The Dockast: ITF Young Dockers Podcast
By ITF Dockers
You’ll hear from special guests fighting from the front of the global trade union and youth movements. You’ll learn new things about how 90 percent of everything is handled by a docker – and how this historically important job is rapidly changing: and not all for good.
Solidarity. Struggle. Soul. Brought to you by the International Transport Workers' Federation (ITF) Dockers' Section.
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The Dockast: ITF Young Dockers PodcastOct 21, 2022
Episode 3: What young workers want – with guests Jack Boutros and Aarin Moon
What’s stopping young people from joining a union? Is big tech a big threat to workers? And can you hear an ‘air quote’ through a podcast…? 🤔
Answering these questions and more are hosts Viri Gomez (ILWU Canada 🇨🇦) and Nick Loridan (ABBV-BTB Belgium 🇧🇪), along with their special guests Jack Boutros and Aarin Moon, both of whom are on the front line of organising young workers in Australia.
Jack Boutros is a Sydney-based gig economy campaigner fighting for the rights of delivery riders with the Transport Workers’ Union of Australia 🇦🇺. Usually based working at the union’s national office, Jack tells our hosts of how he’s swapped his campaign boots for the world of ‘organising’ in the workplace - signing workers up to join the union and working with them to build their collective power.
Aarin Moon is an organiser with the Maritime Union of Australia 🇦🇺. His maritime working life began on the docks of Newcastle, New South Wales, where Aarin first joined the mighty MUA as a first as rank-and-file member. Since then, he’s been involved in the some of the MUA’s most important organising campaigns of the last few years, today as a full-time organiser. Aarin’s recent organising victories include the MUA and other unions’ efforts to successfully unionise Melbourne’s Victoria International Container Terminal (VICT), securing a collective bargaining agreement in the face of significant initial opposition from the terminal’s owner ICSTI.
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Episode 2: Paddy Crumlin, leader of the global waterfront
In our second episode of the ITF Young Dockers’ podcast, hosts Nick Loridan (ABBV-BTB Belgium) and Viri Gomez (ILWU Canada) caught up with MUA National Secretary, ITF Dockers’ Section Chair, and ITF President, Paddy Crumlin.
They discuss a life dedicated to trade unionism, workers’ rights and the current challenges facing dockers and transport workers in a world characterised by supply chain crunches, automated ports and nations at war.
Paddy gives an inspiring insight into the struggles and campaigns that led him from his life in the 1970s surfing his days away as a rank-and-file seafarer, to being elected president of the most influential global union federation in the world.
As always Paddy blends his usual humour and working-class politics with a forensic analysis and explanation of what needs to be done by all of us, to secure a just and sustainable future for working people.
If you want to be part of the change, or just be inspired then fill your boots with Paddy’s wit and wisdom and listen to this episode of The Dockast.
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Episode 1: Organising during the experience of Covid
Welcome to The Dockast! In our first episode, Viri and Nick are joined by Brian Skiffington, a third generation ‘longshoreman’ (docker) working in the Port of Tacoma in Washington State, USA.
Brian is a young activist in his union - ILWU Local 23. He talks to our hosts about how Covid has changed how young dockers like him do work during the experience of the pandemic, and how our unions are adapting to the realities of organising during the Covid era.