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Legislative Council - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2024-02-21 Daily Xml
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Motions

SA Unions

The Hon. R.B. MARTIN (15:54): I move:

That this council—

1. Recognises that 2024 marks the 140th anniversary of SA Unions, formerly the United Trades and Labour Council of South Australia;

2. Acknowledges the significant impact that unions have had on shaping our economy, our society and the life of our state; and

3. Commends SA Unions on all that it has achieved on behalf of working South Australians over its 140 years of dedicated service to the people of our state.

This year, we celebrate the 140th anniversary of the formation of the United Trades and Labour Council of South Australia. The founding took place in January 1884 at the still-standing Franklin Hotel, although it was then known as the Bristol Tavern.

Back in 1884, this new organisation brought together 13 unions from across the colony's early industries to coordinate activities and advocate on behalf of South Australia's workers, and 140 years later the United Trades and Labour Council of South Australia still exists. It is now called SA Unions and it is the peak body for what is now 26 unions representing over 160,000 members across South Australia.

As early as October 1836, the colony's first industrial dispute was resolved when a South Australian company manager, Charles Hare, was left with no option but to pay extra wages to seamen and settlers who were threatening to strike. The first formal move in the early colony to control workers—an attempt to make a withdrawal of labour punishable by imprisonment—came in the form of an act for the summary determination of all disputes between masters and servants passed by the Governor and Council of South Australia on 4 January 1837. However, on the advice of the Privy Council, Queen Victoria disallowed this act. Unsurprisingly, amongst these circumstances, unions began to form.

The rise and expansion of the class of wealthy gentry in SA led to renewed calls for laws that would control labour and provide terms of imprisonment for workers who chose to withdraw their labour. An ordinance to amend the laws relating to masters and servants was introduced in the Legislative Council in 1847 by pastoralist Charles Hervey Bagot, a man who had amassed immense wealth as the owner of the colony's first copper mining company, which he established to exploit the vast mineral deposit that his son had discovered. Bagot's legislation attracted considerable organised opposition but enjoyed sufficient support within the parliament that it was passed in July 1847.

It is little wonder that in the following decades union membership increased in defiance of such legislation, so much so that the Trade Union Act 1876 saw South Australia become the first territory of the British Empire, outside Britain itself, to legalise trade unions. In 1884, the founding members of the United Trades and Labour Council came together for the purpose of uniting more closely the various trade societies and for discussing unitedly any question affecting the welfare of any society and also for the purpose of exerting more political influence in the colony.

So from the very early days, South Australian workers recognised two things. First, the fundamental principle behind collective organising, which is the very same principle today as it was then, that when we stand together we are so much stronger than anyone who stands alone. Collective action is a powerful driver of industrial and social change. Secondly, this powerful momentum that we are capable of creating can equally be used for change from within government as well as from without. That is why, in 1891, the UTLC sponsored the formation of the United Labor Party of South Australia, as the voice and the vehicle for working people to help shape the laws of our state and the colony before it.

The aims of SA Unions today remain fundamentally the same as those of the UTLC. SA Unions still aims to maximise the union movement's effect in political, social, economic and industrial issues, to defend and extend the rights of working people, to increase the standing of trade unions, and to provide leadership and coordination in issues of broad concern to unions and the community.

Whilst some today might try to portray the work of unions as not relevant or as unimportant, the fact is that over decades upon decades of Australia's industrial and social history the increased living standards and the hard-won entitlements that we enjoy today was the work of our unions. Without the role of unions in shaping South Australia's and Australia's contemporary economic, industrial and social landscapes, our state and our nation would look tremendously different than they do today, because progressive industrial reform does not happen on its own.

In 2024, many victories have been won, but across industries we still see that workers in some workplaces are being underpaid or are subject to wage theft, that workers in some workplaces are denied their entitlements, and that workers in some workplaces still cannot be guaranteed the most basic benefit of coming home safe at the end of their shift. In 2024, we need strong unions just as much as we did in 1884.

The South Australian union movement in 2024 is resilient and united. A list of the achievements the union movement has celebrated in the past year, a great deal of it in collaboration with the Malinauskas and Albanese Labor governments, includes but is not limited to:

industrial manslaughter becoming enshrined in law as a criminal offence;

new regulations requiring the active management and mitigation of psychosocial hazards;

rental tenancies reform;

public holiday protections;

family and domestic violence leave in the NES;

criminalisation of wage theft;

protecting those who work with engineered stone; and

expanding workplace protections for young workers.

As someone who was a long-term union organiser at the SDA and a long-time Labor official after that, I am proud of the constructive relationship the Malinauskas government enjoys with South Australia's unions and with their peak union council, SA Unions.

I was grateful to join SA Unions late last month to kick off their anniversary celebrations at the Franklin Hotel, where it all began 140 years ago. I commend the work of our state's unions, from the mighty SDA, where my own career began, to each and every union that stands up for South Australian workers. May you remain ever strong and ever united.

I commend this motion to the chamber and hope that all members, in recognition of the role that unions play in our community and have played throughout our state's proud history, will support it.

Debate adjourned on motion of Hon. D.G.E. Hood.

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