Fluro fighters demand secure jobs for better lives

Vanguard November 2013 p. 12
Greg C.

Hundreds of Fluro clad workers descended on Melbourne’s Southern Cross Railway Station on the morning of Friday October 18th, 2013, to highlight the correlation between insecure, precarious employment and poverty.

Converging at the steps of the transport gateway to Melbourne, the event, titled the Fluro Fightback, was the climax in the week that marked Anti-Poverty Week.

The Fluro Fightback, staged for the second year in 2013, was co-ordinated by the National Union of Workers, and is the major yearly event of the union’s Jobs You Can Count On Campaign.

The rally captured the peak hour commuters arriving into the Victorian capital, very likely that many of those workers are themselves placed in insecure, casualised employment.

The Jobs You Can Count On Campaign was launched in 2012 in response to the crisis situation in Australia, a situation which sees 40% of workers placed in insecure, precarious employment.

(Above: NUW workers rally against insecure work and poverty)

The long term campaign is geared at reversing the casualisation trend of the last thirty years, with the goal of ensuring a secure working life for all Australian workers.

Larrikin Priest Father Bob Maguire headlined an impressive line-up of speakers and paid tribute to the Union’s struggle in ensuring living standards of working people.

“I’m more concerned than ever that care, communication, compassion, concern – all those things – we have to re-establish in the centre of our communities, and at the moment that message is through the unions”, the popular figure told the fluro fighters.

In confronting the poverty issue, Fr. Bob drew on the lessons of the motto of the National Union of Workers – ‘Unity is Strength’, and urged activists not to become ‘slacktivists’. “Poverty is the same thing (in reference to bushfires) it wipes out a million Aussies just like that, it sneaks up, you don’t know it’s coming – and the only way we can survive is if we all stick together”

In the fightback against insecure work, the NUW has been at the forefront of the struggle, and in recent times the rank and file have mounted struggles, and have won these fights, against companies such as Coles, Woolworths, Toll and Baiada.

The Australian Council of Trade Unions has adopted the Jobs You Can Count On Campaign to inspire Australian workers to take up the fight against insecure employment. Highlighting the need for secure employment to live a secure life, ACTU President Ged Kearney implored to passing pedestrian traffic “We’re standing up today for decent jobs, for decent work, and for a better life; and who fights for a better life? Australian unions do!”

In welcoming the other Unions and comrades, Luke Hilakari, who will shortly take the reins at Victorian Trades Hall proclaimed “We are sending a message to every single bad boss that we are taking back our permanent jobs – we are taking them back!”

Kearney and Hilakari were also joined at the stage by Lisa Heap from the Australian Institute of Employment Rights and Miriam Lyons from the Centre for Policy Development.

The Fluro Fighters were treated to a musical performance by new Melbourne duo, the Flybz. The young men fled the poverty of their native Sudan, where they found themselves placed in‘precarious employment’, trained as child soldiers. They were complemented by the legendary Painters and Dockers band.

Following a survey of thousands of workers on the subject of insecure work, the National Union of Workers released the results at the Fluro Fightback, which further highlighted the link between precarious employment and poverty. 68% of workers surveyed had trouble paying their rent, whilst the survey found a further 60% had difficulty with childcare.

An overwhelming 90% of workers surveyed delivered a strong message to Canberra, stating that government should be doing more to address the casualisation crisis.

Federal Labor politicians Clare O’Neal and Lisa Chesters were in attendance, along with Greens member for Melbourne Adam Bandt. Under the previous Labor Government Bandt introduced a private members bill Tackling Job Insecurity, yet was rejected by both major political parties.

The current ALP has forgotten its history, ignorant to its formation. The party was formed by Shearers in Queensland, in the year of 1891. These workers were in essence casual workers and they united all those years ago to confront the very issue the NUW is campaigning for today, and was raising awareness of on the morning of October 18.

The Federated Storeman and Packers Union, a forebear to the current NUW, was at the forefront in creating the conditions for Australian workers to enjoy a secure retirement thirty five years ago through major industrial action that won superannuation as an entitlement for working people. In 2013 the Union is leading the fightback to ensure secure and decent working lives.