Change the Rules!

Unions have been the primary and most important means by which workers have been able to organise to protect their industrial interests and your rights at work. Unions have delivered us annual leave, personal leave, superannuation and many other benefits. But these outcomes are under serious threat. The union movement has been under continual assault by the forces of the right; big business, the captains of industry and the two largest political parties.

Michaelia Cash and her colleagues, anti-union ideologues, seek to press their advantage. The union movement is being bombarded by amendments to the industrial legislation on a regular basis. Each amendment comes gilt with an outrageous Orwellian designation designed to mask the true intent of the thing. But if you take the time to read the detail you will be shocked. Australian industrial legislation is already some of the most repressive in the world and we are suffering for that. Inequality is at a 70 year high in Australia. Wage growth is rock bottom and profits are sky high; wage share continues to contract while profit share swells.

It is time for a change. Sally McManus, Secretary of the ACTU has been working hard with her team and with a select group of union officials from across the country to plan a campaign that seeks to redress the balance. The campaign is called “Change the Rules” and you will be hearing lots about it over the next year.

Industrial relations don’t happen in a vacuum; the work we do at VAHPA is constrained and guided by the rules and political environment in which we operate. Our ability to get the sort of outcomes we need to get for Allied Health Professionals is dependent on these limits. We must engage in the broader political context and we will, with real vigour and intent.

Take the time to watch this video here. We will be bringing you more of these and enough data and campaign materials to fill your christmas stockings to the brink.

We are at a real turning point here; this is a generational shift and we are going to work together to bring equality and fairness back to Australia.

Solidarity makes us strong.
We are union.
We are VAHPA.