IEU Rep Sarah Collins on the Anna Stewart Memorial Project 2024

Busy Sarah, IEU Rep at Assumption College, didn’t know about Anna Stewart, but says she ‘gobbled up every word and moment’ of her ASMP experience.

Sarah Collins (right) with Organiser Shanae Rowick.

In late April this year I got an email from the IEU, asking if I would like to participate in the Anna Stewart Memorial Project. Now I will be honest: I had never even heard of Anna Stewart let alone the Memorial Project as teaching and being an IEU sub-branch Rep keeps me very busy. So, I hurriedly googled Anna and found myself in awe of this amazing woman who was a worker, mother and union activist who fought hard for maternity leave, childcare facilities and the rights of working women in Australia.

She established a norm that I, as a working woman and mother, had never fully appreciated until I read her story. I had the incredible privilege of being invited to apply for the 40th anniversary intake. With care and haste, I filled out the application, not quite sure what the project involved exactly but more than willing to give it a go. I figured that the union must have seen in me something that made me worthy of being an ‘Anna’.

Anxiously I stepped into Trades Hall and found myself with 11 other amazing ‘Annas’, representatives in their own unions and from industries, including public transport, nursing, education, finance, public sector services, postal services, and corrections. Each of them brought their own perspectives and stories and together we took a deep dive into all things union, from the amazing history of Trades Hall and the women who have been instrumental to the union movement, to current issues facing women in the workplace.

To say that I suffered from information overload is a bit of an understatement, but I gobbled up every word and moment. We covered issues including:

• OHS and the hierarchy of control, particularly in relation to psychological hazards

• workplace gender harassment and violence and the right to a safe working environment

• non-disclosure agreements that silence victims and never give them the opportunity for closure

• the gender pay gap and women’s work-life outcomes, which highlighted the startling statistic that women aged over 50 are at the highest risk of homelessness due to wage and superannuation gaps

• the impact of domestic violence and new rights and provisions for Family and Domestic Violence Leave

• developments in reproductive, menstrual and menopausal leave and the unions that have successfully bargained to have these provisions included in their EAs

• the amazing work of APHEDA – the union movement’s own international aid agency which is building solidarity across the globe by helping people organise around the issues that matter most to them.

  We also got to sit in on the Trades Hall Executive Meeting, meet Minister of Workplace Relations Tony Burke, and perform a union stunt on the issue of the gender pay gap by highlighting the pay gaps of up to 50% of some women’s clothing retailers that claim to be ‘for women’.

• ANNA STEWART 40TH ANNIVERSARY DINNER

ASMP with the IEU

As amazing as everything we did, learned and shared at Trades Hall was, I have to say my favourite part of the entire experience was having the opportunity to tag along with and work with the fantastic Organisers, Reps, Industrial Officers and staff at the IEU Victoria Tasmania office.

The complexity of the work they do in empowering, advocating and supporting members is amazing. I’m still boggled at how they manage to keep the information about all the schools and their respective EAs in their head.

I had the opportunity to do several school visits, and sit in on a bargaining meeting at a school. I even had the chance to contribute a little myself by doing the first pass of a log of claims for a school and updating a salary comparison document that helps our Organisers bargain at independent schools (don’t worry, everything was double checked!)

I cannot express just how honoured I was to be a part of the Anna Stewart Memorial Project. It is an experience I know I will carry with me for the rest of my life.