Delegate profile:
Izrin Ariff I am a casual academic in the School of Communications and Arts at the University of Queensland, and have been lucky to be amongst great active members willing to roll up their sleeves. As long as I remember I supported the union movement, but, like lots of people, I decided to become an activist in the NTEU as I became politicised by the lack of action on the big issues facing us all. Climate change, historic inequality and now, the COVID-19 crisis. These problems are so massive at times it seems like there is little hope for progress, but when we look to our history, we see it’s when organised workers stand together that we make change happen. It was the unions’ strength that won the weekend and the 40 hour work week. Ended child labour and the Vietnam War. But, to take on the big questions we need to build from the little ones. Every campaign is an opportunity to not only improve pay and conditions, but reach non-members and have workers take an active role in building the Union. Often, they are also a chance to connect the struggles of workers to those of other groups. One the earliest NTEU campaigns I was involved with against the Ramsay Centre, showed the value of organising this way. With union support, UQ students organised the first student general meeting since 1971, which voted to oppose establishing a centre. A union is its members, so the best measure of a union is how active its rank and file members are. Organising networks like our casuals caucus and UQ Fightback, the rank and file was able to spearhead campaigns against cuts and concessions in all forms, the casuals caucus unanimously passing a motion against the Jobs Protection Framework, as well as a combined campaign that built upon our work with the students against the Tehan reforms.
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And we don’t only have to look to the past. Taking inspiration from the work of dedicated members in Melbourne, which have recently pushed back against systemic wage theft, we have begun our own wage theft campaign. Our organising has us well placed to borrow from the Melbourne model. Members have already started work logging and we hope this can become a nationwide challenge to unfair conditions. It has never been more important for rank and file workers to be organised and fighting for a better world. No one is untouched by the pandemic, we all know someone affected, either personally or through lost work. Even those universities that accepted early concessions continue to see cuts and losses. Although social distancing makes the meetings and leafleting that are the backbone of campaigning difficult, we have to throw ourselves into reaching as many people as possible because we will all need the Union to be as strong as possible to ensure workers are able to defend themselves from crises of the bosses making, whether it be in the name of ‘saving jobs’ or making ‘reforms’. Get more information about becoming an NTEU Delegate at delegates.nteu.org.au
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www.aur.org.au Connect ® Volume 13, no. 2 ® Semester 2, 2020
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