VANGUARD - Expressing the viewpoint of the Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist)
For National Independence and Socialism • www.cpaml.org
The landslide election victory by the ALP in the 2025 election has not seen any further changes to the Fair Work Act.
The changes made during the ALP’s first term of office such as Same Job, Same Pay and Multi Employer Bargaining, Casual Conversion and minimal Delegates Rights clauses in Awards and Agreements have enabled some sections of the working class to become stronger in the workers’ ever-present struggle against capital.
In the State and Territories workers in the public services sectors including ambulance officers, nurses, hospital workers and school teacher aids and cleaners, have won through action higher wages than in recent years.
The largest wage increases have been realised in the federally funded aged care and child care sectors. These wage increases were a result of workers in those sectors through their Unions being able to exert political pressure on an ALP government. The Unions supported the ALP election campaign in exchange for ALP commitment to fund higher wages.
Apart from some Labor hire workers’ wages significantly increasing under Same Job Same Pay legislation, wage increases across the whole private sector have not been nearly as high.
The leaders of Unions whose members rely on federal funding from either federal or state governments have been reluctant to push the boundaries and pursue the federal government on issues affecting all workers such as the Right to Strike if workers are employed under an Award or during the life of an Enterprise or Multi Employer Agreement if workers are so employed.
The dependence of some Union leaderships on their relationship with the ALP has also seen them compliant with the ALP in government destroying a Union ( CFMEU Construction Division ) by putting it in control of a government appointed administrator.
Divisions within Union Ranks
This situation of higher wages in sectors reliant on government funding and associated strategies by Union leaderships to achieve these wage outcomes with limited industrial action and by being “responsible” leaders by not upsetting the private sector employers has caused divisions within the ranks of union members.
Within some of the larger Unions formed through amalgamations with very broad industry coverages, the strategy of high dependence on ALP governments in office definitely has a downside.
It has given rise to Union members employed in non-government dependent sectors feeling left behind and searching for alternative leaderships of their own Union or jumping ship to another Union.
This has been a problem for workers going back at least to the Accord days of the 1980s and still present today.
In some cases there are challenges to the existing leaderships of Unions every three or four years when internal union elections are held.
Usually the challengers at union election time run on tickets that promise a “members first” or “member led” Union.
Existing Union leadership try and maintain their elected positions by highlighting the wins members have had due to the Union being able to exert pressure on the state or federal government.
Unlike parliamentary elections, voting in Union elections is not compulsory.
So the ticket that is able to reach enough members and urge them to vote is the likely winner.
Unity is strength
On occasions in the history of working class mass organisations (unions) in Australia, there have been unions led by people whose political aim has been to build a working class movement that has a vision for workers that goes beyond capitalism and all its laws and institutions that are designed to maintain the power of the capitalist class.
Those leaders have led some big successful struggles of the working class such as the anti-conscription struggle during World War 1 and the refusal of workers to send iron ore to Japan in lead up to World War 2.
More recently the Your Rights At Work Worth Fighting For campaign that defeated the Howard Government showed the best way forward.
That campaign united workers from public and private sectors, whether union members or not, independent contractors (on AWAs and other sham contracts), small businesses squeezed by corporate giants and people on fixed incomes and the unemployed.
United workers struggle is the way forward in 2026.