Ned K.
In January, I went to a funeral to
mourn and celebrate the life of Mike, a former workmate. The eulogy revealed an
extraordinary life of a worker and served as a reminder of the contribution of
millions of individual workers from diverse backgrounds to the development of
Australia’s economy and standard of living.
Mike was a Greek-Australian born at
Innisfail in the Depression years of the 1930s, one of a large family. Life for
his migrant parents was tough enough when disaster struck with the death of Mike’s
mother in his early teens.
His father brought up the six
children and looked to a capital city down south in search of work, lobbing in
Adelaide. The then single parent family found a small flat above some shops in
a busy city street. Mike left school at age fifteen to help support the family.
He took a job as a projection assistant in an old theatre in the city.
In his early twenties he married and
found a better paying job as an assistant in the real estate industry, which
was a great achievement given he had to leave school at a young age. With a
young family to feed and a drop in the housing market, he left the real estate
industry which he enjoyed to find work in factories which, with the long hours,
paid more.
In his early thirties, he got a job
in a large car parts factory, working twelve hour shifts, sometimes seven days
a week, to support his family and pay off their home.
Despite his family responsibilities
and arduous work, he always stood up for his fellow workers and took on the
role of union rep, including a six week strike in the late 1960s which brought
the whole car industry to a standstill.
Following the strike, the company
went on an anti-union crusade, and being a union rep was a risky business. This
did not stop Mike, and he continued this role for the rest of his remarkable 27
years in this factory. If you drove an Australian assembled car between 1965
and 1992, then the chances are that Mike’s labour power was involved in making
it.
Mike was unselfish, encouraging
younger union members to take a leading role in union affairs both within the
factory and the broader labour movement. He never sought the limelight, but was
always there to support the members. When he retired from work, he still
remained a union member and actively supported workers’ struggles.
There are many workers like Mike, the
backbone of the country. It is people like Mike that deserve consideration for
“Australian of the Year” as it is they who produce the wealth and provide the
services that are often taken for granted. The lives of people like Mike are
ignored by the capitalist media because they are deemed ordinary, but they are
indeed extraordinary.
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