Senator Cash, the Minister who brought you raids on union offices, failed anti-worker legislation, and attacks on the rights of working people, has been removed from industrial relations responsibilities.
It’s good news to end the year on.
Minister Cash has spent her entire time in charge of industrial relations running nakedly political, ham-fisted attacks on working people. Raids, Royal Commissions, wage cuts and misuse of public funds.
Now, wage growth is at record lows, and 40 per cent of Australians are in insecure work. It’s a terrible legacy. $4/hr jobs, penalty rate cuts, and 1 in 10 jobs are going to visa workers.
But that’s not why Cash lost her job. Cash lost her responsibilities for industrial relations because people like you took action. The Prime Minister’s hand was forced. Cash was a liability.
People like you who put pressure on Cash in her own backyard, chipped in to run billboards and radio ads in Perth and to keep up the pressure about the need to change the rules so working people have basic rights.
This year, we faced incredible threats to the rights on working people, led by Senator Cash. In the last six months, we had five pieces of legislation put into the parliament to attack working people and their unions. So far, none has passed, after a massive people powered effort to call on the rest of the Parliament to oppose the anti-worker agenda.
These bills would have made it harder for working people to organise to get a pay rise. They would have given more power to big business. More power to the big banks over working people’s savings. And more power to organisations like the union raiding ROC and the ABCC.
As ACTU Secretary Sally McManus said at a speech earlier this year:
You can outlaw us. You can vilify us every day with your media might. You can set up Royal Commissions. You can tap our phones, you can raid our offices. You can vilify and punish our leaders. You can bring in laws to make our work harder. You can take away the support for unions to grow, and refuse to acknowledge that we exist. You can fine us, and jail us.
But you will never defeat us.
We’ve got a big job to Change the Rules for working people. But we can do it, by working together. We got rid of Cash, we prevented their legislation passing the house, for now, and we are changing the story about the sort of country we want to live in. Because of people like you.
You’ve shown this year that by stepping up you can help workers. Workers at Fletcher Insulation, Streets Ice-Cream, Parmalat, PPG Industries, Woolworths, Chin Chin, and many, many more workplaces have won their jobs back or improved their pay and conditions because we all stepped up.
Can’t wait to do it all again in the new year. Enjoy your holidays. You’ve earned it. And to everyone working over the break, we thank you.
Australian Unions Team
http://www.australianunions.org.au/
P.S. Can you spare 10 minutes over the break to complete the Change the Rules survey and share it with your networks? Thanks!
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