There are valid concerns about pandemic lockdowns. But, as Zane Alcorn argues, so-called 'freedom' protestors have never marched for other's rights nor been concerned about keeping people safe from COVID-19.
Builders’ Labourers Federation’s (BLF)
Judy Mundey, the patron of the newly-launched Dare to Struggle Film Festival, gave the following presentation after the screening of a new film about the life and politics of radical unionist Jack Mundey.
Former Builders Labourer's Federation leader Jack Mundey, who pioneered the green ban, was given a rousing state send off at Sydney Town Hall. Rachel Evans reports.
Jack Mundey, a path breaker in militant unionism and a pioneer of the Green Bans movement in Australia, leaves a lasting legacy and a set of challenges for ecologists and socialists, writes Jim McIlroy.
In the early 1970s, an unlikely alliance of builders labourers, environmentalists, residents and LGBTIQ activists united to support the Green (and Pink) bans which helped save huge swathes of Sydney, and other parts of New South Wales, from the wrecking ball.
Any book on the modern urban heritage movement would at least make mention of Jack Mundey and the 1960s Green Bans, but for Sydney-based architect James Colman, Mundey’s figure continues to loom large over his city.
The Construction Forestry Mining Energy Union (CFMEU) has placed a "green ban" on redevelopment of the famous Bondi Pavilion, in support of community groups outraged by Waverley Council plans to effectively hand the building to private companies. Union and political leaders joined with local residents at Bondi Beach on May 29 to announce the union ban on work on the project.
Fifty years ago building worker activists took back control of their union, the NSW Builders Labourers Federation (BLF), from a leadership clique that ignored the members. Under the new leadership of , the re-energised BLF created high standards for workplace safety, decent pay, union democracy, accountable leadership, community engagement and, most famously, Green Bans.
A 72-year-old man overly fond of a cold shandy on a hot day and a cigarette or two, was found dead in the room he rented in a pub in Waterloo, Sydney on February 23.
There was nothing particularly unusual about it except that the man, Eddie Trigg, was the last person to see Juanita Nielsen alive.
Nielsen was a society heiress, a member of the family that owned the iconic Sydney retailer Mark Foy’s. In the 1970s she was living in Victoria Street, Kings Cross, running a local paper called Now.