Workers’ power - wages, unions & workers’ rights

Workers make everything in the state run, from the hospitals to the schools, the construction sites and power stations. Yet every day our living standards go backwards as wages fall behind the cost of getting by.

The Minns government has been at war with workers and their unions. Nurses, teachers, rail workers, ferry operators and public servants have had to fight hard against a Labor government refusing to pay them what they deserve, dragging disputes into the industrial courts. Minns has tried to make it harder for workers suffering psychological injury to access workers compensation.

We need to fight for pace setting wage rises, to improve conditions, end employment insecurity and casualisation and regulate workplaces to make them safe and dignified. Just as important, workers need to organise collectively to strike against exploitation and injustice.

We’ll fight for

Rights and collective action

• Remove all restrictions on workers' right to strike in NSW and protect NSW workers from persecution under Australia’s anti-union and anti-strike industrial laws including providing for the political and legal defence of any worker or union being pursued legally for taking industrial action, and banning prosecutions of striking workers by state sector employers.
• Mandate annual elections for health and safety reps in every workplace; where a union has a member or members on site, it must run the election.
• Legislate to allow workers to picket their work during an industrial dispute.
• Make May Day a public holiday.

Wages and conditions

• Moving to a four-day work week with no reduction in pay.
• Reverse attacks on workers compensation and guarantee injured workers full income and medical support. Bring WorkCover workplace accident insurance and compensation fully into public ownership and fund peer and/or specialist support and advocacy services for injured workers, to ensure they receive their full entitlements.
• Reverse outsourcing, privatisation, the use of labour hire and the contracting out of ongoing services, policy work and other core functions of government.
• Cap the pay of executives in the public service, government agencies, universities and state-owned corporations at no more than five times Victoria’s median full-time wage.
• Establish a NSW Wage Inspectorate to investigate bosses for wage theft and gender pay gaps, both individual cases and systemic cases across industries. Allow the inspectorate, unions and workers to prosecute major cases of wage theft.
• Increase funding for NSW Legal Aid to assist migrant workers to get full residence and workplace rights.
• Increase rights and protections of casual and gig economy workers, including introducing a state-funded NSW Sick Pay Guarantee, and implementing a system to ensure leave and other entitlements follow workers whenever they move to a new role.

Public sector

• Review all enterprise agreements with public sector unions to increase wages, making up for the significant loss in real wages workers have suffered in the last decade.
• End all state government contracts with the big four consulting and accounting firms (PwC, KPMG, EY, Deloitte).
• Reverse outsourcing. Bring all policy, advisory, cleaning, temporary staffing, records management and IT work currently outsourced back in-house to a properly staffed and resourced Victorian public service.
• Reverse all public sector job cuts made by the Minns government including cuts at the Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development (DPIRD) and the Department of Customer Service.
• Amend the Code of Ethics and Conduct for NSW Government Sector Employee to protect public servants’ rights to political speech and free expression outside of work.