Published: 25 July 2023
Last updated: 21 October 2025
In 1948, the 40-hour working week became standard across most industries in Australia. In 1970, union agitation led to four weeks annual leave and on February 1, this year, on the second day of my three-week internship at the Australian Worker’s Union, 10 days paid family and domestic violence leave came into effect.
Before my three-week internship, when I heard the words “trade union”, it was these monumental changes to the labour force that came into my mind. But I honestly didn’t know what the trade movement actually did on a day-to-day basis.
Having grown up in the lower north shore of Sydney and coming from a family of professionals, family dinner time was used to work out which parent was doing the Saturday sport drop-off that week and in my teenage years matured into a post-ABC evening news analysis, the dinner most recently consisting of airing frustrations with the current political state of Israel.
Unions, underpayment and unfair dismissals were rarely, if ever, talked about.
So how did I get into this summer job? After three years of attending law school and volunteering in the Jewish youth movement Netzer, the little voice that I had pushed to the back of my head for so long, saying “get some ‘real’ industry work”, finally grew louder. Yet I didn’t want to join the corporate side and be seen as “the baddie” in my own eyes, a box in which I had put many of my peers.
From the very first day of the internship, I was exposed to the real work of a union. From attending a construction company’s strike, where workers were advocating for changes to their bargaining agreement, to hearing about workers who had been underpaid for months but were too scared of speaking up in fear of any adverse changes to their visa, to sitting in a negotiation about wage increases of public sector workers, I saw just how important unions are not just for all individuals, but the broader public at large to overcome what can simply be described as bullying.
