07/08/2026
A good story of unionism and friendship for this Friday afternoon.
When I was a 25 year old organiser my union gave me the photocopier industry to organise. It was an area of very low union membership. I turned up at a large multinational company to talk to the workers. The HR manager smiled pretty smugly when he saw me, dismissing me as of no concern.
50 angry workers packed a room I’d booked a few weeks later, all men and much older than me, furious the company for unilaterally cutting their pay through a management controlled performance pay system.
They looked at me very sceptically. And then the questions came. One person who was clearly the leader stood up and challenged me with- “If we join the union, what are YOU going to do to fix this? What guarantees can you give us if we join the union we will win?”
The room went silent, I took a deep breath and told them the truth. I personally could not fix anything and I could give them no guarantees. People looked confused.
I went on to say, it would be up to them whether they won or not and that would depend on how strong their union was. They could have a strong fighting union, a weak one or no union. It was up to them entirely, they would make all the decisions and if they choose to stick together they would be stronger than they are now and give themselves a chance of winning.
The leader walked to the front of the room and said, I want a strong union so I’m joining. All 50 joined that day.
But that was just the just start. Union membership in other states was dismal and it was a national company.
But then I met an outspoken photocopier tech from Perth at the first negotiation with the company. I pulled him aside and said, you need to join us and he said, “I’m already the delegate and I’ve signed up everyone in Perth”. This man was Wayne (Woody) Wood. Woody and I then formed a formidable partnership. He is an aboriginal man and a fighter. We organised and conspired night and day across time zones. The Sydney and Perth ASU photocopier techs took the first ever strike action in the industry. Slowly we organised the workers from other states who joined us, they were building a strong union.
Management fought back and pictures appear from our union magazine of our (Asian) union delegates trying to stir up racism to divide the strong union they were building. It didn’t work. Then false rumours were spread about my sexuality (believe me this still goes on to this day, including from senior journalists - back then and now - I could not care less). The union delegates tried to protect me by not telling me what was being said. I did find out and was so worried it could undermine their organising work. One of the delegates assured me - “Sally, we couldn’t care if you had three heads and were the colour blue - you are on our side”. In the end these workers won. They got a new fair pay system. They won because of the strong union they built that couldn’t be divided.
This photo is from yesterday, 30 years later, of me and Woody. It is my last few weeks as ACTU Secretary and he is now the Secretary of the ASU in WA. He drove me to Kings Park in Perth and we walked and talked about those days, he pointed important Whadjuk Nyoongar cultural sites, he told me about the fight to save the park for the people and we looked for Red Capped Parrots. Union friendships are forever.
