The Australian Workers Union (AWU) represents the miners on the West Coast of Tasmania. When the future of mining on much of the West Coast was threatened by the environmentalists' proposed National Heritage listing of the Tarkine region, the union campaigned to prevent the listing. Through its embeddedness in place, the AWU was able to use a sense of place, memory and identity to construct a community campaign that moved beyond the West Coast into the North West Coast where many of the miners lived. The union was able to renew its narrative resources by moving work out of the workplace and into the Tarkine. In this way the AWU was able to mobilise community support and shift political power to the local where workers could regain control over their lives and the place where they lived and worked.

Item Type:	Refereed Article
Keywords:	trade unions, Tasmania, community, environment, agency
Research Division:	Commerce, Management, Tourism and Services
Research Group:	Human resources and industrial relations
Research Field:	Industrial and employee relations
Objective Division:	Law, Politics and Community Services
Objective Group:	Work and labour market
Objective Field:	Employment patterns and change
UTAS Author:	Barton, RT (Dr Ruth Barton)
ID Code:	136154
Year Published:	2018
Web of Science® Times Cited:	8
Deposited By:	Management
Deposited On:	2019-12-03
Last Modified:	2022-08-30
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