Leading the fight for transport workers

Michael has been fighting for the rights of transport workers for over 20 years. A qualified lawyer, Michael’s early career included working in the areas of community law, torts and commercial litigation at the NSW Crown Solicitor’s Office. Michael’s TWU career began organising owner drivers, concrete drivers and couriers. As National Secretary, Michael has led the TWU to take on some of the most powerful companies in the world over their treatment of workers in road transport and aviation.

Under Michael’s stewardship, the TWU has run multifaceted campaigns to organise the road transport industry, bring Coles, Woolworths, Uber, DoorDash and Menulog to the table on lifting transport standards, win ground-breaking legislative reform for truckies and a world-first system for gig workers, and defeat the Qantas model of fragmentation and illegal outsourcing. Michael’s ambitions to eradicate gig exploitation right across the globe has seen him take up a leadership role in the gig economy section of the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF). He is also the ITF’s Asia Pacific Road Transport Chair and ACTU Vice President.

Follow him on X at @TWUMichaelKaine

Emily McMillan is the National Assistant Secretary of the Transport Workers Union; she is the first woman and First Nations woman to hold that position at the TWU. A union official for 21 years, Emily has a deep understanding of supply chain organising to lift standards across industries, reversing fragmentation models and tackling the race to the bottom on wages, conditions and safety.

Prior to her election to National Assistant Secretary, Emily spent eight years leading the TWU’s national campaigns including mobilising workers to win lifesaving industry reform, take mass protected industrial action for job security, hold Qantas to account for trashing jobs and illegally sacking 1700 workers, and rebuild aviation jobs post-covid.

Tim has been fighting for a safer transport industry for over 35 years to improve working conditions and lift wages for all transport workers, as a rank & file TWU member, a workplace delegate, a TWU organiser, a Branch Committee member, a National Councillor, the National President, and WA Branch Secretary. Tim is passionate about his job and works relentlessly to achieve outcomes that make a difference for members of the Transport Workers Union every day.