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06 Feb 20218.15PM - 5:30PM
The Labour History (SA) summer conference will focus on the lessons which Australian labour history offers for strategising the urgent industrial struggles of the future.
The Labour History (SA) summer conference will focus on the lessons which Australian labour history offers for strategising the urgent industrial struggles of the future.
Both the trade union movement has been weakened since 1975 and Australian workers’ wages and conditions have seriously eroded. The dreadful impact of Covid 19 and a proposed WorkChoices-like IR ‘reform’ in 2021, will attack basic employee rights, increase the precariousness of work and further reduce working families’ standards of living. Added to this is the complex global impact of Industry-4 which is already transforming the future of work in Australia.
The conference will open with a keynote address by Alison Pennington, acclaimed senior economist with the Centre for Future Work. Alison will speak to the impact of the new IR Bill on Australian workers, situating her analysis in the changing political economy of work, the structural and institutional disempowerment of labour, and how organised labour can lead a COVID-era reconstruction.
The program for the day is organised around the presentation of 20 labour history papers followed by two panel discussions in open session, which will reflect on the lessons of the past and discuss options for worker responses to the changing nature of work and industrial relations.
Papers will be presented from distinguished, activist historians from the academy and the community exploring such themes as the genius of worker resistance, struggles to establish and sustain the Australian trade union movement, the impact of Industry-4 on work and skills and the future of work. Presenters will include Professor Phillip Payton (SA historian of the year 2018), Professor Michael Quinlan, Professor Hamish Maxwell-Stewart, Dr Don Longo, Al Rannie and Victoria Fielding along with 15 others.
Senior trade union leaders and politicians addressing the conference will include Angas Story (SA Unions), Jamie Newlyn (MUA and SA Unions), Angas Story (SA Unions), Abbey Kendall (Working Women’s Centre SA), Austin White, (PSA), Liz Temple (CPSU), John Adley (CEPU), Federal Shadow Minister, Mark Butler MP, Dr Susan Close MP (SA ALP Deputy Leader), Tammy Franks MLC (SAGreens), Frances Bedford MP (Independent) along with eminent IR experts Stewart Sweeney and Professors Barbara Pocock and Michael Quinlan.
Under Covid conditions, the conference is limited strictly to 100 participants and early registration is strongly recommended.
Registration is $30 for Labour History Society members and the unwaged; and $50 for non-members.
For further information, email SALabourHistorySociety@gmail.com
PDF download of flyer: https://www.historycouncilsa.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Labour-Hist-Conf-A5-corr-copy.pdf
