June 2005 Rail and Road - Rail, Tram and Bus Union of NSW

*Rail and Road JUNE 05 7/9/05 12:05 PM Page 17E POINTS THE WAY FORWARD ☛minimum standards at work. This isabout the kind of Australia we wantourselves and our children to live in”John Robertson made the point thatUnions NSW would be conducting thelargest meetings of workers ever seenin NSW on 1st July. He stressed theneed to ensure that every action thetrade union movement took, wasaction that brought the communitywith us, and involved the widestpossible number of people in theactivities to educate people about thefederal government agenda .“This is campaign for the long haul –it won’t be won by a one daystoppage and a walk around the blockwith banners”, he said.In the discussion following theaddresses, delegates asked anumber of questions about thecampaign and discussed how and inwhat ways they could get themessage across.On the following day, variousdelegates reported that they hadalready started to get the ball rolling!Brett Williams, Signallers delegate forStrathfield, announced that he hadaddressed a train carriage full ofpeople from Mt Druitt to the City onthat morning, and a number of peopleon the train had asked him questionsabout what was happening. SteveThrelfall, CSA Morrisset, took his DVDof the mass delegates meeting acrossto six of his neighbours, and spoke tothem about the federal governmentproposals and how it would affectfamilies.The second day of the Conferencecommenced with reports fromDivisions and delegates, on the waysthat various sections of the RTBUwere changing to ensure that theunion could be united and stay strong,and workshops came back withrecommendations on the keyactivities for the National and StateOffices, the key activities andchallenges for the NSW branch in thenext three years, andrecommendations for furtherdevelopment of delegates andactivists.In his closing address the NSWSecretary Nick Lewocki summarisedthe activities of the two days and thegoals of the RTBU as follows:-“Our goal, simply, is to ensure that weremain strong, so that we can lendour strength to others, and that theNSW branch is able to support ourunion nationally, that our unionnationally is able to play aconstructive and positive role in thetransport and logistics industry, andthat the industry is well organised,with high union density, able to play itsrole in supporting working Australiansby offering safe, skilled and wellremunerated work, now and in thefuture.”