Jiselle Hanna
When we took on this campaign, everybody told us that rank-and-file tickets never succeed. And yes, we’ve learned that the odds really are stacked against you. The incumbents have a lot of advantages. They have name recognition, they’re able to say that they understand the challenges of running the union and they have access to the resources and the infrastructure of the Victorian labor movement including personal connections and friendships.
They’ve also got access to big donors and even lawyers. To give you a sense of it, when we started, we phoned around a list of industrial lawyers to see if any would provide pro bono support for the campaign. Some told us that while they would have liked to help, they were worried that if they did so, they’d lose the support of other unions — or even the incumbents.
So many people told me some version of “you will never, ever win, this is a suicide mission, you’ll get the entire union movement off-side.” And yes, the pressure has definitely been intense — especially the smear campaigns against myself and our other candidates — and this pressure is part of why rank-and-file tickets often don’t succeed. But despite that, I deeply believe that optimism is a political act.
The hope of our campaign is that it sends a message — to the labor movement, to our comrades in the rank and file, and to the union’s leadership — that union elections are not something to be feared. No one is entitled to union leadership positions. They are not jobs for life. So, from the beginning, our motto has been “win, lose or draw, we’re in it for the long haul.” Yes, we want to win this election. But more than that, we are a rank-and-file group and we aren’t going anywhere. After the election — whether we win, lose, or draw — we will continue to be a force within the union, fighting for…
Auteur: Jiselle Hanna
