'Worth Fighting For: Inside the 'Your Rights at Work' Campaign' by Kathie Muir
'Worth Fighting For: Inside the 'Your Rights at Work' Campaign' by Kathie Muir
This book tells the story of the ACTU’s ‘Your Rights at Work’ campaign against Work Choices, the largest, most expensive and most sophisticated political campaign ever mounted in Australia, and one with a decisive impact on the 2007 federal election.
Your Rights at Work was an unprecedented campaign in Australian political history. Longer, more expensive, and implemented across a wider range of media, worksites and community venues than any previous political campaign by any other non-party group, YRaW also attracted a wide range of people as active supporters of the campaign. Many of these people had never been active in union campaigns previously, some were retired or were not union members. People from all walks of life were outraged by the meanness of the legislation and the Government's lack of a mandate for its implementation. Some older workers' were concerned for their children and grandchildren's future, horrified at the thought that rights they and their parents had struggled and sacrificed to win might be lost to future generations.
The book 'Worth Fighting For: Inside the Your Rights at Work' campaign provides a lively record of the development and implementation of the campaign. Through interviews with union leaders, along with participant observation, Kathie Muir traces the innovative nature of the television and paid media strategies, the workplace and community mobilising strategies.
This is a lively and accessible book that provides an invaluable record of the most important political campaign ever undertaken by the Australian union movement and is an essential resource for union education and training.
