Anthony Albanese<\/a> described both as personal friends and \u201cgiants of the labour movement\u201d.<\/p>\nThe first all-female leadership team in the ACTU\u2019s 99-year history, the influential pair played a major role in shaping the Albanese government\u2019s workplace agenda.<\/p>\n
They successfully campaigned for the right to disconnect law, same job, same pay protections, wage theft criminalisation and ensuring minimum pay, insurance and safety standards for gig economy workers.<\/p>\n
The ACTU recently began targeting Pauline Hanson, in a clear sign the union movement now considers One Nation \u2013 rather than the Coalition \u2013 the biggest political threat to Labor and economic risk for working people.<\/p>\n
McManus will depart in August while O\u2019Neil will help the new secretary settle in before leaving before the end of the year.<\/p>\n
In a farewell video posted to social media on Monday night, the pair said it was time for renewal.<\/p>\n
\u201cUnion membership is growing and workers have over 47 new workplace rights,\u201d McManus said. \u201cBut, of course, there are still big challenges with cost-of-living pressures, AI and billionaires who have too much wealth and power.\u201d<\/p>\n
In a statement, the prime minister said McManus and O\u2019Neil\u2019s \u201ctireless advocacy and strong leadership\u201d had put working families \u201cin a stronger financial position today than they would otherwise be\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is fitting that Sally and Michele announce they\u2019re stepping down from their respective positions at a time when there have been significant wage increases in critical and long-undervalued sectors, the gender pay gap is at a record low and union membership is growing for the first time in decades,\u201d Albanese said.<\/p>\n
Speaking to ABC radio\u2019s RN breakfast on Tuesday morning, O\u2019Neil said it was the \u201cright time\u201d to leave, and that new leadership would be \u201cthe best thing for workers\u201d and the \u201cbest thing for the union movement\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The leadership of the trade union movement is set for a major shakeup after the secretary and president…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":827962,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":["post-827961","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/827961","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=827961"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/827961\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/827962"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=827961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=827961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=827961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}