The Victorian Labor government, led by Premier Ben Carroll, has quietly withdrawn a controversial bill ahead of the November election, which would have banned the Retail and Fast Food Workers Union (RAFFWU) and some regional trades halls.
The Associations Incorporation Reform Amendment Bill 2026 would have handed Consumer Affairs Victoria powers to deregister and wind-up incorporated associations that were playing “an industrial relations purpose”.
While the bill was said to be targeting so-called “red unions”, which sprang up as part of the opposition to COVID-19 vaccine mandates, its real target was RAFFWU.
This is because RAFFWU has shown itself to be a fighting union for retail and fast food workers who have long been covered by the Shop and Distributive Alliance (SDA). After attempts to democratise the SDA were unsuccessful, RAFFWU emerged in response.
The federal law governing trade unions, the Fair Work Act, effectively gives existing unions in a given industry veto power over new unions seeking to be registered. This is why RAFFWU operated as an incorporated association.
For more than a decade, RAFFWU has successfully challenged deals between the SDA and employers, which allowed bosses to pay workers less than the minimum wage. This threatens the SDA’s business model, which is built on employers recruiting workers to the union, in exchange for the SDA signing weak collective agreements.
If employers no longer benefit from these deals and decide to walk away, the SDA’s large, but loosely organised, membership base is at risk. As the SDA lacks a democratic delegate structure it is therefore is prone to a membership collapse if the companies it claims to hold to account cease being the union’s primary recruitment agents.
The SDA’s artificially-enlarged membership allows its right-wing leadership to hold disproportionate influence over the Australian Council of Trade Unions and the Labor Party, both of which are based on the nominal number of members an affiliated union holds.
The legal framework governing trade unions is aimed at preventing unions, like RAFFWU, from setting up in industries where the incumbent union is worse than useless.
The Associations Incorporation Reform bill would have further entrenched the power of “yellow” unions that serve the bosses, such as the SDA.
Carroll, who is from Labor’s right faction, has a long association with the SDA, since he was a member of the union in the 1990s. He tabled the bill soon after taking the premiership from Jacinta Allen in August.
Sue Bolton, Merri-Bek councillor and Socialist Alliance candidate for Broadmeadows, told Green Left: “Unionists who support trade unions which work to improve workers’ pay and working conditions know that RAFFWU is a real union and support it wholeheartedly.
“We know the SDA is a fake union because it serves the bosses’ interests. The Labor Party is eroding and weakening its base by its attacks on militant unions, including RAFFWU and the Construction Forestry Mining and Employees Union.”
RAFFWU’s vocal campaign against the bill culminated in a vibrant rally outside Victorian Labor’s head office on September 5.
Solidarity rallies were organised in Boorloo/Perth and Magan-djin/Brisbane on September 6.
The Maritime Union of Australia, Community and Public Sector Union, Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance and Australian Nurses and Midwives Association Blak Caucus issued solidarity statements with RAFFWU and opposed the bill, as did ex-RAFFWU member and Secretary of Monash branch of the National Tertiary Education Union, Brenna Dempsey.
Green Left has been told that regional trades and labour councils had let Labor know about their concerns that the bill could be used against them, since many operate as incorporated associations and play an industrial relations role.
Labor withdrew the bill on September 24, the final sitting day of parliament before the election, after failing to secure Legislative Council support.
RAFFWU Secretary Loukas Kakogiannis said on September 25: “This is not the last fight. We know that federal Labor is talking about making further changes to the Fair Work Act that would restrict the ability of RAFFWU to take industrial action and to bargain”.
[Loukas Kakogiannis will be speaking at a public forum, “Fighting unions under attack”, alongside Nigel Davies and Craig Johnston, organised by Defend the Unions / Defend the CFMEU on October 14.]