By Olivia Serougi

The following is a presentation that was delivered by Olivia Serougi at a PEWA meeting. Please sign up to our email list if you wish to find out more about our regular meetings and social events.

I’d like to acknowledge that we are meeting on the lands of the Darug people. I pay my respects to Elders past and present, and acknowledge their continuing connection to Country, community and collective responsibility. As we talk today about connection, care and organising, we recognise that these principles have been practiced on this land for tens of thousands of years.

Today I’ll be talking about:

War, Work, and Who Carries the Load: Why Connection is a Class Issue

In so-called Australia, we are lucky enough that when we talk about war, we imagine it as something distant. War is fought overseas, reported on the news, debated in parliament. This is definitely less so at the moment – we are seeing the geopolitical landscape shift so rapidly that in the first two weeks of this year already, the Venezuelan president was kidnapped, new and more intense strikes on Syria and South Lebanon took place, ICE agents are murdering civilians in the U.S. and tensions continue to escalate in Iran. But despite happening internationally, war has domestic consequences. Military spending is prioritised while public services are restrained. When budgets tighten, education absorbs the cost through staffing shortages, larger classes, and workload increases. That’s not coincidence, it’s how states fund war without taxing wealth. Bombs get funded quickly while classrooms are told to wait.

So, now more than ever, it is important to remember that war isn’t an exception to the system. It’s one of the ways the system stabilises itself. War reorganises labour. War redistributes resources. And war produces winners and losers, very predictably along class lines.

What often goes unspoken is the fact that war doesn’t only destroy, it transfers its costs. Those costs don’t disappear, they land somewhere. They land in public systems. They land in classrooms. They land in homes. They land on workers. And increasingly, they land on workers whose labour is already undervalued, already stretched, and already assumed to be limitless. That’s where public education workers come in.

Education as a quiet front of war and crisis

Education is a “quiet front” of war. Public education doesn’t exist outside global politics. It absorbs what is happening. When governments pour billions into militarisation, surveillance, and strategic alliances, they tell us there’s “no money” for smaller classes, no money for specialist support, no money for wellbeing staff, no permanent jobs. So, what happens instead? The system relies on us to absorb the shortfall. We are expected to manage trauma without training; build relationships without adequate time; meet needs without resources. And this isn’t framed as exploitation. It’s framed as ‘care’.

“You do it because you care.”

“You do it for the kids.”

“Teachers can cope because they’re flexible and resilient.”

Austerity: how the cost is shifted onto workers

I think it’s important to acknowledge that this is not accidental. This is how austerity works. In schools, austerity looks like: larger class sizes, fewer counsellors and learning support staff, casualisation and short-term contracts, unpaid overtime normalised, wellbeing rhetoric replacing actual material support. Instead of funding solutions, systems rely on goodwill, resilience and our “passion for teaching”.

Social reproduction and why austerity is gendered

Which brings us to social reproduction – the hidden engine of capitalism. We know that labour produces value, but who reproduces the workforce itself? Who educates children? Who manages emotional fallout? Who holds communities together when systems fail? This is called social reproduction and we saw it clearly during Covid. Under capitalism, this labour is underpaid or unpaid; taken for granted and heavily gendered. Education sits right at the centre of this. As educators, we don’t just deliver curriculum. We reproduce the conditions that allow society to function. And when society is destabilised by war, imperialism, or economic crisis (all of which we are seeing right now), that reproductive labour intensifies.

So, I suppose this leads us to consider, ‘who absorbs systemic shock when crisis hits?’ Historically and materially, the answer is – women. Not because of identity, but because of position in the labour system. In education, the workforce is predominantly female; emotional labour is expected, not recognised; and flexibility is demanded, not rewarded.

When services are cut, women are expected to “fill the gaps”. When workloads increase, women are praised for coping. When burnout occurs, it’s individualised, not politicised. This isn’t a cultural problem. It’s a class strategy.

War, imperialism, and the destruction of connection

It is important to recognise that imperial wars don’t just destroy infrastructure, they destroy social fabric and at the heart of this are our connections. That’s why schools, teachers, and women are often targeted: they are anchors of continuity; they sustain memory and community; they pass on collective identity. At a local level, we have seen how underfunding education fragments: staff cohesion; student relationships; union participation; and ultimately – community trust.

Isolation is not a side effect. It is functional for capital. When people are exhausted and isolated, organising becomes harder. Again, that is not accidental. It is functional because a disconnected workforce is easier to manage, discipline, and exhaust.

Why connection is political, not optional

Here’s where connection becomes central. Capitalism, especially under austerity, depends on isolation. Union organising depends on connection. Particularly connections with fellow public education workers in networks like PEWA. Capital thrives when workers are isolated, exhausted and individually responsible for systemic failures. Connection interrupts all of that. Building relationships does three things: It makes exploitation visible; it turns private stress into collective understanding; and it creates the conditions for organised resistance.

The same relational skills we use to keep schools functioning under austerity are the skills that can make PEWA really powerful — when they’re politicised. Listening. Trust building. Checking in. Holding space. These are often dismissed as “soft” skills, but historically they are core organising skills.

Every strong labour movement has been rooted in shared spaces, political education and collective care. This is why feminised labour is so dangerous to capital when politicised, because it already understands relational power.

PEWA as counter-infrastructure

This is where PEWA becomes strategically important. Infrastructure isn’t just buildings, it’s the systems that organise our daily working lives:

• NESA and DoE management hierarchies
• compliance and accreditation processes
• HR channels
• individual grievance pathways

These structures organise us vertically and isolate us horizontally.

That is why PEWA isn’t just an organising structure, it’s a counter-infrastructure. In a system designed to fragment us, building connection is an act of resistance. When we talk across roles, share experiences, listen rather than compete and politicise what we’re told is “just part of the job”, we rebuild class consciousness.

Historically, unions themselves were counter-infrastructure. Things like workers’ halls, reading groups, strike committees and mutual aid networks. PEWA sits squarely in this tradition.

PEWA:

• creates horizontal connection across roles;
• politicises experiences that are individualised elsewhere;
• rebuilds collective confidence under austerity; and
• preserves memory and organising capacity

When we have our meetings or social events, what looks like “support” or “conversation” is actually base-building, consciousness-raising and power-building.

PEWA’s resistance under austerity

Austerity doesn’t just cut budgets — it targets unions indirectly. As mentioned, it overloads workers so they “don’t have time” to organise, it fragments staff through casualisation and reframes solidarity as selfish or irresponsible. Our organising interrupts this by naming structural causes, collectivising harm and turning care into collective demand. Resistance isn’t only strikes, it’s also:

• political education
• collective refusal of unpaid labour
• cross-role organising
• building spaces like PEWA

Unions and groups like PEWA exist because we need to accept that individual resilience has limits — but collective resistance doesn’t.

Everything I’ve spoken about today stems from something which has a name but I have been reluctant to use it. It’s called socialist feminism — not as an identity, but as an analysis. This certainly isn’t about men versus women. It’s about recognising how gendered exploitation weakens all workers and how solidarity strengthens us.

We must insist that war is a class project, austerity shifts costs onto workers, education is political, care is labour and connection is power.

If capital depends on isolating us, then our task is clear. We organise. We connect. We refuse to carry the cost alone. Because when gendered labour is invisible, capital wins. And when workers build connection across it, we do.

And if war relies on fragmentation, then building connection is not secondary to resistance — it’s the foundation of it. The thing that makes PEWA different is that this isn’t about ideology for its own sake. It’s about understanding the material conditions shaping our work, so that we can change them together.