PANEL: Militants in the workplace
The trade union movement in Australia is in an abysmal state. Membership and density continues to decline, penalty rates have been slashed, EBA’s have been ripped up, with workers forcibly returned to award conditions and wages have stagnated. The employing class have been on the offensive for the past decade with precious little resistance mounted from our collective organisations. The Ensuring Integrity Bill threatens to destroy our democratic organisations, but not even this stirred union officials to lead a fight, preferring instead to rely on the lobbying far-right politicians like Pauline Hanson to save their skin.
There is a long road ahead to reviving militant class struggle unionism. But the basic steps of recruiting to the union, politicising our workplaces and rebuilding, where we can, a culture of class struggle is necessary work for any socialist who works. In this session, we will hear from socialist activist about their industrial and political organising.
Panel features:
Nick Davies, RTBU NSW who has made important contributions to challenging sexism on the job, strengthening the confidence and unity of workers in the process.
Emma Dook is an IEU delegate who has organised an english language school and is fighting for their first collectively bargained EBA in an industry with very little history of trade unionism and industrial struggle.
Tim Arnot, delegate with the Queensland Teachers Union on the opportunity that the school strike for climate actions create for politicising our workplace and activating our unions.
Readings
Tom Bramble, Are unions doomed to fail? Red Flag 13 April 2018
https://redflag.org.au/node/6287
Tom Bramble, Unions pro-Labor electoral strategy is a failure, Red Flag 20 May 2019
https://redflag.org.au/node/6781
Jerome Small, What can we learn from past union revivals, Red Flag 3 February 2019