The story of #occupydandenong is one of both a small community’s fight for fair wages and conditions, and a sample of a bigger picture in which a resurgent labour movement is transforming Australian politics.

IFF, an international flavouring company that makes food additives, employs 60 workers in Dandenong South. It’s a strong union site, covered by the National Union of Workers, but even so, workers have had a rocky time negotiating their workplace conditions. Like too many Australian worksites, there exists a management culture that tries to impose agreements on workers without consulting them. Three years ago, negotiations over a new agreement broke down to the point of strikes, and IFF’s Asia-Pacific regional manager had to step in to resolve the impasse.

When negotiations for a new agreement began in September last year, union members described feelings of being patronised, spoken to like children and not listened to when they tried to bring their concerns to the table. The workers were due a wage increase, but the company couldn’t comprehend that a wage increase was needed to keep pace with cost of living, and tried to deny workers their previously agreed wage increase of 55 cents an hour. IFF also planned a removal of accrued sick leave entitlements, a significant occupational health and safety issue in a chemical manufacturing facility.

With no movement on negotiations, the workers applied to the Fair Work Commission to take the mild form of industrial action known as a “paperwork ban”, where all workers refuse overtime and don’t take on additional administrative tasks. The employer response was to lock workers out of the factory indefinitely. When workers arrived at the site after Australia Day to start their shift at 6am, they were shocked to find management standing behind the gate and pinning notices of an indefinite lockout to it.

What happened then has in only a few days become a legend of Australian industrial activism. Shocked by management’s extreme response, workers spontaneously flooded the plant lunchroom when the gates opened to let in a car. The idea was to hold to an impromptu meeting. They did not move for four days.

Wildcat actions like this, held in the face of lockouts and other forms of management intimidation, have a history as long as industrialisation. From the French saboteurs who threw shoes called “sabots” into machines to save their manual jobs, to construction workers in Australia downing tools in the 1970s to protest the sacking of a feminist university lecturer, spontaneous actions have had powerful impacts on worksites, if not always the communities beyond them.

Yet this is the age of social media, and every protesting IFF worker carried a portable media centre into that lunchroom in the form of a mobile phone. As they met, the workers created a hashtag, #occupydandenong, and began posting protest selfies and demands handwritten onto cardboard to explain their actions. Catching the attention of the broader activist community online, the hashtag went viral.

Suddenly, solidarity statements were pouring in, a petition rapidly gained 1,000 signatures and the sudden interest of the mass media was piqued. Encouraged, the workers decided to dig in and remain in the lunchroom until their demands were met, posting continuous updates to social media while doing live interviews to media organisations. Amidst solidarity visits from other unions and the leadership of ACTU, Melbourne celebrity Father Bob went down to show support, as did the new ALP member for Bentleigh, Nick Staikos, Victorian attorney general Martin Pakula and federal Greens MP Adam Bandt.

It’s a happy result for the IFF workers that four days of this kind of attention brought the Asia-Pacific manager back to negotiations, as demanded. The day after they emerged peacefully from the lunchroom, workers received a wage increase of 6.3% over three years – significantly above the 55 cents they’d been offered before.

Perhaps the happiest result for the working people of Australia is that social media has liberated the trade union movement from decades of union-busting propaganda. The #occupydandenong campaign was able to show that unions are not frightening, and their demands are not extraordinary. It showed a group of ordinary Australian workers moved to act on demands that anyone can understand – to return to work, to work in safety and to earn enough to feed their families.

Local businesses who heard about the occupation brought down food donations. Among many, Ready Roasts brought dinner, Lynbrook Bakery brought bread rolls. This was perhaps the most striking detonation of the myth that small businesses and unions are enemies. They’re not. They’re neighbours, cousins, siblings, friends.

It’s these personal connections among communities, facilitated by social media, that is having a powerful transformative effect on Australian politics. The National Union of Workers is not a traditionally militant organisation – in fact, it’s aligned with the movement’s right. The confidence of its rank and file to do such things as occupy lunchrooms has been boosted by its ability to communicate its goals of shared prosperity and the fair go directly with the people, without first being filtered by mainstream media.

In recent landmark elections in Victoria and Queensland, union members were mobilised to campaign against the Coalition and engaged in extensive door-knocking and picketing on street corners. Despite weeks of scaremongering campaigns against unions by conservative politicians and commentators, both Daniel Andrews and Annastacia Palaszczuk were vocally grateful for the unions’ help. And why wouldn’t they be?

Just ask 60 workers with retained conditions and a wage rise in Dandenong South. There is power in a union.