‘Now it’s our turn’: teachers strike in South Australia
Teachers and school support staff in South Australia staged a very successful strike on 29 November, staring down a state government determined to trash their hard-won conditions, security and essential services in schools. After a rally last month, 77 percent of Australian Education Union...CONTINUE READING
Farm workers fight wage theft
A new study published by the University of New South Wales highlights widespread wage theft and exploitation of migrant workers in Australia. According to the report, Wage Theft in Silence, almost a third of temporary migrants earn $12 per hour or less – roughly half the legal minimum for...CONTINUE READING
Perth bus drivers take on Transdev
“Labour shouldn’t be treated as a commodity!” This is the rallying cry of Perth bus drivers who for the past month have been engaged in a campaign against public transport contractor Transdev. The campaign started in early October as enterprise bargaining stalled after months of negotiatio...CONTINUE READING
‘There’s a lot of angry men up there’: wildcat strike hits the Pilbara
Around 200 fly-in fly-out (FIFO) workers at Rio Tinto’s Nammuldi iron ore mine in Western Australia’s Pilbara region walked off the job on 12 November. They were demanding to be paid for the almost two-hour travel time between their remote accommodation camp and the mine site. The casual l...CONTINUE READING
Fighting for jobs at Sydney University
University of Sydney staff are fighting to protect jobs and working conditions in the information technology, human resources, campus infrastructure and finance help desk services. In August, the university released a proposal to centralise the four services into one corporate-style call c...CONTINUE READING
Call centres getting organised
Young people have come to expect the worst from working life. For many of us, our first experience of work is in the hospitality industry, where we are lucky if we are paid legal, award wages. Workers aged 20 to 24 are the worst unionised of any age group in Australia: only 7 percent belon...CONTINUE READING
South Australian teachers escalate their campaign
South Australian teachers and school support officers have entered a new phase of combat against the Liberal state government in response to the government’s refusal to continue negotiations for a new enterprise agreement. A rally of more than 500 teachers and support staff outside the Dep...CONTINUE READING
United strike action in Wollongong
“Management across the Illawarra have made a huge mistake because Wollongong is a union town!” These words from Mark Rogers, a casual academic at the University of Wollongong, summed up the sentiment of 23 October in Wollongong. For the first time in 14 years, professional and academic sta...CONTINUE READING
Sacked fundraisers raise hell
The email came through at 3:40pm on Friday, 5 October: all 53 of us employed at the University of Sydney’s fundraising call centre had just lost our jobs. The “regrettable” closure of the centre, the message told us, was to occur the following day, meaning we had less than 18 hours until o...CONTINUE READING