Members, to say that 2025 has been a consequential year for your union would be an understatement. We have used the energy of our dedicated staff and membership, years of toil, and momentum that we’ve built over the last decades to make this year one for the history books.
As early as January, we were taking action at Sydney Airport, shutting it down with members from dnata, resulting in their employer providing serious pay increases, better conditions, and commitment to pursue industry reform with the TWU. This was all a part of our mission to set better sector standards across transport, a key tenet of ’26.
We followed this with further action at the International Terminal just last month, fighting for SACL to provide job security for workers next year with members from across aviation.
Employers and clients-alike have been put on notice, and they know we mean business, especially after the victory forget that will go down in the halls of TWU history – indeed all union history: The $90 million penalty levied against Qantas for illegally sacking 1800 workers at the height of the pandemic. This is on top of last year’s $121 million decision from the courts to compensate effected workers.
Justice Lee noted the risk that the Transport Workers’ Union and our 60,000 members across road, waste, buses, aviation and logistics all took on when we first picked up this fight back in 2020. Nobody else, not even the Fair Work Ombudsmen, would touch it.
We all knew that if any of us had looked away, it wouldn’t have stopped there. The ruling against Qantas represents the largest penalty for a breach of industrial relations laws in Australian history. With the Alan Joyce saga now well and truly at an end, we hope this opens the door for serious reform in aviation, including by implementing our Safe and Secure Skies commission.
Our fight for reform doesn’t end there, and this year we saw another serious victory, following last year’s Transport Reform in Canberra.
In March, we stood in the New South Wales Parliament celebrating the end of a decade-long effort to pass our changes to Chapter 6 of the Industrial Relations Act into law, offering stronger protections for owner drivers and small businesses, and finally recognising gig-workers in NSW Industrial Relations law for the first time.
Since then, we’ve been proud to work with members to continue winning several important fights, including with waste workers who stood up to Mondiale, and with Linfox and Bevchain members who have been benefiting from the free productivity training and related pay-increase that our union fought for.
This brings me to 2026. Through careful planning over many years, Transport Workers have aligned over 200 Enterprise Agreements to expire in 2026, so we can take action together across road transport and aviation, fighting to lift everyone’s pay and conditions and set better sector standards.
Next year, we want to make clients pay, set better sector standards, and work together to become more member-led. I want to emphasise how big this campaign is. Road and aviation workers fighting together for the first time, over 200 Enterprise Agreements up at the same time – this was no accident. Our officials, as well as you and your yards, worked hard to get us here. We will be sending a message loud and clear, that it’s time for the race to the bottom to stop.
This means primarily that clients must be held accountable. If supply chains want us to stop taking action, then they need to come to the table and agree to set better sector standards.
2026 is the footing that will put us in good stead for 2029, 2032, and 2035. It is critical that we stand together, because the results of this fight will dictate the rules of the next one.
Congratulations to all of our members for the work they’ve put in so far to secure a better industry. Every TWU win belongs to each and every one of our members. The fight for 2026, and Our Roads, Our Skies and Our Future begins right now.
Richard Olsen • TWU Secretary