Izzy Ariff

I'm Izzy Ariff, I'm am Teaching Associate for Commarts at UQ. Being union won me conversion from casual work, pay rises to keep ahead of the rising cost of living and protection from cuts that threatened the quality of education and research, as well as the livelihoods of colleagues. But that's not exactly why I'm union. 

I'm union, because at its best the union is us. Workplaces everywhere have seen their wages and conditions erode, while people have less control over more of their lives. The union is how we can start to change that by building our capacity to have more of a say in how we work, what we are paid and how we spend our lives.

Power and wealth have concentrated and stratified, best illustrated in the university sector by the mean Vice Chancellor's salary ballooning to forty fold the average university worker's pay. At the same time, universities have been casualised, forcing greater and greater fractions of the workload onto less and less stable employment with esoteric or non-existent paths to advancing careers that wears down brilliant people on the casualisation tread until they are burned and driven out. Institutional memory is degraded and the capacity to deliver quality of education, feedback and research is short-changed as classroom and laboratory outcomes are directed towards looking good on a spreadsheet of assets rather than producing or sharing knowledge.

No one knows a workplace better than its workers, especially its dysfunctions and obstacles. To address these issues we need to take an active role in deciding how our workplaces run, but we can't do that alone. They way we work, especially as casuals, can make people feel atomised individuals, so before we can take action we need to build the ‘we’ and ‘us’ that can take it. Our union is how we build the connections, solidarity and power for ‘us’ to have that say. It's how ‘we’ can start to change things for the better.

I'm union because the union is us.