Jerome Small

Fair Work Commission plans giant pay cut for community sector workers

On 22 September, half a million workers, students and solidarity activists mobilised in more than 80 cities across Italy under the slogan “Blocchiamo Tutto” (Let’s block everything). The Unione Sindacale di Base (USB), which initiated the action, has called for “the immediate break-off of relations with the terrorist state of Israel”.
Major ports across the country were shut down from Genoa, Palermo, Livorno, Ancona, Trieste, Salerno, and Venice, where strikers braved police water cannons. Train stations were blockaded in Naples, Turin, Rome, and Milan, while strikes of railway staff paralysed transport networks. 
Protests took place on a truly national scale, including in regional centres with little living memory of struggle, demonstrating the depth of support for Palestine and indignation at the government’s inaction. 
At Rome’s La Sapienza University, students launched an occupation of the arts faculty, while campuses in Bologna and Torino were blockaded. Many schools were shut as students and staff walked out.
Demonstrators also took to highways, shutting main roads in Pisa, Florence, Turin, Bologna and Rome. In doing so, they were defying the Meloni government’s Security Decree passed in June, which makes blocking traffic and major infrastructure a serious criminal offense. This will be an early test of strength between protesters and the government over the enforcement of these laws. 
The strike wave even reached the Vatican, where members of the Association of Vatican Lay Employees joined a march to parliament as part of the Priests Against Genocide network. 
Italy’s solidarity movement has been galvanised by the Global Sumud Flotilla currently sailing to Gaza, the largest-scale attempt to break Israel’s siege and deliver vital aid thus far. One of the Flotilla’s departure points was the northern Italian port city of Genoa, and it was there that the Block Everything movement began last August. 
As the convoy prepared to launch, a campaign to collect food aid for Gaza revived the city’s dormant but deeply-rooted activist traditions. Unions, neighbourhood committees and charities collected more than 300 tons of materials. On 30 August, 40,000 marched to see off the flotilla singing Bella Ciao, out of a population of 564,000. 
The call to action was taken up early on by the Autonomous Port Workers Collective (CALP), a Genoan dock workers’ collective affiliated to the USB, one of the country’s many “grassroots” or “base” unions, which operate separately from the mainstream federations. 
In a widely shared video, CALP member Riccardo Rudino pledged at the demonstration: “If, even for 20 minutes, we lose contact with our comrades on the flotilla, we will block all of Europe: from Genoa’s docks, not a single nail will leave, it will be a global strike”.
Under the slogan “Lets close the ports to war”, CALP has previously blocked arms shipments intended for Saudi Arabia’s war on Yemen, and on 7 August refused to load arms onto a Saudi ship allegedly bound for Israel. Last Thursday, dockworkers in the port city of Ravenna also took action, blocking two trucks suspected of carrying weapons. 
Coming off the back of these actions, the impressive response to USB’s call for a strike on 22 September represents a significant leap forward for the movement. The call to block everything has been taken up in workplaces from ports to logistics centres, but also drawn huge sections of civil society behind it, from Trieste in the northeast to Sicily in the south. 
The main union federation, the CGIL, which represents the majority of organised labour, has dragged its feet in mobilising its membership for Gaza, and didn’t participate in 22 September. CGIL instead organised its own four-hour strike three days before, which was strongly observed in some workplaces. But the more significant action on 22 September emerged from below. The hope is that this mobilisation can put pressure on larger, more conservative federations like CGIL to organise serious strikes. 
The size of the demonstrations is an expression of a rising tide of struggle in Europe, fuelled by disgust at Israel’s genocide in Gaza, and a continent-wide turn to austerity and militarism. 
In France, hostility to the government’s proposed austerity budget generated the first “Bloquons tout” (“Let’s block everything”) movement on 10 September, forcing the resignation of one prime minister, and pressuring the unions to call mass strikes against his replacement. This provided a clear model for Italy to follow. 
In Spain last week, protesters forced the abrupt ending of the Vuelta, Spain’s Tour de France equivalent, in opposition to the inclusion of the Israeli team. Spain’s centre-left government, which has long traded on rhetorical opposition to Israel’s genocide, has been forced to cancel a €700 million deal to acquire Israeli-designed rocket launchers. 
While governments across Europe attempt to cover their complicity in genocide and placate the movement for Gaza with meaningless gestures, Italy’s governing far-right coalition has refused even this concession. 
Days before the strike, Infrastructure and Transport Minister Matteo Salvini, leader of the far-right Lega, went on Israeli channel <a href="https://www.ilfattoquotidiano.it/2025/09/19/salvini-intervista-israele-palestina-hamas-news/8132274/">i24news</a> to denounce the Palestine movement, saying “I don’t think they know what they’re protesting about. Islamic terrorism is the main problem in the world today.”
Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, of the fascist-rooted Brothers of Italy, seized on small clashes in Milan provoked by police to demonise what she characterises as the “violence and destruction” of “hooligans”. The government’s attacks are not limited to words. Palestine protests, including those of high school students, are routinely met with <a href="https://www.facebook.com/reel/910031973922530">brutal police repression</a>. 
Meloni’s highly authoritarian party is committed to ruling as the “party of order”, and to repressing any manifestation of left-wing opposition. It sees the militarised Israeli ethno-state as a model to be emulated. 
But the government’s opposition to the movement is about more than ideology. It’s also about defending the nexus between the Italian state, the US-led NATO military alliance, and Italy’s highly profitable weapons industry. Meloni has committed to raise defence spending to meet NATO targets of 5 percent of GDP in the next decade. This will mean a massive windfall for companies like Leonardo, currently valued at €29.45 billion, which rely heavily on contracts with Israel. 
The cost of this new arms race will be borne by workers already reeling after years of one-sided class war. In Italy, real wages have fallen 7.5 percent since 2021, precarity is rife and, on average, three people die at work every day. 
Against this world of austerity and war, 22 September is another flicker of hope. It shows the possibility of a political response based on working class power and solidarity. As the USB said in a statement on the day of the strike: “Workers have returned to centre stage and are calling on citizens, all citizens, to stand up. They are not doing so for a contract renewal but to demand justice for a distant and tormented people. In this age of selfishness and individualism, this seems unthinkable. But no, solidarity between peoples and brotherhood beyond borders are not dead and buried values; on the contrary, they are alive and kicking.”

Luca Tavan

‘Block everything with Palestine in our hearts’: Italy paralysed by Gaza actions

If someone took $20,000 from you, you’d probably want it back. In fact, you’d probably think it’s worth quite a bit of effort to get it back. That sort of money can mean a lot of extra security, comfort and dignity for most workers. 
And if you and every single one of your workmates had that kind of money taken out of your pay packets, with most of this missing cash flowing to the already filthy rich, it’s pretty likely you’d expect your union to try to organise to win it back. 
The reality, however, is that most unions in this country have done very little to organise a fight to reverse the massive hit to our incomes due to inflation over the past four years. Before looking at why this is the case, it’s worth exploring just how much we’ve gone backwards over that time. 
Writing in the Guardian
in May, economist Greg Jericho <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/grogonomics/2025/may/15/australia-wage-growth-remains-solid-but-now-the-recovery-needs-to-be-sustained">pointed out</a> that a worker on the average wage is 4.4 percent behind where they would be if wages had kept up with inflation over the past four years, as measured by the Consumer Price Index. This means that someone earning the average wage ($93,000 per year in 2021) is around $4,000 per year worse off, in 2021 dollars. Adjusted for inflation (CPI), that’s the equivalent of around $90 per week in today’s money, or $180 missing from each fortnightly pay packet. 
But even this is a significant understatement of the financial pain many wage earners are experiencing.
Jericho points out that the CPI is designed to exclude changes in average mortgage costs, which have been a massive burden for many workers over the past four years. These mortgage costs are included in another measure of inflation compiled by the Australian Bureau of Statistics—the Employee Living Cost Index (ELCI). 
Using this measure, Jericho calculates that the average wage earner in Australia is not 4.4 percent behind inflation, but double that: on average each of us is a staggering 8.9 percent behind where we would be had wages kept up with inflation since 2021. Put in dollar terms, this amounts to nearly $180 per week or $360 per fortnight. 
What if we add up all these weekly losses? How much have we lost in total
during the inflationary surge since 2021? <a href="https://github.com/jimb0w/Inflation/blob/master/Inflation.pdf">Detailed statistical modelling</a> carried out for Red Flag quantifies this loss: 
<ul><li>Someone on the average wage ($93,898 in 2021) has lost a total of $23,374 since July 2021, compared to if they’d kept up with the Consumer Price Index. </li><li>This figure rises to a staggering $33,919 in wages lost to inflation since 2021 if we use the Employee Living Cost Index instead of CPI. </li><li>Average wages are skewed upwards by a minority of very highly paid wage earners like senior managers. The median wage is $20,000 lower, and is more representative of what most of us earn: half of us earn less than the median, and half earn more. Still, someone on the median female full-time wage ($71,666 in 2021) has lost $12,767 over four years compared to inflation measured by the CPI—or $20,815 if we use the ELCI.</li></ul>
Wages set by enterprise agreements will vary from this average, but the big majority will give a similarly bleak picture. 
Of course, all of these are average figures. Many of us will have been impacted less than this, others more. But they give us a general picture of the staggering degree to which wages have gone backwards over the past four years.
This money has not simply disappeared. Much of it has been redistributed from wage earners to corporations and the super-rich. A <a href="https://australiainstitute.org.au/post/corporate-profits-increase-inflation-fact-sheet/">study</a>
by the Australia Institute in 2023 found that surging corporate profits accounted for more than half of the increase in prices since 2021; wage earners’ loss has been corporate Australia’s gain. 
Since 2021, while wages have fallen behind prices by 4.4 percent (CPI) or 8.9 percent (ELCI), the total value of companies listed on the Australian Stock Exchange has jumped from $2,500 billion to $3,155 billion. This is an increase of 26 percent, well ahead of the rate of inflation. And the combined wealth of the annual Rich 200 list published by the Australian Financial Review has soared from $480 billion in 2021 to $668 billion this year—a jump of 39 percent in just four years.
Companies fattening their profits and their balance sheets at our expense isn’t some law of nature. It’s a policy choice by the rich, by the capitalists, and by the governments that serve them—both Liberal and (mainly) Labor over the past four years. 
In the face of this onslaught, our unions have been largely passive. So much so that it no longer goes without saying that it is actually possible to win pay rises: they can be achieved through industrial action, and unions are supposed to play a role in making this happen. 
A small number of unions showed this back when inflation was lifting off in late 2021, winning <a href="https://www.afr.com/work-and-careers/workplace/thousands-of-workers-to-get-5pc-pay-rises-off-inflation-spike-20220320-p5a672">a sprinkling of enterprise agreements</a> that included CPI-linked pay clauses at major companies including Toll Global Express, Teys meatworks and STC trucking. These clauses ensured that workers at these companies at least didn’t go backwards relative to CPI. The Australian Financial Review spent plenty of words <a href="https://www.afr.com/work-and-careers/workplace/inflation-guarantees-in-union-deals-trigger-7pc-plus-wage-bumps-20230621-p5di8v">sooking</a>
about these results in the months and years that followed; anything that moves the burden of inflation from workers to employers is a scandal, according to them.
But as inflation increased, the union movement actually retreated from pursuing claims along these lines. In 2022 and 2023, there were very few examples of pay rises being won that matched or exceeded inflation. Some of the few in the private sector were from the offshore gas industry in Western Australia. The Offshore Alliance (the MUA and AWU) demonstrated that going <a href="https://awu.net.au/national/news/2022/09/17897/76-days-230-workers-and-15-billion-how-oa-members-won-a-landmark-ea-on-the-shell-prelude/">straight for the jugular</a> of major corporations can still win <a href="https://offshorealliance.org.au/news/phi-offshore-alliance-keeps-moving-up/">spectacular results</a>. 
The largest-scale recent example of a union winning an above-inflation wage result is the Victorian branch of the ANMF. Last May, a mass meeting of 3,000 union members employed in public hospitals unexpectedly rejected the government offer of 3 percent per year, along with the nebulous promise of a Fair Work Commission gender equity adjustment at some point. 
Faced with the plausible threat of an industrial campaign waged by a large and very popular group of workers willing to defy their own leadership, the government caved in, granting the nurses a pay rise of 28.4 percent over four years. Shortly after, Ambulance Victoria staff won <a href="https://vau.org.au/in-principal-agreement-reached/">increases of 24-33 percent</a> over four years, after a six-month industrial and political campaign.
It’s important to note that the real increase in nurses’ base rate of pay between 2021 and 2028 will total only a little more than 3 percent above inflation, if Reserve Bank inflation forecasts are correct. If we include increased allowances, this figure rises to between 6 and 8 percent ahead of inflation, over seven years. And this is meant to include a historic fix for more than a century of gendered underpayment of nurses too. Despite these limitations, the nurses’ 28.4 percent result has understandably become a benchmark for public sector wage claims more broadly. 
But while Victoria’s Labor government may have crumbled at the plausible threat of a prolonged industrial campaign from rebellious nurses, it has refused to move far from its wages policy of 3 percent per year for other groups of workers, preferring to tough out prolonged but low-intensity industrial campaigns. Last month, public mental health workers voted to accept a union leadership recommendation to settle for a deal far short of the initial claims rather than escalating the industrial campaign. Thirty-eight percent voted against acceptance, but to win against a government digging in its heels will need a much more vigorous industrial campaign, one capable of creating a crisis for the government. 
Outside of Victoria, one of the few other high-profile examples of a successful fight for above-inflation pay rises is government teachers in NSW, who in late 2023 won <a href="https://www.nswtf.org.au/news/2023/09/20/government-puts-pen-to-paper-inking-pay-rises-for-teachers/">an immediate pay rise</a> of between 8 percent (for top of scale teachers) and 12 percent (for graduate teachers). This followed a lengthy <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/apr/26/nsw-teachers-to-strike-next-week-over-pay-and-conditions">industrial campaign</a> under the previous Liberal government, and the teachers’ <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-08-03/nsw-teachers-wage-negotiations-stall-after-government-offer/102683528">rejection</a>
of a pathetic 2.5 percent offer from the incoming Minns government. This is a significant result, though the NSW teachers’ 2024 <a href="https://www.nswtf.org.au/news/2024/12/12/significant-gains-for-school-members/">pay deal</a> was only 3 percent per year over three years.
The failure of most unions to pursue wage rises aggressively is painfully squeezing household finances. Added to this, many essential industries—including health care, education and community services—struggle to retain experienced workers because of punishing workloads and low wages, which jeopardises and threatens the many services working-class people rely on. Winning back the money lost to inflation matters: it can be the difference between thousands of experienced staff staying in a vital industry, or being forced to look elsewhere for a living wage, intensifying the spiralling crisis in many essential services. 
And whatever industry we’re in, the benchmark we set—by either accepting a massive hit to our pay or by fighting for a real pay rise—has the potential to demoralise or inspire others. Fighting is therefore not just about winning something for ourselves, but for every worker who deserves a pay rise. 
A determined fight over wages can also be an important step to rebuilding the sort of unionism we need: the sort of unionism that used industrial action to win breakthroughs in pay, shorter hours, life-saving health and safety—and which didn’t stop there. 
Historically strong unions like the Builders Labourers’ Federation, the metalworkers and the maritime unions all developed into powerful industrial units through fights over wages—and then used that industrial strength to fight for a better society, in dozens of different ways. 
So why are there so few unions following this path today?
We know from ballooning corporate profits that the money is there. The precious few examples we have of workers fighting show that governments and corporations can
be compelled to fund decent wages. We know from these same examples that to shake this money loose requires a serious industrial campaign, sometimes combined with the political pressure that strikes by groups like nurses, teachers and ambulance workers can create. 
So the reason this is not being pursued on a wider scale is not that it is impossible. Rather, it’s a political choice. To put it simply: the majority of the leadership of the unions in Australia have a decades-long track record of pursuing a policy of class collaboration rather than conflict. The most notorious example of this is the <a href="https://redflag.org.au/node/7336">Prices and Incomes Accord</a>
of the 1980s. Under this policy, union leaderships teamed up with a federal Labor government to impose industrial peace and wage restraint. Profit share rose while wages share declined—not by chance but as a matter of state policy, with the union leadership as active partners. With the active or passive assistance of almost all of the top union leaders, it was Labor that imposed the neoliberal agenda of privatisation, deregulation and booming corporate wealth that still plagues us today. 
This important fork in the road for the Australian union movement wasn’t just a matter of industrial strategy. It was a political choice, one of prioritising the supposed “national interest” rather than the uncompromising pursuit of workers’ interests. 
The politics of the union movement’s leadership hasn’t improved since that time. It’s notable that in countries where neoliberalism was imposed by conservative forces such as Thatcher in the UK and Reagan in the US, this produced a somewhat more combative and oppositional legacy in some unions. Both of those countries had a notably <a href="https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/wkstp.pdf">higher level</a>
of <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/britains-historic-strike-wave">strikes</a>
over the peak of the inflationary wave in 2022 and 2023—the UK <a href="https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/timeseries/bbfw/lms">recording</a>
ten times the decade-long average of strikes in those years—whereas the strikes over pay in Australia, while welcome, <a href="https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/labour/earnings-and-working-conditions/industrial-disputes-australia/latest-release">barely moved</a> the statistical dial. The legacy of the class-collaborationist approach of the Accord is still entrenched in Australian unions.
There’s an obvious consequence of this for those who want our unions to take a different course: building a more combative union movement is a political project, not simply an industrial one. Of course we should be pushing our unions to fight to win back those missing tens of thousands of dollars. At the same time, we need a political strategy: one that rejects the politics of class collaboration, and instead sets out to rebuild the politics of class struggle. Pushing for higher wages has to be one part of this wider project.

Pay rises need to make a comeback, and there’s a simple way to win them

The Interim vice-chancellor of the Australian National University, Rebekah Brown, has announced that there will be no more job cuts as part of sweeping restructures that began in 2024.
This comes as a relief to the remaining 105 staff whose positions were slated to be cut under the proposal to “Renew ANU”. The announcement, made in an all-staff town hall meeting on Thursday, is a testament to the sustained pressure by members of the National Tertiary Education Union and students involved in the “No Cuts at ANU” campaign. It follows the resignation of the former vice-chancellor, Genevieve Bell, last week.
The cuts have left no part of the university unscathed. Renew ANU aimed to slash $250 million in spending across the university, including $150 million on salaries. But five areas still face major overhauls, including the College of Arts and Social Sciences and the College of Science and Medicine. These include substantial cuts to the world-renowned School of Music, which would end the teaching of performance and composition.
According to the latest figures from the union, nearly 1,100 staff have been forced out since last year. Academics who relocated to Canberra for their dream jobs have found themselves competing with their colleagues for a smaller number of positions in Hunger Games-like spill and fill processes. In backing down from further job cuts, Rebekah Brown confirmed that they are no longer needed for the ANU to meet its “savings” target. 
This is partly due to the university’s voluntary redundancy scheme. Touted as a win by the union, the scheme allowed the university to cut jobs on the cheap. Those expressing interest in it have fewer entitlements than those who are made redundant and must have their application approved by senior management. If their position is deemed necessary, it will be rejected. The fact that 175 staff have taken a voluntary separation package rather than wait to be made redundant speaks to the depth of resentment towards the ANU and the desire by many to leave.
The cuts have generated significant opposition from staff, students and the wider Canberra community. More than 2,000 people have signed a petition calling on the ANU Council to stop the cuts and terminate the employment of the chancellor, Julie Bishop (and the now departed Genevieve Bell). This follows staff resoundingly rejecting a proposal to forgo their scheduled pay rise in December last year, and more than 800 supporting a motion of no confidence in the chancellor and vice-chancellor earlier this year.
Students involved in the No Cuts campaign have protested and organised forums against the cuts, including a Special General Meeting of the Australian National University Students’ Association earlier this week. The meeting voted to sack Julie Bishop, reverse Renew ANU, open the ANU’s financial books and fully fund free education.
Although many are understandably celebrating the end of Bell’s reign and the wave of job cuts, there is no indication that the restructures will be completely scrapped. In fact, Brown was clear in her town hall address that she intends to “complete the Renew ANU strategy”, including the decision not to embed performance into the curriculum of the new Bachelor of Music.
This comes as no surprise. As the former provost, Brown, like Bishop, is part of the same management team overseeing the cuts. For her part, Bishop remains chancellor despite allegations in a Senate enquiry that she bullied an academic on ANU Council to “near suicide”.
Forcing a widely hated vice-chancellor to resign in disgrace and ending forced redundancies should give hope and confidence to those facing similar attacks at universities around the country. While it remains to be seen exactly how much of the original plan to disestablish, amalgamate and centralise various parts of the ANU will be implemented, the fight for a university that puts staff and students before profit continues.

Elliot Downes

No more job cuts, but the fight continues at ANU

“Can I see with a show of hands—who here has walked out from work today?” A cheer ripples across the growing crowd outside the State Library of Victoria on 10 September as dozens of people, maybe a hundred, put up their hands. Somewhere around ten times that number have skipped work, used a day off, extended a lunch break or otherwise made time in our day to stand with these striking workers. 
Some strikers hold giant letters, spelling it out in red, green and black: ON STRIKE FOR GAZA. For the second time since Israel’s latest genocidal onslaught started on Gaza, community sector workers in Melbourne workplaces have done something that the whole union movement should be doing—used workers’ industrial muscle to disrupt business as usual, by going on strike and rallying in the streets. 
As one of the strike organisers, Louisa Bassini, told Red Flag: “We know we have the power as workers to do more to stop the genocide. This action has helped prove that we can use that power, and will hopefully encourage others do the same in other industries”.
The rally is a sight for sore eyes. 
Tasnim Sammak, a member of the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU), addresses the crowd on behalf of the Free Palestine Coalition: “We can’t look at the images of the rubble and destruction and think it’s over. No. What we should think is: we need to act now, with urgency. And urgency needs to fuel us”.
A series of striking workers take the microphone. A striking worker from Inner Melbourne Community Legal points out the hypocrisy of community sector employers and peak bodies:
“Despite standing for so called justice and human rights, our peak bodies have refused to speak out—and have said ‘it’s not our core business’. Shame! That’s why we’re here today. It’s time to do the most powerful thing we can do as workers, and that’s to withdraw our labour.” 
“We’re a union shop—we’re all here!”, announces a speaker from Flat Out, an advocacy organisation for women in prison: “What’s the point of having civil society, a community sector, if it won’t stand up to the government. I know the government funds us, but at some point you’ve just got to say: stop the genocide, free Palestine!”
“We’re sick of seeing parents holding dead children in their arms”, says another striker. “We’re sick of seeing plastic bags full of body parts. And we’re also sick of seeing children playing funerals because they see people on stretchers all the time. Israel bombs Qatar and our government and media are silent, because they’re part of a genocidal machine which is hungry for profit. But we’re not silent. We’re on strike today. We’re using our power as workers to shut things down, saying we’re not going to work as usual during a genocide, and calling on other workers to strike too.”
Another striking worker puts it in the most straightforward way: “We have to strike because nothing else is working”. 
The rally features banners and flags from the NTEU, and from the Australian Services Union which covers most of the striking workers. Some at the rally are members of the Australian Education Union, others the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation. Many have been active in the various Unionists for Palestine groups over the past two years.
 It is living proof that despite the crushing consensus among politicians and media commentators, large numbers of workers recognise and oppose a genocide when they see one. One attendee, social worker Louie, tells Red Flag: “Today is a real demonstration of the fact that workers support Palestine and oppose genocide and they want to build forces so that their voices are heard”. Another social worker, Rachel, explains: “I’m here because I’m sick of seeing children starving, and seeing people blown up”. 
“I want to put pressure on the government to put sanctions on Israel”, says another. 
Easily the largest and most visible political group on the day is Victorian Socialists, which includes several strike leaders and rally organisers among its members. Veteran journalist Marty Hirst gives an impassioned speech about the importance of fighting for free speech on Palestine, announcing the launch of a <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/media-workers-to-launch-free-speech-campaign-for-palestine">major campaign</a> on the issue on 20 September. There are references to the current important fight to stop the Fair Work Commission from imposing massive pay cuts on community sector workers.
Some recall the proud history of workers in this country acting in solidarity with workers worldwide, connecting that to an argument that <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/why-palestine-union-business">Palestine is union business</a>. There are cheers for the dock workers of Genoa, Italy, who have <a href="https://x.com/usbsindacato/status/1962085329575313604">pledged</a> to blockade the port—and to call out other ports in solidarity—if Israel intercepts the Global Sumud Flotilla, which is currently sailing to Gaza. A pledge to rally (and if possible, strike) in support of the Genoa dock workers if and when they take action in defence of the solidarity flotilla is greeted by loud applause. 
But it’s rally co-chair Monica Campo who really brings the house down by talking about the importance of fighting for the right to strike—by striking. 
“The Fair Work Act deliberately limits our ability to organise, and to use the power that we have as workers, as a class”, Campo explains. “It limits our ability to continue that long tradition of standing in solidarity with international struggles. We should and must continue to fight these limitations in the Fair Work Act, and we’re pleased to hear that the ASU has committed to keep challenging these limitations on our right to strike. But one way to challenge the law is to break it!” The applause building through the crowd erupts into cheers. 
This is more than a propaganda point—it should be a call to action. 
Though it is right to emphasise the repressive and anti-democratic nature of Labor’s Fair Work Act, it is also the case that the sort of “demonstration strikes” that community sector workers have now taken twice against the genocide have rarely, if ever, resulted in sackings or even serious disciplinary action. Of course, the level of support in individual workplaces and within union structures, and a concrete assessment of how management are likely to respond are all important factors. But this form of industrial action can and should be much more widespread. 
Every unionist in the country owes a debt to the community sector Palestine strikers. They are showing us that we don’t have to resign ourselves to the unspeakable horror unfolding in Gaza today. And the strikers are continuing a living, breathing, organising, fighting current of solidarity—one that has played a crucial role in the history of the working-class movement. 
The official, Labor-aligned leadership of our movement have spent decades smothering the political radicalism and industrial militancy that kept this tradition of struggle and solidarity alive. But the strikers are reminding everyone of the obvious truths: that workers still have the power, that more of us need to use it, and that we still have a world to win.

‘One way to challenge the law is to break it!’: Community sector workers strike for Palestine again

The decision by Australian Services Union (ASU) members in the community sector to walk off the job for the second time in support of Palestine is an important moment in Australian labour history. In a country where industrial action is tightly policed and the right to protest under threat, taking strike action against genocide is an act of courage and principle. 
The workers’ defiance stands in stark contrast to the complicity of political leaders. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s appointment of Jillian Segal as “antisemitism envoy” is a smokescreen—her role is to suppress Palestine solidarity. Albanese also refuses to impose sanctions on Israel. NSW Premier Chris Minns has repeatedly tried to ban pro-Palestine marches in Sydney. These are not security measures—they are political censorship.
In February 2025, the NSW parliament passed the Crimes Amendment (Places of Worship) Bill, criminalising protests near places of worship with penalties of up to $22,000 or two years’ imprisonment. The law expands police powers and exempts protests only if approved by police or part of industrial action—ironically, the very loophole ASU workers are now using to strike for Palestine. Across Australia, 49 anti-protest laws have been introduced in the past two decades, disproportionately targeting environmental and human rights activists.
Repression is happening everywhere. In the UK, protesters have been arrested for holding signs supporting the activist group Palestine Action. US students have been expelled for standing in solidarity with Palestine. Journalists have been sacked and, like Mary Kostakidis here in Australia, dragged through the courts for the crime of criticising Israel. Google and Microsoft workers have been fired for protesting against the companies’ military contracts with Israel. 
But defiance matters. The case of Antoinette Lattouf, sacked by the ABC for reposting a Human Rights Watch statement, was a small but vital win. Her legal fight exposed institutional cowardice. More powerful still was the sight of tens of thousands of Australians taking to the streets in support of Palestine, despite official efforts to stop them.
Free speech is a lofty notion, but the reality is that some voices are much louder than others. The rich speak through their control of media empires and lobbyists. The poor and the oppressed can only make themselves heard through protest, disruption, and refusal—actions they are all too often punished for. Defending free speech means defending the right to resist, to strike, and to organise. The ASU workers have shown us what that looks like.
Our side needs to be organised to defend freedom to speak out about genocide and the apartheid state of Israel. This is why Victorian Socialists members in the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance have initiated a coalition to defend freedom of speech on Palestine.
The first meeting of the coalition is on Saturday 20 September, 2pm at Brunswick Town Hall. Speakers include journalists Amy Remeikis, Antoun Issa, and Mary Kostakidis. <a href="https://victoriansocialists.org.au/civicrm-event/1652">Tickets are $10 and available here</a>.

Marty Hirst

Media workers to launch free speech campaign for Palestine

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.

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‘One way to challenge the law is to break it!’: Community sector workers strike for Palestine again

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Community sector workers to walk out for Palestine again

QLD public sector strikes show potential, but more is needed

Victorian Socialists launch Socialist Workers’ Caucus

Freelance journalists in Australia vote for Palestine solidarity

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