Tom Barnes, Australian Catholic University and Kevin Lin, University of Technology Sydney
The growing labour movement in China, as fragmented and repressed as it is, offers hope for workers everywhere as an example of organising against incredible odds.
Businesses do better when management and labor are partners, and unions are the key.
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The ranks of labor unions have been decimated over the last half century by outsourcing and anti-union campaigns. The result has been rising inequality.
A still from a NSW election ad, run on television and online, which says “selling the electricity network is wrong; selling it to another country is just not on”.
CFMEU Mining/YouTube
Labor and the unions have decided to play the China card in the NSW election. Such scare campaigns ignore the facts, including that Australia has invested almost as much in China as China has here.
There are still many reasons workers and shop owners avoid Sunday trading.
Jeremy Kunz/Flickr
Given the history on privatisation in NSW, and facing a more emotionally powerful campaign, the Baird government is actually doing pretty well to be closing in on polling day in a winning position.
Asked about what he would consider a good result at the upcoming state election, Mike Baird joked he’d be happy with a win.
AAP/Dan Himbrechts
‘I would be incredibly disappointed, I can’t tell you how disappointed I’d be, if I didn’t have the opportunity to continue beyond March … [these are] some of the most exciting times in politics’.
The WorkChoices campaign was a rare and important success for the Australian union movement, but can it build on this success of eight years ago?
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For British Labour leader Ed Miliband, defeat was yet again snatched from the jaws of victory. With the UK general election less than six months away, the recent Rochester and Strood by-election was a…
The problem confronting Labor and federal leader Bill Shorten is not so much the ties with unions as the centralisation of power in the party and a handful of affiliated unions.
AAP/Lukas Coch
Proposed reforms in the Australian Labor Party aim to give members a greater voice in party governance and policy development. This is driven by the need to reverse the party’s shrinking support base after…
On the surface, 2014 appears to represent “business as usual” for the landscape of South Africa’s electoral politics. The African National Congress (ANC) has secured a fifth straight victory in the latest…
Another union, another conference.
Joe Giddens/PA Archive
The complex web of teacher trade unionism in the UK is about to become even more convoluted and competitive. One of the headteacher unions, the National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT), has announced…
Bill Shorten’s objective of an ‘inclusive’ Labor Party is hard to argue against in theory, but achieving it in practice is likely to prove fraught.
AAP/Julian Smith
Federal Labor leader Bill Shorten has outlined his vision for a rejuvenated Labor Party. His speech earlier this week was a call to arms for the reform of federal Labor’s organisational rules. While Shorten’s…
The Australian Labor Party is constantly faced with an expectation to be true to traditional ‘Labor values’ but to then adapt them to a changing Australia.
AAP/Daniel Munoz
In the wake of the ALP’s poor result in the recent Western Australia Senate election, The Conversation is publishing a series of articles looking at the party’s brand, organisation and future prospects…
British Labour Party leader Ed Miliband has embarked on sweeping internal reform of his party. Should his Australian counterpart Bill Shorten follow suit?
EPA/Andy Rain
In the wake of the ALP’s poor result in the recent Western Australia Senate election, The Conversation is publishing a series of articles looking at the party’s brand, organisation and future prospects…
The only likely beneficiaries of a union-Labor split may be trade unionists.
AAP
In the wake of the ALP’s poor result in the recent Western Australia Senate election, The Conversation is publishing a series of articles looking at the party’s brand, organisation and future prospects…
Factional dealings saw Labor senator Louise Pratt demoted in favour of conservative union heavyweight Joe Bullock in the ALP’s WA Senate ticket.
AAP/Alan Porritt
The only surprising factor in the stories regarding Joe Bullock, who held the number one position on the ALP Senate ticket at Saturday’s Western Australian Senate byelection, was that they took so long…
Trade unions’ survival-based strategy has left them reliant on an outdated ideology of class conflict.
AAP/Dean Lewins
The Conversation is running a series, Class in Australia, to identify, illuminate and debate its many manifestations. Here, Chris Peers argues that the union movement and academics debased the currency…