“The union movement is still the biggest social movement in the country.”
I have been an active union member all my working life. The union movement is a critical part of a genuinely democratic society, in that at its best it is a space for working people to directly influence their conditions of work. It is also, in many ways, the missing piece of the climate movement.
As a firefighter I am a proud member of the Fire Brigade Employees’ Union. I have served as a station delegate, Vice President, and between 2009 and 2016 I was the State Secretary - the union’s leader.
As State Secretary I was responsible for the day to day running of the union - it’s staff, it’s assets, and the strategic direction to be endorsed or otherwise by the membership. In my tenure as Secretary a lot was achieved, but there are four things in particular I am especially proud of.
The 2012 Workers Compensation strike. This was the first general stoppage of firefighters since 1956. In defiance of the employer, the government, and the Industrial Relations Commission every fire engine in Sydney converged on NSW Parliament in defence of our workers compensation protections. It was this, alongside the work done by our parliamentarians in the Legislative Council, particularly John Kaye and David Shoebridge, that meant that firefighters and paramedics have kept decent workplace protections.
The campaign against station closures, 2012 - 2014. Budget cuts to the Fire Brigade led to rolling closures of fire stations across NSW. Over an eighteen month period the FBEU raised this in the press, in local councils, and anywhere we could get a hearing. Our intervention in the Miranda By-election of 2013, where firefighters in uniform urged voters to “put the Liberals last” proved the final straw for the government. Station closures stopped shortly afterwards.
50/50 recruitment of women to the fire service. Firefighting has historically been seen as a male occupation. In the interests of shifting this, and of the service reflecting the society we serve, the FBEU worked with management to push for fifty percent of all recruits being women. This was a controversial and difficult position for the FBEU to take, but the right one.
Climate Change. In 2010 the FBEU became the first firefighter’s union in Australia, and amongst the first of any union in the nation, to adopt a position on climate change recognising it as a workplace health and safety issue for our industry, as well as a social issue more broadly. Again, this was a difficult debate inside the FBEU, but one that was absolutely the right position to take.
The union movement is still the biggest social movement in the country. The Greens have always prided ourselves on our commitment to and engagement with the movement, and if preselected I will bring to this work a skill set developed over twenty years of practice.