For nearly fifty years, the labour-capital power balance in Australia has tilted further and further towards the bosses with casualisation, profiteering, privatisation, wage suppression, and attacks on collective bargaining. Now, for the first time in 11 years, nationwide union density in Australia increased. Almost a quarter of a million Australians joined unions between 2022-2024, with more workers joining unions in every sector and industry, and the largest growth among workers aged 15-24 years - up 53%!
We may, finally, be at a turning point - and this is just the start.
The share of national income going to wages rather than profits has increased.Australia’s lowest paid workers have won three consecutive increases to the minimum wage over the last three years; this translates to an annual increase of $7,451 before tax.
2.62 million workers are now covered by a collective agreement. This is the highest number since March 2014. In just the last two years, 600,000 more workers have been covered by an EBA.
Unions are winning fair pay for workers through the Same Job Same Pay legislation - with 230 miners at Mt Arthur winning a $1000 per week pay rise.
Gender equality is now an object of the Fair Work Act, with unions winning work value cases to address the historic undervaluation of work in female dominated sectors like Aged Care, early childhood education and health care.
In Victoria we are on a pathway to Treaty, and Victorian Trades Hall Council stands firmly in solidarity with the First Peoples Assembly of Victoria. The union movement knows better than most that people thrive when they have a strong, collective voice and can make choices about what works best for them and their families.
Victoria continues to serve as the testing ground for progressive ideas in Australia. Wage theft laws, Industrial Manslaughter laws, Silica bans and Family Violence Leave started here. While we pursue new reforms - sick leave for casual workers, limits on medical certificate requirements, a ban on non-disclosure agreements and limits on workplace surveillance - we are keenly aware of our responsibility to make the value of these changes apparent to everyone.
Your Trades Hall, the People’s Parliament, will soon be even better placed to support union education, agitation and organising, with Stage 3 restoration and structural works due for completion this year. The historic Victoria St Wing, the oldest section of the hall, is being structurally repaired while layers of Korean War surplus paint are meticulously removed, layer by layer, to restore the exquisite murals below. Our training rooms will have modern heating and cooling - powered by rooftop solar.
Global turmoil dominates the headlines. But the truth is that workers are winning. Unions are winning. Your Trades Hall is advancing because of the strength and tenacity of a united labour movement in Victoria and Australia. And in hard times it remains true that the unity of labour is the hope of the world.
In Solidarity,
Luke Hilakari
Secretary, Victorian Trades Hall Council