Reviewing victories,renewing struggles: The ACTU Congress,Adelaide,South Australia,4–6 June 2024

Abstract

The Australian Council of Trades Unions gathered in Congress in Adelaide, June 4th - 6th 2024. This article provides a detailed report on the Congress: drawing out key themes in debate and decision, providing an account of major speeches, and reviewing the industrial and political context. The report devotes special attention to the Congress's collective consideration of recent changes to industrial law, to the issue of artificial intelligence, to the problem of ‘working time’, and to the prospects of a green industrial transformation. It also seeks to place the Congress in historical context.

The ACTU Congress in Adelaide, South Australia, 4–6 June 2024, was the first time that representatives of Australian unions had gathered together in person, in a Congress, for six years. It was a tumultuous interregnum, marked by a pandemic that transformed the experience of work for many, by the rise of artificial intelligence, the increasing impact of climate change, the defeat of a conservative government, the election of a Labor Government, and the passage of new legislation that has removed some significant barriers to collective bargaining and has rebalanced the industrial relations system back towards workers and unions.

Unions were clearly buoyed by recent victories. The gathering celebrated the passage of industrial legislation and declared a determination to safeguard these gains. But what would be the next steps? Would Congress endorse a bold and assertive policy? Or would it temper its ambitions to reflect the movement's still diminished size and strength? The gathering was important as a signal of union priorities and strategies, and hence of future dynamics in Australian industrial relations (IR).

In her Secretary's address in the opening plenary session on the morning of June 5th, Sally McManus celebrated the significance of the Labor Government's first term industrial reforms. These included the ‘world's first’ paid family and domestic violence leave for all employees, multi-employer bargaining, same pay for labour hire workers and protections for gig workers. While congratulating the Government for standing ‘rock solid’ in the face of concerted opposition to many of these changes, McManus also applauded the involvement of ‘every single union’ and the leading role played by ‘every trades and labour council’ in campaigns waged over many years to win the reforms. The fight for more secure work was decades long; getting rid of so-called ‘zombie’ or expired enterprise agreements was finishing a job started by Sharan Burrow, ACTU President until 2010. The impressive list of victories included, among others, strengthening of rights to request flexible work hours, a new right to disconnect from work, restoration of delegates’ workplace rights, multiple reforms to address the gender pay gap and to address sexual harassment, rights and standards for gig and transport workers, and new wage theft laws including superannuation theft.

Union leaders and a handful of delegates and members came on stage to applaud the changes. They spoke about their campaigns waged over many years leading up to the IR reforms of 2022–2023 and of how they have subsequently used the laws to benefit their members and address long-standing problems. One theme of these presentations was of big achievements but still much to do. For example, the Health Services Union (HSU), Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation (ANMF) and the United Workers Union (UWU) leaders celebrated significant pay rises for aged care workers resulting from a successful joint application to address work undervaluation. UWU member Theresa described the wage increases as just the beginning of a process enabling aged care workers to reduce their reliance on multiple jobs and to ‘commit to a job we love’. Transport Workers Union (TWU) member and gig worker Nabin, referring to the new standards for employee-like workers, noted ‘(now) we are recognised as people with bills to pay and families to feed, (it's) not just about delivering your order’. Australian Workers Union (AWU) Secretary Paul Farrow spoke of the importance of new piece rates for minimum pay standards for Pasifika workers in horticulture, noting there was a long way to go to ensure adequate protections for these vulnerable workers. Multi-employer bargaining was applauded by Independent Education Union (IEU), Australian Education Union (AEU) and UWU leaders and delegates for freeing them from the treadmill of negotiating hundreds of separate enterprise agreements, allowing them to spend more time organising. Representatives of the meatworkers, flight attendants and mining and energy unions stood together to attest to how the Same Job Same Pay labour hire changes were making a difference for workers in their industries.

The mood of the first plenary was celebratory and upbeat in the wake of the passage of the substantial industrial reforms, which one union leader calculated as made up of 46 separate legislative changes. However, noting the union movement must grow for future success, McManus said ‘the 15 per cent cannot carry the 100 per cent’. The Secretary also called for support for workplace delegates as ‘the heart and soul of the movement’ and she emphasised the importance of ‘unity, discipline and never giving up’ in the unions’ long campaigns to see the IR reforms enacted. Reflecting the theme of the Congress – ‘Solidarity, Values into Action’ – McManus called for solidarity in moving forward. An emphasis on solidarity, unity and discipline was also evident in the organisation and conduct of the event, which was a carefully crafted and orchestrated affair.

It was a rousing public beginning, and an opening of formal proceedings, but for most delegates a continuation of discussion and debate already begun. The Congress practically extended over three days. Tuesday June 4th – before the official opening – had been set aside as an opportunity for delegates to caucus in specific groups. This process was sufficiently formalised for the relevant meetings to be carefully sequenced and listed in the official program and the ‘Congress app’. Caucus meetings were not just based on ideological affiliation (meetings of the Left and Right in the late afternoon of the 4th), but also around social identities that intersect with those of class. There were, across the morning session, successive gatherings of women unionists; LGBTQIA + delegates; people of colour; and from the regions. In the early afternoon, there were additionally four concurrent caucus sessions, set aside for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders; retired unionists; members of small unions; and youth. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander delegates also participated in a day-long forum prior to Congress on Monday June 3rd (see Leroy-Dyer, this volume).

This arrangement is worthy of acknowledgement, for it captures something of unions’ important efforts towards reexamination and renewal. The contemporary movement has greatly changed from that collective organisation that once upraised the specific interests of the white male and straight worker in the prime of life as the bearer of a universal interest, and that obscured sometimes important differences between workers by rhetorical calls to the ‘working class’. Just as all workers have used the power of collective organisation to demand their rights from employers, so workers defined partly by their collective experiences of gender, sexuality, race, age and location have also sought to articulate and to defend additional priorities. The collective gatherings of June 4th reflected the history of these struggles within the union movement and a determination to advance them further. The unfolding of the conference, and the agreed conference resolutions, captured the relative success of these endeavours (of which more later on). So too did the uncontested re-election of two women – Sally McManus and Michele O’Neil – to the most senior ACTU leadership roles. This process unfolded in a relatively undramatic fashion that belies its historic significance. It was only in 2017 that McManus became the first woman to hold the position of ACTU Secretary. The Australian trade union movement now has more women than men as members. The broader union leadership reflects this shift, and a commitment to gender equality, with women and men now equally represented on the peak body's large executive of 52 members.

The formal conference extended over Wednesday June 5th and Thursday June 6th. It was a gathering distinguished both by relative constraint and control, though also by a sense of political energy and variety. The former was expressed in the organisation of proceedings. The Conference was effectively structured around three kinds of sessions. Plenary sessions dominated. These extended from around 90 min to a little longer than two-and-a-half hours. There were five plenaries, and here the primary business of the conference was discharged.

The first plenary encompassed a Welcome to Country, Vales for lost comrades, an opening address by the South Australian Premier, Peter Malinauskas and the Secretary's address by Sally McManus. The format of the following three plenaries was relatively constant. A theme or issue had been earlier selected for close collective examination, and these matters ranged across union successes, climate change, artificial intelligence (AI), working time, international action, and racism and anti-racism. The second plenary commenced with Michele O’Neil's Presidential Address. Other elected office-bearers of the ACTU initiated two other plenaries with their own key speeches, though the speaking duties were invariably shared with the elected leaders of affiliated unions, some accompanied by delegates, or with the contributions of visiting worthies (Dr Ian Ross of the Net Zero Authority and Dr Christina J. Colclough, a Danish expert on AI). The opportunities for delegate contributions from the floor were limited with few seemingly unscripted interventions and these usually lasting only a handful of minutes.

Like the conferences of the Labor Party, the character of the ACTU Congress has changed over time. As a formal decision-making body, it was once the site of vigorous and public contention, with frequent open contests over policy and position. This is no longer the case. Union leaders from different parts of the country are in much more regular contact than in the past, so that issues are continually discussed and debated, rather than confronted at a singular and contentious gathering, staged every few years. Ideological divisions are perhaps less fundamental than in the years of Cold War. And given the movement's many challenges, the display of unity and common purpose is granted relative priority.

In consequence, there was within the plenaries in Adelaide very little expression of overt difference or of debate. Key issues and policies had already been developed and reviewed through lengthy processes of consultation and discussion, long before the Congress convened. The gathering was therefore much more a rally of the legions than a shared deliberative process. Perhaps for this reason, attendance at the plenaries flagged over the two days: there was no need to mobilise ‘the numbers’ to win the passage of key resolutions and little prospect that there would be a clash of alternative viewpoints. But notwithstanding the slightly stage-managed atmosphere, the spirit of a shared common purpose was unquestionably high. The plenaries introduced and pursued important themes in contemporary and future union struggle. And ideas given less space in the plenary sessions were sometimes vigorously interrogated in other parts of the gathering.

Alongside the plenaries, the ACTU had scheduled two ‘workshop’ sessions of 1 h, each featuring around 15 separate and concurrent workshops. Here the format was looser and more variable, with sometimes as few as one or as many as seven designated speakers, but with much less emphasis on set speeches, and more on question-and-answer sessions, interventions from the floor, and a pooling of wisdom. The topics were various, and sometimes overlapping, so that the staging of the workshops could be considered an opportunity to advance new issues and to review and pursue ongoing struggles. An examination of the topics of the workshops suggests an abiding preoccupation with tactical and strategic issues. Various sessions interrogated how campaigning and organisation might be advanced through the use of new technologies like AI and software such as iMIS; social media, such as TikTok, and recent changes to industrial law (including the provision of greater rights for union delegates and the opportunity for multi-employer bargaining). More conceptual or political matters were also considered as contributors to strategic success, including the import of ‘an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander lens’; gender equality; attention to increasing ‘diversity and representation’, and an ‘intersectional lens’.

The workshops also reflected an interest in particular workplace rights and possibilities including those matters that were the focus of plenary sessions. The question of working time was prominent, with three separate sessions addressing this matter from slightly different perspectives. Likewise, the question of environmental crisis and industrial change was also considered in several sessions dedicated to topics such as ‘climate and work, health and safety’, and a ‘just transition’. Some other workshops interrogated long-familiar questions, such as superannuation and workplace health and safety. Others still explored matters that have traditionally been granted lesser attention: workers’ right to housing, disinformation and combatting the far right, and the question of ‘data security and workers’ rights’.

The import of the workshops lay more in the opportunity for collective sharing than in the passing of formal resolutions, for there was no overt process linking the outcome of the workshops to the subject or unfolding of the plenary sessions. But the atmosphere in these smaller and less formal sessions was vigorous, creative and hopeful. While the outcome of the workshops will not be immediately evident in national campaigns or in legislative change, they doubtless renewed and strengthened a process of collective sharing and learning across the movement. They may be expected to influence various campaigns and strategies pursued by particular unions over coming years.

A program of ‘Fringe Events’ – also organised in two sessions of 1 h further defined the gathering. Fringe events were scheduled to overlap with the lunches on Thursday and Friday. The 15 topics ranged still more widely. There were two sessions dedicated to aspects of labour history – one the launch of a significant ACTU publication on Muriel Heagney, ‘Union Warrior for Equal Pay’, and another on the history of resistance by Australian convict workers. There were further sessions devoted to topics such as housing; ‘de-privatisation’; union aid; young people, work and technology; and the environment. Two fringe sessions were directly concerned with questions of peace and disarmament. It is difficult to gauge the success of the fringe program. The coincidence with lunch and the desire to continue conversations deferred from the plenary sessions undoubtedly limited attendance and attention. But the program reflected something of unionism's intellectual life and continuing taste for debate. As with the workshops, here the sense of labour as a vital social movement – marked by a shared but actively recovered past, by new challenges, and by points of disagreement as well as commonality – was both expressed and renewed.

The most substantial outcome of the conference was a statement of policies that in draft form runs to 230 pages. It comprises 28 specific policy statements, listed alphabetically from ‘A Fair Share: Tax and Revenue’ to ‘Workers with Disability’. Given the imposing length of the document, there is somewhat of a mismatch between the limited number of topics canvassed at length on the conference floor and the matters that are recorded in formal decisions. The resolution on ‘Tax and Revenue’ runs for eight pages. It articulates key principles, most memorably that ‘The neoliberal experiment has failed’. It promotes a range of policies, spanning the preservation of progressivity in income tax scales, the need to address the ‘inequities’ of negative gearing and capital-gains discounts, the reform of family trusts, support for a land tax, improved government action to counter tax avoidance, resource and rent taxation, and a minimum ‘tax floor’ for high-income taxpayers, among others. These views are no doubt widely shared among union affiliates and their memberships and reflect a long process of consultation and collaboration. They were not, however, granted much attention in plenaries and workshops. It is not clear how strongly Australian unions will campaign on these matters, or the ways in which they will seek to do so.

Equivalent observations might be made of several other matters that were not granted much space or time for collective discussion but are registered in highly detailed conference decisions: Clearly some of these policies reflect the priorities and campaigns of particular ACTU-affiliated unions and activity to advance these priorities is likely to be led by those unions. The policies included: ‘Education’ (including schools and school funding, vocational education and training, and higher education); ‘Healthy and Safe Work’ (with an agreed conference policy running to more than twenty-five pages); ‘NDIS’; and ‘Public Services Owned by Everyone for the Benefit of Everyone’; ‘Social Wage and Social Inclusion’ (which includes a criticism of the Government's most recent increases to social security as ‘not sufficient’ to prevent ‘widespread financial distress’) ; ‘Temporary Migration – Changing Our System’; ‘Trade’; and ‘Universal Healthcare for all Australians’.

How might these policies influence the activity of unions, the framework of IR, or even the priorities of Labor Governments in future years? It is difficult to say. Many of the ACTU's 2021 policy priorities, at least in the peak body's core areas, certainly were present in the Labor's Government's ambitious first-term IR agenda. However, resolutions in past decades that dedicated the movement to ‘socialisation’ and to the 35-h week did not immediately remake social conditions. The themes of the plenary sessions probably give the best indication of the movement's collective priorities. In her President's Report, Michele O’Neil emphasised three issues as key challenges for the future: working time, AI and climate change. Sally McManus had also raised them in her Secretary's Report. Union leaders gave these matters attention not shared with all issues included in the Congress decisions; they were favoured over others. Union leaders also developed arguments on these matters that drew upon union history, that reflected recent campaign successes (or more rarely failures), and that articulated future plans. It is therefore to these issues that this Congress report will now turn.

‘Working time’ and the battle for a fair day's work has been fundamental to the Australian labour movement. The campaign for an 8-h day famously spurred precocious mobilisations of the 19th century, propelling Australian unions into an international vanguard while also shaping Australian social habits and norms. Moreover, the movement continued to win victories into the 20th century: Australian workers were among the first in the world to win a 44-h week (a half-day holiday on Saturday afternoons), and a 40-h week (the latter generalised as a common standard from 1948). In 1957 the ACTU Congress dedicated unions to the battle for a 35-h week and by the early 1980s the 38-h week had become conventional.

Changes to economy, politics and society since the early 1980s have arrested the long-term momentum towards reduced hours. They have also complicated the question. A widely shared championing of ‘flexibility’ has undermined belief in common standards. The rise of a service and a care economy has led employers to insist upon a working day that does not adhere to the nine-to-five. Women have joined the formal workforce in much greater numbers. The struggles of women within unions and without have drawn much greater attention to the unequal labours of the home. A fragmentation of the labour force has meant that employment in a continuing job at full-time ‘standard hours’ is no longer a dominant experience; many workers are not just employed casually or part-time, but also in multiple jobs. The union movement has also changed: it is weaker than in previous decades and its strength now principally resides in predominantly public-sector unions that cover care and education. And the issue of ‘working time’, for so long central, has been less prominent over recent decades, as unions have struggled to defend their very legitimacy and viability.

The prominence of the question of working time at the Congress was therefore a reflection of union traditions and an effort to intervene in a changed industrial world. Notably, leaders framed the issue in novel terms, reflecting altered circumstances. President Michele O’Neil's address recalled the heroic battle for ‘eight hours work, eight hours rest, and eight hours recreation’, but noted that this mathematical division had ignored the work of the home. Assistant Secretary Joseph Mitchell opened his discussion of the matter by emphasising the preciousness of the time spent with his two-year-old daughter, and the centrality of time away from work to the meaning of a fully rounded life. These effective interventions were reflections of a movement much changed from the era of male, blue-collar hegemony.

The ACTU's approach to working time evident at the Congress reflected the transformed workforce. There was no attempt to proclaim a single ideal standard (as in the manner of the 8-h day or the 40-h week). The emphasis was rather on the need for workers to ‘Win Back Time’ (an arresting formulation, from Michele O’Neil), combined with an acceptance that this might take on a variety of forms. Several matters were nonetheless asserted as general principles: reductions in hours should be won without loss of pay, any reductions in working time should be shared with part-time and with casual workers in the form of increased pay and/or reduced time, and differences between industries should be accepted.

A panel discussion surveyed recent campaigns on these matters, sharing path-breaking industrial victories but confirming also that the employees in different parts of the economy currently prioritise different versions of a ‘fair day's work’. The Australian Services Union had recently secured a trial of a four-day week at Oxfam and in local government in Tasmania, among other sites; its leaders identified a great appetite among the membership for an extension of these victories. Members of the Commonwealth Public Sector Union's (CPSU) Victorian branch had also embraced the prospect of a reduction of working time. The union's leadership had closely examined experiments with reduced hours in Iceland and Scotland, building on networks established through its relevant global federation, the Public Services International. With some difficulty, it had also won agreement for a trial of a reshaped working week in parts of the Victorian public service (the language of the agreement is ‘Exploring Alternative Ways of Working’). This was an achievement not widely known, and it was greeted by Congress delegates with warm applause. Conversely, the Shop Distributive and Allied Employees Association (SDA) – covering retail and fast-food workers – rather observed a split among its members: full-time workers sought more time away from work, whereas part-time and casual employees often wanted to increase their hours. For the SDA, the battle to ‘Win Back Time’ was therefore best pursued through ‘roster justice’ – more stable hours and more work for those who sought it – along with increased paid annual leave (a fifth week for all workers). The ‘four-day week’ would be an aim for only a section of the membership.

The absence of consensus among constituent unions on the priority and form of a changed relationship between ‘work’ and ‘life’ was reflected in Congress resolutions. The new policy was organised under the title of ‘Work, Life, Care and Family’, expressing directly the centrality of gender and of unpaid care and domestic work to the reshaping of these matters. The policy signalled that ‘Congress will advocate and campaign for entitlements to better assist workers with caring responsibilities and increase women's workforce participation’. It emphasised the need to expand paid parental leave, and access to early childhood education and care. It foregrounded the import of ‘secure, stable predictable and meaningful rosters’. But there was no attempt to proclaim the four-day week or a fifth week of annual leave as an aim shared among all unions. The contrast with an earlier era of campaigning around hours was notable; industrial bargaining and change around these issues will clearly be gradual, tentative and variable. It is likely that it will be framed by discussions of gender equality and care work rather than the notion of ‘recreation’. It is also likely that advance will happen through a process of self-conscious ‘trial’ and ‘experiment’. And it may also be connected with another important topic of the Congress: the rise of AI.

AI is a recent concern for most unions. The AI policy brought to the Congress was one of only a handful of entirely new ACTU policies, with most policies being updates of those that came before the 2021 Congress (ACTU, 2024b). A recurring theme in plenary and workshop discussions and presentations on AI was of the need for a human-centred approach underpinned by the principle that AI must benefit working lives. There was also a common refrain for workers to be consulted in AI development, deployment and regulation.

Introducing the issue in her President's report Michele O’Neil led with an optimistic view that ‘AI can change the world for the better if we get it right’. In contrast, expert Christina Colclough painted a bleak picture of AI as being ‘about the extraction of power’; of AI increasing the speed and intensity of work, and further marginalising the marginalised. With the basis of AI decision-making often as much of a black box to managers as it is to workers, AI not only undermines workers’ autonomy and voice, but it also weakens the employment relationship. Colclough was equally pessimistic about the power of current risk-based approaches to regulating AI, calling them ‘unfit for purpose’ and arguing for much greater accountability and transparency. Among other things, she called for a ban on buying and selling of personal data, for AI regulation with inclusive governance and for a reverse onus of proof where the only AI systems allowed to be deployed are those that are proven to cause no harm.

Another theme in the discussion of AI was the need to grapple with problems that were still emerging and were not yet fully understood. In the words of Christina Colclough ‘we need to know what we need to know’. Union officials from the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA), Finance Sector Union (FSU), TWU, National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) and HSU all spoke in the AI plenary session of growing problems related to use of AI in their industries, including intensive monitoring and surveillance, algorithmic management, misuse of personal data, substitution of human labour and theft of creative work. The union officials were clear that there was nothing inevitable about the current situation, with Alison Barnes of the NTEU making the point that organisation leaders have choices. Michael Kaine of the TWU, in reference to the longer-standing issue of AI-enabled gig delivery work, noted ‘governments rolled out the red carpet for an enemy we didn’t recognise’.

The third issue that ACTU leaders had identified as central to future struggles was climate change. Congress plenary speeches addressing this issue emphasised two matters. ASU and ANMF representatives reported on the pressures experienced by frontline energy, local government, social and community services, and healthcare workers as they worked to support communities facing extreme temperatures and disasters, Thomas Mayo of the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) spoke of the issue as one of justice for Torres Strait Islanders, who are at risk of losing their homes. The second focus, picked up by Australian Manufacturing Workers Union (AMWU) and Communications, Electrical and Plumbing Union and Electrical Trades Union (CEPU-ETU) leaders, was on transition and the importance of building clean and renewable energy manufacturing and ensuring jobs in the clean energy sectors are good quality, safe and secure. Both stressed the importance of planning and for union involvement in this. The 18-page ACTU policy, ‘A Safe Climate with Good Union Jobs’ covers a lot of ground. It restates the unions’ commitment to the Paris Agreement goals and advocates for the government to adopt an ‘ambitious, proportionate’ response, observing that the current emissions reduction target for 2035 does not align with the need to limit warming to 1.5 °C (ACTU, 2024a: 10).

Alongside the three major issues that loom as major union priorities for coming years, the Plenary sessions also granted some attention to a few additional matters. The Final Plenary included a section dedicated to international issues: ‘Building Worker Power Around the World’ began with a video message from the leader of the Confederation of Trade Unions in Myanmar, detailing the struggle for democracy and union rights. It was succeeded by a resolution that affirmed solidarity but that also called on the Australian government to widen its sanctions against the military regime and to recognise the ‘national unity government’ as the ‘legitimate representatives of Myanmar’. It further urged Australian businesses to divest from relationships with military-linked or state-owned enterprises.

The resolution formed one element of a much longer section of the Congress Policy, entitled ‘International - The World We Want’. That policy affirmed the ‘internationalist’ orientation of Australian unions, noting further the rising threat of ‘authoritarianism’ and the great ‘fragility’ of peace. It emphasised the importance of international solidarity, detailing Australian union support for workers and citizens enduring and resisting authoritarianism and violence in many parts of the world. This included Palestine and Gaza: a site of mass suffering as well as an incitement to mobilisation and conflict within the Australian polity. The ACTU's resolution declared support for ‘ending the occupation of Palestine’ and a ‘just and sustainable peace’, that would include ‘the removal of illegal settlements’, the ‘withdrawal of Israel from all Palestinian lands’ and ‘the dismantling of the separation wall’. It reiterated commitment to a ‘two-state solution’, but linked this to a claim to ‘recognise, without delay’, Palestine as a sovereign state with East Jerusalem as its capital. Congress further called for ‘an immediate and lasting ceasefire’ in Gaza, and ‘unimpeded access of humanitarian aid into Palestine’. And it called on the Australian Government to ‘exercise all avenues of influence and pressure and diplomacy to stop the bombing and ground assault by Israel into Gaza’ as well as to ‘work for an immediate and lasting ceasefire’.

The plenary session dedicated to international issues did not debate or discuss this matter. It rather gave space to two guests from union movements in Asia and the Pacific, so that they might share their experiences, struggles and perspectives. An organiser from the International Domestic Workers Federation detailed difficult efforts to organise domestic workers across Asia. She relayed that domestic workers are often migrants without citizenship rights and that they are also frequently not seen as ‘workers’. She explained how the building of social networks – often in spaces distinct and separate from worksites – has been central to unionisation. She also emphasised the import of the ILO Convention on Domestic Workers, underlining the fact that the Australian government has not yet ratified this convention, and that among Asian governments, only the Philippines government has done so.

A second guest was Laures Park, the matua takawaenga for the New Zealand Education Institute (NZEI Te Riu Roa), the union and professional body for primary and early childhood teachers, & the co-convenor of Council of Trade Unions Runanga. She outlined the efforts of a newly-elected conservative government to wind back Māori rights. But she emphasised the strength and relative success of Māori resistance. And she opened out the wider question of colonialism and its legacies: matters obviously of significance for Australians, and issues that are taken up at length in the pre-Congress Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander forum report by Sharlene Leroy-Dyer.

Considered holistically, Congress captured a movement faced by continuing uncertainties but actively seeking to reshape itself and its world. The still declining density of unionism remains an omnipresent shadow, limiting the capacity for action and posing an existential threat. The relatively muted interest in the Congress from the broader public sphere is notable, for union policies and strategies do not carry the powerful weight of previous decades. Yet a reduced movement remains – as Secretary Sally McManus emphasised – the largest civil society organisation in the country. Unions represent millions of employees and through their advocacy and interventions they shape the working conditions of many more. Since the mid-1990s, unions have operated in an explicitly anti-union legislative environment. But tirelessly prosecuting their case, they have in recent years successfully reshaped the laws that govern employment and IR. In Adelaide, they publicly demonstrated their unity, agreed on a formidable number of policies, and proclaimed the ongoing value of ‘Solidarity’. They have further identified priorities for bold future struggle, so that workers might collectively shape the dimensions of the working day, the increasing use of AI and the looming green industrial transformation.