A recent 5.2 percent raise in the minimum wage set off a big debate in Australia. The governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) has insisted the wage raise was too high, and the newly elected Labor Party (ALP) government readily agreed. The Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU), however, praised the move and claimed the RBA was out of touch.

The ACTU’s public support for the pay raise obscured some of the deeper dynamics of Australia’s labor movement and economy. Minimum wages and standards were already ludicrously low due to a series of dodgy nationwide agreements struck by a powerful yellow union. These agreements transferred billions of dollars from workers to bosses over years, and undermined wages all across Australia. The culprit behind them, the Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees Association (SDA), remains deeply intertwined with both the ALP and the ACTU.

The Retail and Fast-Food Workers’ Union (RAFFWU) emerged in 2016 to confront the SDA and the bosses. It has since won billions of dollars back for workers, challenged the dominance of the ALP in the labor movement, and organized countless workplaces that the ACTU had abandoned. Last year, its members undertook the first industrial action by retail workers in the country in fifty years, and in May, one of its rank-and-file members was even elected to parliament. Jacobin sat down with RAFFWU secretary Josh Cullinan to discuss the new ALP government, the minimum wage increase, worker representation in parliament, and the state of the union movement.