made him a “powder monkey”. His job was to blast the ore body with explosives. But he had no experience: “I can’t even spell gelignite let alone [know] what it’s about”. His boss insisted, so he got on with it. Fortunately, he wasn’t injured—others weren’t so lucky. It was like the “Wild West”, Hoskin recalls. Safety was terrible.
But business was booming for the iron ore companies. When the iron ore export ban was relaxed in 1960, there was a development bonanza in the Pilbara. Demand for iron ore was relentless. Tonnage of iron ore increased from 6.8 million tonnes in 1967 to 50.5 million tonnes in 1972.
Conditions in the late 1960s and early 1970s for miners were tough. Production worker Randall Grant remembers the “soaked and soggy” salad sandwiches at Dampier in 1968, stating, “The guys were really pissed off with that. They wanted a hot meal”. Grant later became an Australian Workers’ Union shop steward (union representative who continues to do their usual work for the company, now usually called a “union delegate”). 
Lance Elliott, a staff member at Mount Newman, describes conditions at that time as “unairconditioned, dusty, unsafe to say the least”.
In the 1960s, before workers exercised their collective muscle, the companies used their responsibility for food, housing and amenities in the “company towns” to their advantage. Towns were run by the companies rather than by a local government. 
So, for example, the Amalgamated Engineering Union (AEU) reported that in June 1968, a Hamersley Iron boilermaker had his accommodation, and therefore job, withdrawn after making “sharp criticisms” of the food to the messing officer from Poon’s.
The same month, a worker’s complaint about food resulted in his alleged assault by a manager. Three workers were framed and remanded in custody for eight days by a justice of the peace who worked for the company; the three were then sacked. Power rested squarely with management in these early days.
Workers took action even while the mines were being built. On Christmas Day 1965, the construction crew on a Hamersley Iron mine rioted over the food.
It was in the late 1960s, however, that both workers’ struggle and union organising really took off. The two things went hand in hand. 
AWU organiser Gil Barr relates that Mount Newman was unionised in this period by using the sacking of three workers as an organising opportunity. After previously getting only ten to fifteen workers from a 400-strong workforce to a union meeting, he “fronted the company” and got the workers reinstated. “From then on, we started to get membership as the guys could see the benefit of it”.
Randall Grant was present at the first AWU meeting at King Bay in 1968. Workers with union traditions from the eastern states—who later became shop stewards—got Grant to the meeting: “They were saying this wouldn’t happen at Port Kembla [an industrial hub eight kilometres south of Wollongong, NSW] and places like that”. Grant himself didn’t come from a union background, but he became a shop steward too: “as soon as you got onsite and saw what was going on it’s like ... hang on, things have got to be improved here”.
AWU officials addressed around 40 workers in the single men’s quarters, signing them up to the union. Yet the Pilbara’s remoteness posed a significant challenge. Unions needed to devote significant resources to the task. They required sacrifices from organisers, some of whom camped in tents with their family while on organising drives. 
The formula for union organisers was as follows: go up north for a few weeks, talk to workers about their grievances, sign them up to the union and establish a union branch or sub-branch.
So, for example, Jack Marks of the AEU, Frank Bastow of the Boilermakers and Blacksmiths Society and J. Quinn of the Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and Joiners went on a “North-West Organising Trip” of several weeks in July 1967.
Marks reported back to his union that they “set up new shop stewards wherever we found a group of workers, and when this group consists of more than one union representative, shop committees were formed”.
In 1968, workers at Goldsworthy’s port on Finucane Island tried unsuccessfully for weeks on end to convince management to let them eat at the mess (canteen) rather than consume the “power packs” in the smoko room. The entire workforce of 80 then struck for four days to force the issue and were sacked. The company re-employed them days later when a ship needed loading.
Union militancy increased in 1969. 
On 22 May 1969, workers at Tom Price, Mount Newman and Goldsworthy stopped work for a day as part of a statewide strike in support of jailed Victorian Tramways Union secretary Clarrie O’Shea.
In October 1969, there were strikes lasting seventeen days and involving all unionists at two Hamersley Iron sites. Starting with one union at one site, the dispute quickly spread to other unions and a second company site. The grievances included dust, refrigeration, food and heat money (an allowance for working in the hot weather). The strike “was controlled/administered by newly established combined union committees at each of the two sites. Compulsory conferences held between union officials and the company in the Industrial Commission failed to resolve the strike. Further, union officials were given hostile treatment by mass meetings of the workers”.
In late 1970, workers broke through and made significant gains in their wages and conditions. Workers at Hamersley Iron won an over-award payment in May. The deal was a substantial increase, worth around $1,000 for lower-bracket workers and $550 for those in a higher bracket.
Mount Newman workers were in dispute with the company for about four months, ending in a stunning victory. The workers obtained “more money for a 40-hour week than they were offered for a 60- hour week”.
There was a tug-of-war between the company and its workers during these on-again, off-again strikes over many months. Mount Newman tested the workers’ strength, determination and organisation and tried to avoid meeting the unionists’ demands. As Lance Elliott remembers, “All of a sudden there were union meetings, there were union delegates talking with the management and it all came to a severe head ... and the whole place went out on strike”. The atmosphere was “acrimonious”. 
Staff (managers and white-collar workers) crossed union picket lines to do workers’ work. Key to the victory was the industrial pressure put on the company in the context of high demand for iron ore. Idle iron ore carriers were visible from the site of union-management negotiations.
Power relations were changing. The mining companies didn’t grant any concessions willingly—improved pay and conditions were hard fought. Engaged in a show of strength with the unionists, companies reneged on agreements if they thought they could get away with it. Gains won at one company did not automatically flow through to another mining company. 
Accounts of the Pilbara iron ore industry can make the gains in wages and conditions, and union organisational success, seem almost inevitable.
A tight labour market and clauses in industrial awards for “union preference”—where workers need to be members of the union to work in the industry—certainly wouldn’t have harmed the unionists’ cause. But on their own, these are not enough. 
100 percent union membership had to be won, enforced and even re-won from the ground up—including by withdrawing, or threatening to withdraw, labour. Once established, this became a weapon in the union movement’s arsenal.
The 1969 Iron Ore Industry Award gave limited recognition to shop stewards for the first time. These rights, however, were heavily circumscribed. Concerned that their negotiating role not be usurped, some union officials opposed even this limited clause.
Committees consisting of shop stewards representing each of the different unions on a site were first established in 1967. Similar structures were set up at various companies and worksites in the next few years, undercutting management’s ability to play unions off against one another and engendering solidarity between the different unions. 
These grassroots bodies would later organise strikes in the region involving all or many of the unions, lasting weeks and costing the mining companies millions of dollars in lost production.

Alexis Vassiley

The rise of union power in the Pilbara mines

The Minns Labor government plans to slash workers’ compensation in New South Wales. Unions, as well as legal and mental health groups, have vehemently opposed the changes, which will make it more difficult to claim workers’ compensation for psychological injuries. This will hit essential front-line workers like nurses, teachers, paramedics, firefighters, aged care and transport workers particularly hard. 
NSW Treasurer Daniel Mookhey defended the proposals as essential cost-cutting measures intended to bring down employer insurance premiums. They will do this not by making workplaces safer, but by denying workers the support they need. Mookhey has frozen cash injections to icare, the state workers’ compensation insurer, and issued an ultimatum: either these attacks are passed through the Legislative Assembly, or the government won’t fund its own insurer properly.
Mookhey wants to turn back the clock and de-legitimise workers’ mental health issues, citing the doubling of psychological injury claims in the past six years. 
The most obviously cruel change is to increase the threshold for minimum Whole Person Impairment (the scale used to measure the degree of impairment resulting from workplace illness or injury) to 31 percent for psychological injury claims beyond 130 weeks or for permanent impairment. But people who meet this threshold are “essentially catatonic” according to NSW Unions leader Mark Morey. According to psychiatrist Anthony Dinnen, who assesses workplace psychological injuries, imposing this threshold “would exclude 99 percent of patients from benefits”. 
“The workers compensation system is the only reason I am still alive”, explained a NSW firefighter in a Unions NSW report, <a href="https://www.unionsnsw.org.au/publication/cast-adrift-cuts-to-workers-compensation/">Cast Adrift</a>. “Without being able to access essential mental health services and receive diagnosis, treatment, education and support to begin my recovery, I would have certainly taken my own life. My whole person impairment is 24 percent which is a very significant injury. If the threshold was increased to 30 percent and that affected me by taking away my entitlements again, I would be destitute and would have no hope of survival or recovery.” 
The report shows how prevalent psychological hazards are in NSW workplaces. Of 10,000 workers surveyed, 60 percent had been exposed to trauma, 44 percent had experienced bullying and 22 percent had faced harassment, including sexual harassment. 
The government wants to narrow the definition of compensable psychological injuries. If an injury is sustained due to “reasonable management action”, workers will not be eligible for compensation. This wording provides an easy out for negligent and bullying bosses to argue their conduct was “reasonable”. 
Work pressure and burnout are major causes of the growing rates of psychological injury to workers in NSW, yet these will no longer be eligible for compensation. Workers who face bullying, sexual harassment or racial harassment won’t be eligible for compensation until they have had a court, commission or tribunal ruling in their favour. They will also have to pay their own legal fees. 
This suite of changes constitutes a major attack on the rights and conditions of all workers. Unsafe work conditions will be allowed to flourish if it becomes easier to reject workers’ compensation claims. 
The government and business have argued that workers make frivolous claims that clog up the system. In reality, claiming workers’ comp is already a difficult bureaucratic process in which workers are treated with suspicion and hostility by an adversarial system. Dealing with that system can itself be traumatic. The NSW State Insurance Regulatory Authority had to admit this year that it contributed to the psychological injuries of a group of already injured workers by mishandling their cases. 
It is rich for the government to use the failures of the state insurer icare as an excuse to attack workers. Icare has been plagued by scandal, including chronic underpayment of workers, blatant corruption, intimidation of a whistleblower and outrageous executive bonuses. Between 2012 and 2019, icare underpaid at least 53,000 workers and was forced to pay back $38 million. During that time, the former chief executive of icare, John Nagle, awarded his wife a contract without tender, paying her $800,000 over three years. Icare leaders were accused of the homophobic bullying and harassment of a senior whistleblower, Chris McCann, causing him to be hospitalised, diagnosed with PTSD. 
Despite these scandals, icare still awarded its executives with some of the highest salaries and bonuses in the public service, bringing CEO Richard Harding’s salary to over $1 million. 
The NSW government has done nothing to rein in icare’s mismanagement or its executive salaries. Instead, it is attacking the victims of unsafe workplaces. 
Unions NSW has <a href="https://psa.asn.au/rally-against-changes-to-our-workers-compensation-protections/">called protests</a> across Sydney to respond to Labor’s attacks. It’s important that unionists and supporters stand against the gutting of workers’ comp. We are facing an onslaught of overwork and underpay, and now we’re being denied compensation for the damage done to us. Ultimately, we need to build a movement against the anti-worker Labor government and the business interests it serves.

Emma Norton

NSW Labor government attacks workers’ compensation

Michael Hiscox, the acting secretary of the ACT branch of the CFMEU, was removed from his position and replaced by an unelected bureaucrat on 13 May. This came nine months after the union’s national office was put under <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/labor-set-to-impose-dictatorial-powers-over-construction-union">administration</a>
by the federal Labor government, which removed the right of union members to elect their officials. 
Labor justified its attack on the union by referring to media reports about alleged criminal behaviour in the union. There have been no allegations of such behaviour in the ACT branch, which, along with Western Australia, was not placed under administration last year. 
The consequences of Mark Irving’s appointment as administrator are clear to anyone in doubt. Replacing elected officials with appointed administrators across every branch has brought restrictions on organisers’ and members’ rights to raise criticisms within the CFMEU and shape the union’s direction—an atmosphere unconducive to the kind of confident and militant organising that construction workers need to defend their working conditions and rates of pay. 
“Labor has learned [from the deregistration of the BLF] how to best attack our union through this administration system: by passing a law that removes any unfair dismissal law for officials who get sacked for no reason”, Dusty Miller, a local CFMEU member and former member of the Builders Labourers’ Federation, told Red Flag. “Under the administration, there is no democracy. There is no ability for the union to have their own elections.” 
The union’s former national secretary, Zach Smith, recently proposed a restructure to expand the role of the CFMEU’s national office. Less than two weeks before being removed from his position, Hiscox cosigned a <a href="https://www.facebook.com/share/p/16NnxuTg4v/">statement</a> opposing the restructure, stating that it “would only deprive rank and file members of having a voice in the way that their Union is run”. 
So, what reason has Irving given for his intervention in the ACT branch? There are no charges of criminal activity, credible or otherwise, and no accusations of corruption or misconduct. The reason given was a drop in membership and a small budget deficit. But the union has plenty of cash reserves and a solid, loyal membership base—hardly a crisis.
Even if the branch were in crisis, government intervention would not be the solution. Its most likely effect will be the same as administration has had in every other branch: putting compliant organisers in positions of power while promoting fear and passivity in everyone else. 
Miller said that many members have voiced their disgust at the move. 
“We now have a person called Ben Davison sitting in the branch secretary’s office in Canberra, who doesn’t have a clue about anything with our industry, who doesn’t understand construction”, he said. “To me, it’s a payback to Michael and our branch because we stood up to this [centralisation] plan.”
The demotion of Hiscox should stand as clear proof that “cleaning up criminal or corrupt behaviour” was not the overriding purpose of the sackings, restrictions and centralisation. It was about disciplining a union with some industrial strength by punishing anyone speaking out. 
Zach Smith announced on 22 May that he would step down as national secretary, presumably because of backlash against the proposed centralisation plan. It’s unclear what this means for the plan’s viability, but there will undoubtedly be ongoing pressure on people like Hiscox who speak out against the administration. 
Miller has a clear message for members facing the degradation of their union’s democracy: “Stay strong and united. Stay strong and push back”.

Nick Reich

Attack on democracy in the ACT CFMEU

The mood on the picket line at the Allied Pinnacle factory in the Melbourne suburb of Altona North is infectious. Although there have been strikes at the facility—which is a major producer of baked good for supermarkets and bakeries—in 2017 and 2022, for most of the workforce, this is their first experience of industrial action. 
The workers sing and dance, get to know each other, fire up the barbeque and have a great time. “If you ever get the chance to, go on strike! It’s a once in a lifetime feeling of everyone you know coming together, and when you feel the support it’s an amazing experience!”, one worker says. 
Allied Pinnacle produces chocolate mud cakes, donuts, muffins and bread loaves for Coles, Woolworths and Bakers’ Delight amongst others. The factory usually has nine production lines running night and day, all but one of which were shut down by the strike, with one being partially operated by non-union casuals. 
The 48-hour strike, which began on 14 May, involved around 150 United Workers Union members across three shifts. Their demands included improved conditions, better allowances and a pay increase. For all the high spirits on the picket line, the stakes for the workers are high. Management made visits to the picket to issue warnings or make complaints, and threatened to call the police. When they did, the workers surrounded them chanting “Union power!” until they left. 
When delivery trucks tried to enter the Allied Pinnacle site, the first thing they saw was the picket line with dozens of workers. After a friendly conversation, the most drivers turned around and drove off with a supportive honk of the horn. This was met with cheering and clapping on the picket line. 
Allied Pinnacle workers are paid between $26 and $35 per hour. They are fighting for a 15 percent pay increase over the next three years and increased penalty rates for nights, weekends and public holidays. At the moment, the vast majority of the workers rely on overtime and weekend penalties to earn a liveable wage, with many working six-day weeks or multiple jobs just to get by. The ongoing housing crisis and cost-of-living crisis has made this situation untenable for many of them. 
To make matters worse, management recently made scheduling changes to reduce the amount of penalty rates workers receive. Previously, the standard work schedule was Tuesday to Saturday with eight hours work per day. That has been changed to a Monday to Thursday schedule with 10-hour days, with no overtime included and avoiding Saturday penalties. This has amounted to a significant cut in take home pay for the affected workers.
Another grievance workers have is to do with casual conversion. Management has an arbitrary system for granting permanent jobs to the workers in the factory. Some have reported being on casual contracts for up to six years before being offered permanent work, despite doing regular hours, and performing the duties of other permanent staff.
Striking workers have also reported that when the outside temperature is 30 degrees or more, the inside of the factory, particularly near the ovens, can reach more than 40 degrees, with only a few floor fans provided for relief from the heat. Management is aware of the heat issue in the factory, but instead of resolving it, they responded by authorising a $100,000 upgrade to the air conditioning in the managers’ offices.
One worker detailed to me how safety rules are commonly flouted to speed up production. Workers are frequently expected to lift 25-kilogram bags of sugar and butter by themselves, contrary to the safety guidelines. Repetitive lifting of heavy weight causes risks to these workers over the course of the day and many complain of back and leg pain at the end of their shifts.
The two-day strike is just the beginning of this campaign. Workers expect further industrial action in the next few weeks. Supporters are encouraged to come and visit future picket lines at 23-29 Pinnacle Road, Altona North.

Jack Gardner

Bakery workers strike for more dough

For several months, security workers at Canberra Airport have been embroiled in industrial disputes with Capital Airport Group (CAG) and their new employer, MSS Security.
Two years ago, United Workers Union members won above-award conditions through threats of industrial action. But the switching of employer contracts has meant that CAG is no longer upholding their end of the bargain.
MSS Security, an international security conglomerate, has a notorious history of anti-union and anti-worker practices. After winning the airport contract, the company refused to guarantee the jobs of all current employees, requiring them to reapply for their positions. 
Managers also said that some of the terms in the existing workplace agreement would not apply “in their ‘current form’ to any future agreement”. 
As well, continuing staff have reported that MSS has consistently screwed up rosters and wage payments.
“Workers have been through three payrolls, with constant underpayments—one member has been underpaid by more than $2,000 on two separate occasions”, Fletcher, a UWU organiser, told Red Flag. “In short, it’s been far from a seamless transition.”
On 28 February, Fletcher attended a farewell lunch held by the outgoing contractor. During the event, three police officers, acting at the behest of a CAG employee, arrested him for trespassing and hauled him off to the Civic Watchhouse in handcuffs. As part of his bail conditions, Fletcher is prevented from returning to the airport.
This is a thinly veiled attempt by CAG to intimidate union members and organisers. 
It highlights two issues: first is the immense influence of CAG, owned by Canberra’s only billionaire, nepo baby Steven Byron. Rich bastards like Byron believe they are beholden to no one. 
When workers win improved conditions, CAG switches contractors. Rather than dealing with legitimate workplace issues, the company calls the police to do its dirty work. 
Second is the undue power of the police. Rather than “maintaining community safety”, as they purport to do, they are acting as industrial enforcers for a billion-dollar private company.
Security workers are determined to give them a fight. On May Day, UWU members held a rowdy protest of more than 100 outside the airport's main entrance. 
As UWU members build to their next action, Fletcher urges ongoing solidarity: “Contract change should not be an excuse to tear up hard-fought wages and conditions. It’s outrageous that Canberra Airport thinks it can use the police as private enforcers in industrial disputes”.

Connor Heins

Union organiser arrested at Canberra airport

At the end of 2024, the Australian National University announced $250 million in cuts as part of a “Renew ANU” program. According to figures published in the Australian Financial Review, this “renewal” includes $150 million slashed from salaries—the equivalent of 638 full-time jobs.
While hundreds of workers are facing the sack, it has since been revealed that new Vice-Chancellor Genevieve Bell was still taking an undisclosed salary from tech giant Intel well into her first year at ANU—on top of her $1.1 million university pay packet. Also, Canberra MP David Pocock revealed that Bell blew $1.2 million on external consultants to advise on Renew ANU after telling the Senate the university had spent just $50,000.
The fallout has been significant. In an unprecedented move, 800 ANU staff participated in a National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) vote of no confidence in Bell and Chancellor Julie Bishop. An overwhelming 95 percent voted in favour of the no-confidence motion. Bell’s response? To smear the vote as “sexist”.
It’s not just staff pushing back. Students have launched a “No Cuts at ANU” campaign linking staff working conditions to student learning conditions. Forums, rallies and a student strike have been held throughout the first half of 2025. The demands are simple: sack Bell and Bishop, get rid of the Renew ANU project and publicly disclose the university’s financial records.
Bell is one of many university bosses overseeing a national offensive against staff and students. At the University of Canberra, ex-Labor parliamentarian turned Vice-Chancellor Bill Shorten has ditched any pretence of supporting workers by axing 150 staff. Western Sydney University is gutting 400 jobs. The University of Wollongong has cut more than 100 subjects and slashed $21 million from salaries. Monash University is cramming more students into bigger tutorials while slashing staff numbers.
These attacks result from a system that treats education as a business and students and staff as cogs in the machine. With the Albanese government cutting funding and capping international student numbers, universities expect greater uncertainty in their profit margins and are making workers and students pay.
A fightback is underway at the ANU, but it is only the beginning. To defend our education, we need to take on not just vice-chancellors like Bell and Shorten, but the whole rotten system that treats our education like a commodity, and universities like businesses.

Victorian teachers demand dignity, but won’t get it without a fight

Council workers battle to bargain together

Labor’s PALM scheme is modern slavery

Rank and file group set up in Victorian public sector union

The rise of union power in the Pilbara mines

NSW Labor government attacks workers’ compensation

Attack on democracy in the ACT CFMEU

Bakery workers strike for more dough

Union organiser arrested at Canberra airport

Fighting course cuts at ANU

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