Regional Labour Councils, Local Employment Generation and Labour-Community Coalitions

Abstract

Regional labour councils have been involved in building labour-community coalitions. The case study of the South Coast Labour Council demonstrates that a regional labour council can engage in a broader make-up of lobbying partners than is generally recognised in the literature, which includes labour-community coalitions that are not geographically, politically or socially close. The South Coast Labour Council did not focus on employer opposition, as is usually the case with building labour-community coalitions, but rather, it focused on lobbying farmers to increase pressure on government officials for the siting of a grain terminal in Port Kembla, near Wollongong in the Illawarra region of NSW. It pursued broader aims of labour-community coalitions to include local employment generation.