Unions will come together tonight to launch Canberra’s largest ever community campaign. The campaign, called ‘We Are Union’, will call for stronger public services, secure jobs, quality health care, better resourced schools and a fair tax system.
The campaign will benefit from several years of innovation and learning from highly successful union campaigns in Victoria, Queensland and nationally.
We Are Union will focus on mobilising the over 33,000 union members in Canberra, and a further 15,000 community supporters, on issues such as penalty rates, increased school funding, ensuring quality hospitals and health care, and defending public services.
Rather than spend on advertising, We Are Union will train volunteer union members including nurses, firefighters, teachers, tradies, public servants and cleaners to have personal conversations with their neighbours and undecided voters. Using sophisticated data targeting, the campaign will coordinate over 800 volunteers to have personalised conversations with around two thousand swinging and undecided voters in each electorate.
The campaign will not advocate voting for a party or candidate, but instead will ask voters to make their voting choice based on the campaign’s core issues.
The following quotes are attributable to Alex White, Secretary of UnionsACT:
“The campaign that will launch tonight is about building a brighter Canberra, with secure local jobs, quality public services and a strong well-funded education and health system.
“With over 33,000 members and 15,000 community supporters, this will be the largest and most sophisticated community campaign in our city’s history.
“Despite the partisan attacks from some in the business lobby, and from conservative politicians, our campaign has a positive focus on the issues that are important to Canberrans.
“We are open about who we are and what this campaign is about. Union members are proud to be union and we know the community wants to hear the real story from us.”
Launch details
The We Are Union launch will take place on Wednesday 6 April at 6pm at the Kurrajong Hotel in Barton. There will be photo/interview opportunities with the leaders of Canberra’s unions and rank-and-file members.
