The 'Your Rights at Work' Campaign: 2005-2007

Sally Mcmanus

doi:10.5130/ccs.v1i2.1246

Abstract

In 2007 the Howard Government was swept aside in a landslide at a Federal Election. On that day, many hundreds of Your Rights At Work activists were on polling booths around the country - frequently outnumbering the major parties - in what was the key phase of the campaign.  The previous years had seen the largest trade union campaign for industrial rights in decades. This paper looks at how that campaign was organised, and asserts that the victory of the campaign in defeating the Howard Government was not the result of a silver bullet strategy, but a mix of campaign components in a specific context. While certain strategies were new, in many ways the Your Rights At Work campaign was a back to basic initiative that had its success on the back of local organising across the nation.

Highlights

I was a union branch secretary for the whole of the ‘Your Rights at Work’ campaign, from the dark days of 2004 and I still am
I was involved in many of the debates that happened at the leadership level within the NSW union movement, and as a union secretary implementing decisions with members and their communities
The other danger is to look at campaigns in retrospect and to say it was a particular aspect that really won the day

Summary

Introduction

I was a union branch secretary for the whole of the ‘Your Rights at Work’ campaign, from the dark days of 2004 and I still am now. People have got to feel strongly enough around the issue in order to cross the political boundaries, to take the risks, and do a lot of the things we ended up doing in the YRAW campaign.

Results

Conclusion