John Falzon on the next steps for unionism
The recent, highly regarded ACTU Congress helped galvanise the union movement to tackle the challenge of re-engaging the Australian public with collective action.
That makes it a good time to ask one of the philosophical pillars of the movement some big questions about where we’re at and where we are heading.
John Falzon is a progressive polymath. He’s a poet, author, sociologist, and teacher amongst many other things. He’s spent his life in the collective movement for social justice and social change, working in the community sector as a youth worker, a community development worker in large public housing estates, a researcher and an advocate, including twelve years as Vinnies national CEO.
John Falzon in his element.
What do you think is the biggest challenge for the union movement right now?
Much has been said about the decline in union density since the early eighties. But what is less spoken about is the sheer doggedness of the union movement in refusing to be crushed even though this was one of the specific aims of the neoliberal agenda. We must, of course, be unafraid of engaging constructively in collective self-criticism, learning from the strategic and tactical errors of the past.
But the fact that we didn’t give up, the fact that we’re still here, and the fact that we continue to punch well above our weight in the struggle not just for a better life for workers but, in the longer term, for social liberation, all of this is truly remarkable.
As the late Fred Moore, miner, unionist and, for me, a very dear mentor, used to say, if you give up, you’re gone. We didn’t give up. And that’s why we’re not gone. That’s why we’re still here.
We’re accustomed to being called all sorts of names, to being demonised, taunted and ridiculed. What we’re sometimes a little less conscious of what poet Audre Lorde called the “thin persistent voice that says our efforts are useless.”
Our efforts are never useless. We fight, we fail, we fall, we fight again, we fail again, we fall again, we help each other up, we dust ourselves down and we keep on fighting for social justice, for a society where we can truly take care of each other, our planet and ourselves.
Good legislation is being won in the parliamentary arena after constant battles waged by the union movement and other liberatory social movements. This despite the hyper-exploitation and exclusion wrought by neoliberal capitalism as it destroys lives and crushes souls.
The marketisation of nearly every corner of our lives is what we’re up against. This is the dehumanising logic that justifies capital being in control of society rather than society being in control of capital.
Our biggest challenge is to believe in ourselves.
More than we believe in the market.
It is this collective self-belief in our story, our power, and our purpose, that enables us to grow our numbers and strengthen the commitment and consciousness of existing members, both of which are essential if we are to chart a path out of neoliberalism rather than giving a free pass for capital to call the shots on our future.
We are at an exciting conjuncture in our history. The national leadership of our movement, in Sally McManus and Michele O’Neil, as well as in the leadership of many unions, is unremittingly focussed on using the current opportunities to turn the neoliberal trajectory around.
We are not the majority of the working class. But we are the heart of the working class, and we are responsible for engaging with and energising the yet-to-be organised, including those who have been deliberately dis-organised by the policy settings of the neoliberal era.
If we do not shape the future, it will be shaped by those who still mean to harm us and those we love. They despise us. But nothing scares the b’jeezus out of them more than when the despised get organised!
John addresses unionists, Brisbane, 2023.
What should be the first priority of progressives and unionists in 2024 Australia?
Unity through solidarity.
All of our struggles are intimately connected. This is why we must consistently join the dots between them. Our industrial battles are connected with the struggles against patriarchy, against heteronormativity, against colonisation and its continuing extreme violence here and across the globe, against the causes of the climate emergency, against pernicious ableism, ageism, racism and all forms of oppression old and new. We need to consign to the dustbin of history the ridiculous idea that workers across the globe are somehow exempt from these forms of avoidable suffering, or that class, as a primary category, somehow erases our rich stories as human beings.
What practical steps can we take to build respect and support for Australian education staff?
It’s certainly about the daily struggle for proper resourcing, better wages and conditions and protection of the health and safety of education workers. But in the longer term, if we really want to see a revolution in the way educators are valued and respected, then we must look to the broader social context and build the kind of society where education is neither a commodity nor a privilege, but a human right collectively enjoyed by all at all stages of life and, potentially, in all situations in life.
Love is a word we do not hear often in political discourse. And it is a word that is all but absent in economic discourse. Which is no surprise since all our efforts seem to be focused on building surplus value for the few. But imagine a future in which we decided instead to build, for all of us, a surplus of education, a surplus of culture, a surplus of caring… a surplus of love.
John Falzon is currently Senior Fellow, Inequality and Social Justice with independent, progressive think tank, Per Capita, and Visiting Fellow at the Australian National University’s School of Regulation and Global Governance, where he is working on a sequel to 2018’s Goodbye Neoliberalism: “I talk about six ways out of neoliberalism, which are at the same time six ways in to the building of a new kind of society based on justice and compassion.”
As you can tell from his words above, John is an inspiring speaker on unionism, social justice and social liberation. He has given keynote addresses to the conferences of most major unions in Australia, and a wide range of social, community, and academic organisations.
To organise a talk or a course by John for your staff or social justice organisation, contact him at: john_falzon@hotmail.com
May Day, 2024
By John Falzon
(workers of the world, unite… against femicide, genocide, ecocide…, for love)
for you
we say to each other
for you I’ve
all of time’s open spaces
in my heart
we’re free in the breaking open of our stories
the defeats are only fragments
of our struggle towards
that place
that liberation
where we turn everything upside down
we are workers
without borders
being solid with each other
being tender
means we have no truck with borders built
by those whose power thrives
when we’re apart
solidarity
costs dearly
but the distance that they want
to put between us
costs our lives