Unions

Book cover reading United We Stand: Class Struggle in Colonial Australia with an image of unionists marching.

Rebels In The Workforce: Women Worker’s Resistance in the Nineteenth Century

Read a book excerpt from United We Stand: Class Struggle in Colonial Australia which discusses women’s resistance to workplace exploitation.

Cover of Knocking The Top Off: A People's History of Alcohol in Australia

Jean Young, Kath Williams and the Fight for Equal Pay

Read an excerpt from the book Knocking The Top Off: A People’s History of Alcohol in Australia about the fight for equal pay.

Poster reading Organising for Climate Action. Climate Action is Union Business. Has an illustration of various workers and workplaces.

How to Organise about Climate Related Workplace Health and Safety Issues

Resources produced and compiled by the Australian Services Union for workers organising around climate change and extreme weather related workplace health & safety.

Labor Power and Strategy: How to Read Womack

The 2023 book Labour Power and Strategy, edited by Peter Olney and Glenn Perušek, is centred around a lengthy interview with labour organiser and historian John Womack Jr in which he argues for the importance of ‘strategic workplace organising’

Two May Day marchers carrying a banner in 1973 that reads "Support BLF Green Bans"

Green Bans Timeline: 1971-74

A timeline of the Green Bans implemented by NSW Builders Labourers Federation (BLF) in the early 1970s.

Every Worker in Australia: A Race Class Narrative

This guide offers a blueprint for building and sustaining the collective power needed for workplace and electoral wins.

Flyer advertising rally for Saturday July 15th Rally 10 am Martin Place. Title reads Gay Rights Now! Overlaying image of people protesting with banners.

Revolution Is For Us: Gay Liberation, Unions and the Left in the 1970s

Two pivotal events that set the platform for contemporary campaigning by Australian LGBTQI+ movements: union bans and 1978 Mardi Gras protest.

A group of protestors with large banner that reads Keep Uranium in the ground, Socialist Youth Alliance.

Leave it in the Ground: Union Bans and Uranium Exports in the 1970s

Read about the history of opposition to uranium mining in Australia in the 1970s and early 1980s regarding union bans and uranium exports.

Against Fascism and War: Pig Iron Bob and the Dalfram Dispute, Port Kembla 1938

The 1938 Dalfram dispute involved workers at Port Kembla in Australia striking and refusing to load iron on a ship bound for Japan in 1938.

A large group of men on strike sitting on the steps of the Sydney Opera House in front of one of the opera house sails. Some are wearing hard hats

How Workers Defeated Anti-Strike Laws in the 1970s

Read an excerpt from the book, Without Bosses: Radical Trade Unionism in the 1970s, about workers retaining the right to strike.

Strikers walking along a rocky beach next to the water holding signs. One reads Equal rights for all workers.

Defending Unionism: The Weipa Dispute, 1995

Learn how workers in Weipa forced a mining company to accommodate collective bargaining by combining strike action and a port blockade.

an old black and white photo of a procession of people walking along a street outside a hotel with text on their roof that reads Royal Hotel

Beer Strikes: A History of Hotel Boycotts in Australia, 1900-1920

Watch this video presentation about beer strikes and the history of hotel / pub boycotts in Australia in the early 1900s.

workers sitting on steps outside Opera House

The 1972 Sydney Opera House Work-In

Learn about the Sydney Opera House ‘work-in’ carried out by construction workers who expelled management & continued work under workers’ control.

a group of men in work clothes covered in coal dust wearing hard hats with miners lamps on the hats

The Nymboida Coal Mine Takeover, NSW, 1975–1979

How workers at the Nymboida coal mine in NSW resisted mass sackings by taking over and running the mine themselves in 1975. firstly through an occupation and then via union ownership.

Lines of Resistance: What can the Old Left offer today’s creatives?

Lines of Resistance: A Symposium on Media, Arts & Activism that profiles research on the role of media and visual arts in activist movements.

a large group of people gathered together in a group posing for a photo. The front row is seated on the ground and others are standing behind.

Local Power: Shifting Power at the Local Level – Candidate School

Case study of organising at a local level, Victorian Trades Hall Council’s Candidate School, focused on changing who gets elected to local office.

Crowd of strikers in Market Square, Brisbane

Australians general strike for right to unionize, Brisbane, Australia, 1912

Brisbane unionists organised a general strike in 1912 to protect and enhance the rights of tramways workers to organise.

anti nuclear protestors on USS Worden ship with protest banners saying No Nuclear Weapons

Australians campaign against nuclear power and uranium mining, 1974-1988

Street marches and trade union action typified Australian resistance to the building of nuclear reactors and uranium mining and export.

Protest poster - Aboriginal Australians in protest holding a sign that says No mining on sacred land. The wording on the poster says We, The People of Noonkanbah call for support.

Noonkanbah 1979: When Unionists Stood up for Aboriginal Rights

The Noonkanbah dispute was an important chapter in both the struggle for Australian Aboriginal rights and union solidarity in the 1970s-80s.

Developing Strategic Campaigns: An ITF Manual for Trade Union Activists, Educators and Organisers

This manual will help workers to identify clear campaign goals and objectives, develop strategies and tactics, and create unifying public messages and timelines for campaigns.

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