WORKERS across Australia rallied to “change the rules” of a political and economic system rigged against ordinary people yesterday, with 100,000 marching in Melbourne alone.

Trade unions organised rallies in 14 cities and towns to promote the Change the Rules campaign, which says the Liberal Party government has presided over the biggest collapse in living standards for three decades and that a change in government is needed to shift power and wealth from employers to workers.

Six thousand workers at Australia’s biggest telecoms company Telstra took strike action over bosses’ bid to “force workers to take a pay cut in real terms,” according to the CEPU union’s communications division national president Shane Murphy, and they swelled the ranks of the marchers.