Boss Class Agenda or an Independent Working Class Agenda?

Written by: Bill F. on 15 January 2026

A Boss Class Agenda restricts the scope of claims put forward by unions in their struggle to win better outcomes for the workers. Above all, it imposes a legalistic struggle around EBA negotiations (bosses always want “trade-offs”) and court appearances, with strict rules governing any form of industrial action, strikes and sit-ins especially, and harsh penalties imposed by the capitalist state against unions, officials and even individual union members.

Workers’ action is confined to the particular workplace/s directly involved, with any industry-wide support ruled illegal. The ability of union officials, organisers and delegates to even meet with members in the workplace is tightly managed by the anti-union laws and regulations developed and imposed by both Liberal and Labor governments. Despite the risks, many honest and courageous union officials and organisers find ways to highlight the workers’ issues and support their actions. 

Nevertheless, within this arena of small victories and frequent setbacks in the day to day struggles that workers face in monopoly capitalist society, workers can learn the lesson that collective action and determined organisation can win breathing space for a while, even though capitalism will eventually reassert itself and crack down again. For workers, this treadmill sometimes speeds, sometimes slows, but never stops in the constant battle to “get ahead”.

Given the obstacles and difficulties facing unions, it is little wonder that membership has fallen, a result clearly intended by the ruling class interests of foreign and local monopolies and their compliant governments. For non-union workers, it’s “take it, or leave it”, unless they are skilled or specialised. Yet non-union workers also recognise their common exploitation, poor wages and conditions etc. and can quietly “organise” themselves, even with petitions seeking wider support.

Independent Working Class Agenda

An Independent Working Class Agenda expresses not just the immediate and real basic material needs of the working class, but also their aspirations for a better life, for a fairer world of peace, justice and equality. 

In the context of Australia, an independent working class agenda means one that reflects these fundamental interests of the class without influence or pressure from the Labor Party, the bourgeois media, and any other bourgeois or petty-bourgeois sources. It seeks to empower workers to take control of their struggles in the workplace and in the community, demanding that their union delegates or neighborhood councillors put workers’ interests in first place.

Consequently, it promotes working class leadership, collective action and solidarity. It challenges the anti-union legal system of monopoly capitalism, it takes a militant stand on all the current social and political issues that impact working people and supports their struggles around many issues – against imperialist domination and the threat of imperialist war, poverty and the cost of living, the climate crisis and environmental degradation, Indigenous rights, pollution, civil liberties, racism and discrimination, housing and rent, healthcare, aged care, education, childcare, refugee services, water and power, government social services, laws and regulations, etc. It identifies with the working classes and oppressed peoples across the globe, and expresses solidarity with their struggles against imperialism, exploitation and autocracy.

Thus, the working class can build the allies it needs to be recognised as the force that can lead other sections of society and bring about significant change. It reaches across the whole of the working class, building unity and support for their struggles. It educates workers and their allies in the basic operation of monopoly capitalism, and the dominating role of US imperialism in this country. At the same time, it exposes and shames the greed of the collaborating bosses, the lies of the poisonous mass media, and sell-outs who betray the workers.

While there are various groups and parties that claim to represent the workers’ best interests, they will be judged by the extent to which they seek to build unity and support around the struggles of the class. Not all differences are hostile and antagonistic, and experience over time reveals what positions and ideas are mainly correct, or need to be scrapped or modified.  

An Independent Working Class Agenda is revolutionary in that it moves beyond improving the lot of the working class under the capitalist system, and seeks to replace the current ruling class of foreign and local monopoly capitalism with working class state power where the collective working class runs society – socialism.

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