Trade unions are vital tools for workers to defend their rights and push back against their control and wealth of the bosses. But the state of Australian unions is pretty dire: declining membership, subservience to the Labor Party, and industrial passivity. So what is to be done?
This session will chart how we got to where we are, and how we can get out the impasse we find ourselves in. Far from being inevitable, the low level of trade unionism in this country is the consequence of the political leadership of the trade unions. This session will argue that these trade union leaders have always formed a conservative bureaucracy that is a barrier to radical unionism. Instead, socialists look to rank and file workers to rebuild union power. This session will look at some small examples of rank and file unionism today to show that the dire situation can in fact be changed.