Become a solidarity member today

UNITE is one of the only organisations in Australia promoting trade unionism amongst young people. We have a proud record of campaigning for workers rights especially in fast food and retail. We want this to continue.

But organising young workers is no easy task. We need all the help we can get. There are many things that you can do to help our work both big and small. Here is a brief list of our achievements in recent times. Judge for yourself as to whether we are an organisation worth supporting.

UNITE has -

- Spoken to hundreds of students at dozens of schools about workers rights and unions.
- Run the Boost Our Pay campaign which campaigns against youth rates, individual contracts, for an increase to the minimum wage and for secure hours.
- Worked on countless individual cases for our members where we have done things like saving jobs, securing pay rises and sorting out OH&S issues.
- Produced a series of ‘know your rights’ leaflets on issues like casualisation, youth wages, why young people should join unions and OH&S
- Built links and visited other unions who represent fast food and retail workers including the Unite Union in New Zealand.
- Participated in the campaign to get rid of Howard’s Work Choices laws and now continuing to campaign for decent IR laws under Rudd.
- Successfully raised the issues that young workers face in the media including national TV, newspapers and radio.
- Attended events like Push Over and the Big Day Out promoting trade unionism amongst young people.
- Campaigned against a range of dodgy employers including Starbucks, KFC, McDonalds, Video Dogs, Borders, Spotlight and now 7-Eleven.
- Supported broader struggles in the trade union movement in particular through Union Solidarity in Victoria
- Promoted trade unions on many school and university campuses by running regular information stalls.
- Held actions in solidarity with struggling fast food and retail workers overseas.

The list goes on…..

This is an impressive list for a small and struggling organisation but did you know we are currently operating without any full time staff? Until recently we had one organiser but she has now gone on maternity leave and we are now operating with the support of our volunteers.

Unlike most other unions UNITE does not have lots of resources at our disposal. At the moment we only have a small office with a fax machine and one PC! We do not even have a car. In fact lots of the organising for our current campaign against 7-Eleven has been done on a push bike!

In this respect we have more in common with some unions in the third world. Our strength is our membership, our ideas and our fighting attitude.

While we are proud of our record on a shoestring budget but we do not want it to stay this way. Unfortunately we are missing some opportunities because of the lack of resources. This is why we are asking all of our members and supporters to consider making a bigger contribution to our work.

We are in need of financial assistance. We need to be able to pay for professional organizers to carry out the work. One off donations are greatly appreciated but even better still you can become a solidarity member of UNITE. Recently we have had solidarity members sign up from as far away as Darwin, Perth and Canberra! This has been fantastic but we need more.

Solidarity members of UNITE make an important contribution to our work by making regular fortnightly financial contributions. The minimum rate is $1 per week but above this you can donate as much as you like.

If you want to become a solidarity member click the link below to download the membership form, fill it out and mail it back to UNITE.

Solidarity membership form

To make a one of donation to UNITE you can either make cheques or money orders payable to UNITE and post them to PO BOX 925 North Melbourne Victoria 3051. You can also directly transfer funds to our bank account via internet banking.

The details are:
Account name - UNITE
Account Number - 7007
BSB Number - 803 226
Fitzroy and Carlton Community Credit Co-op
Please put a note with your transaction saying Donation

We also need volunteers to help us visit workplaces and run information stalls at schools and universities. Even putting up posters in your local area will help UNITE. If you can help our work in anyway please contact us soon. You can call or email our office on 0393281555.

With your help we will be able to turn the tide and build UNITE as a fighting union for young people in fast food and retail.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 27th, 2008 at 8:07 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.