Jess Munday

Candidate for Franklin

Jess has spent the majority of her career fighting for working people in Tasmania, because she knows what it’s like to struggle to get by. She grew up in a housing department house in Kingston, and knows what it's like to not have food in the cupboard as a kid.

Jess’s working history is diverse – from supermarkets, to call centres, the Army Reserve, and Centrelink, which was where she got involved in the union movement. Jess became a workplace delegate with the Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU) while working in a Centrelink call centre and started working for the union during the Your Rights @ Work campaign.
It was John Howard’s attacks on working people through his anti-union WorkChoices legislation, which cut workers' pay and took away rights to protection from unfair dismissal, that really got Jess fired up to stand up for workers.

Fighting for workers and their families is both what Jess does, and who she is.

Over the last almost decade leading the union movement in Tasmania, Jess has fought against Liberal Party cuts to jobs and take-home pay for workers, and she’s stood up for Tassie’s public services. She’s fought privatisation, offshoring, and labour hire workers getting paid less than employees.

Jess also has broad experience in superannuation and workplace safety. She is a director of a profit-to-member industry superannuation fund and sits on the state’s workplace safety board. She also leads a community legal centre that was established by the union movement to help injured workers access free legal advice when they’ve been injured at work.

She has a degree in political science and public policy, qualifications in workplace health and safety, and is a graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors.

Jess has lived in Franklin most of her life. She is raising her three kids here and doesn’t want them to have to leave Tasmania to get a job that pays well or to have decent access to health and education.

Jess is hoping to take her passion and experience advocating for working people and their families from the streets to the Parliament.