Are social issues union issues?

WHEN unions make a stand on a social issue there's often a discourse about whether it's something a union should be involving itself in, but this is at the heart of what unions have done for nearly 200 years in Australia.

In the 1830s unions started to form in Australia due in part to the passing of the NSW Masters’ and Servants Act [1828], which gave colonial authorities the right to prosecute someone who refused to work.

This happened because it was a social injustice and workers had to unite with each other to successfully fight back. In the 1850s Australia saw the boom of the Victorian gold rush, but conditions on the gold fields were terrible as miners couldn't own the land they lived on, were forced by the police to pay extremely high rates for licenses and were denied the right to vote. Miners responded by banding together and on 3 December 1854 we saw the Eureka Stockade rebellion at Ballarat.

The diggers lost the battle but just 12 months later reform passed through parliament to address most of the issues raised by the rebellion. Through the late 1800s into the 1900s we saw unions fight for so many things we now enjoy and take for granted - an 8 hour workday, paid annual leave, penalty rates, equal pay for women, sick leave, long service leave, superannuation, redundancy pay, allowances, meal breaks and rest breaks.

But while unions kept fighting for their members to win greater rights at work they never strayed from raising their voices over social injustices and causes that may not have directly affected some or any of their workers. In the late 1960s the Australian trade union movement stood up against the racial injustices in South Africa and strongly denounced apartheid with several unions sending support via APHEDA (Union Aid Abroad) and taking industrial action against the regime by blocking South African ships and refusing to send goods over that would support the regime.

When Nelson Mandela was finally released and visited Australia in 1990 he spoke to the ACTU and union members in Melbourne and thanked the Australian union movement for its support over the long struggle. In the 1970s in Sydney the government was set to remove most of the green spaces in the city, demolish historic buildings and evict people from smaller houses to make way for highways and more skyscrapers. The NSW Builders Labourers Federation (BLF) took industrial action and refused to work on sites that were environmentally or socially undesirable. These Green Bans were the first industrial actions of their kind in the world and it's thanks to the work of those union members that we still have amazing historic areas like The Rocks and all the green space that's left in the Sydney CBD. We saw the NSW BLF come to the fore again in the 1970s with Pink Bans when they refused to work on building sites at Macquarie University after two gay students were kicked out of residential colleges at the university. The union movement and the students had grown a sense of solidarity through their joint fights against the Vietnam War and South African apartheid. The fight stopped when the ban against gay students being allowed on residence ended. In more recent times we've seen the Australian union movement stand in solidarity with the people of Timor Leste against their struggles with the Indonesian government, successfully campaign against the Howard-era Work Choices industrial relations act, campaign strongly for marriage equality and support the School Strike 4 Climate (Australia) with their rallies.

So next time you see a union take a stance on a social issue, know that this is a rich part of the history of the Australian trade union movement.

Lending your voice to those who can’t always speak out for themselves to right an injustice in Australia or the world is something to be proud of.