‘They know what’s at stake’: inside the longest-running industrial action at an Australian university

Members of the National Tertiary Education Union strike at the University of Sydney. The strike is the longest industrial action at any university in Australia. Photograph: AAP

The usually bustling University of Sydney campus is a ghost town on Friday morning, aside from a groundskeeper on his lawnmower and the occasional police car.

One hundred metres down the road, though, dozens of union members are belting out Red Flag and The Internationale to the toots of trucks and a chemistry lecturer’s french horn.