Members, we’ve crossed the halfway point of this year, but the 2026 campaign is ramping up in earnest. Across transport, in road and aviation and in every sector, teams are in many cases several rounds into negotiations with the aim to achieve better wages and conditions for you over the next several years.
The journey here has been shared ad nauseum, but that by no means minimises the fact that decades of work has gone into aligning the hundreds of Enterprise Agreements that we’re negotiating this year – because this year is about pay, and also about bringing as much of transport as possible onto a fair and sustainable level, so that the race to the bottom becomes a competition over quality instead, and a new floor is set for future negotiations.
Every time we do a round of negotiations, we want to force more of the bottom feeders to align their standards with the better actors in this industry, which leads to better outcomes, but more job security as well.
We’ve seen where fragmentation leads – it’s not pretty. It erodes standards in road transport and aviation, and had a catastrophic effect on worker safety. We know from surveys that more than half of workers at Swissport said that they’ve felt pressured to work unsafely – this cannot continue and the churn is not sustainable. The message we’ve sent in aviation in recent years with our historic wins is that the Joyce era is over: come to the table and be a part of a better industry, or we will fight for workers to make sure that you do. We still need a Safe & Secure Skies Commission to ensure that this happens.
As I said to you in recent entries, the TWU has gained a reputation – rightly so – of taking on the fights nobody else wants to take on, of fighting for workers when the chips are down and still coming out on top. The only reason we can do that is because of our members, who are the most relentless anywhere.
TWU members are making their voices heard, and they’re getting heard. We’ve pushed hard on our Multi-Employer Agreement claim for bus workers, culminating in bus workers telling Government Ministers and the Premier about what it’s like out there to their faces at the Bus Industry Roundtable. And through blood, sweat and tears, we’ve got there.
The ruling in favour of an MEA is nothing short of absolutely historic.
This is the kind of stuff we get done because we’re a serious Union with a passionate membership, who don’t just talk the talk but make their case to the community, to the Government, to their employers as well.
We’ve already had some big wins in 2026. The MEA is a historic victory. And I look forward to sharing more victories with you in the months ahead.
Our roads, our skies and our future are in the spotlight in 2026.
Nick McIntosh • TWU Assistant Secretary