Lockdown 6. And I’m at a loss for words, we only got out of lockdown 5 a week or so ago. We celebrated a donut day and by 5pm we were back in lockdown. There’s no resilience for this lockdown, it’s just a slog.

Cases are going up in New South Wales, parts of Queensland are in lockdown, South Australia is out of lockdown but everything feels on a knife edge. It’s a giant mess. The vaccination rollout is an unmitigated disaster, and while I’m now fully vaccinated thanks to the Victorian government, there just isn’t enough supplies to go round.

In previous lockdowns there’s been a routine – numbers at 9am, the presser, work, a walk in the afternoon and a spirit of being all in this together. Now the numbers are a reminder of being in lockdown, and that if not extended, it’s still unlikely to be the last. And that’s way to depressing to cope with.

The transformation program at work is taking up a fair bit of my brain power. There’s a lot to understand and think about, the opportunity to give feedback is important but the uncertainty around what’s going to happen isn’t helping anything. And to watch friends and colleagues go through this when we have already been through so much just hurts.

Rejoining the union has made me think about what resistance looks like when there are almost no effective tools to really fight back against these cuts. Does participating in the process mean I am agreeing to it? Would it be considered a win if we saved one job? If so, who’s do we save?

In the strongest terms possible I want to say that I oppose these job cuts. No one deserves this, I’m furious about the injustice of it all. It’s always the worker who pays, never the executives and it’s just bloody unfair. I’m heartsick watching people go through this.

I’ve always imagined there is some universal tally of good and bad in the world. The needle moves back and forth constantly; we are nowhere near wholly good, and frequently it seems like we might slide right down into wholly bad. The bad stuff is kept in check by people standing against injustice, even when there’s no chance of winning. Opposing the job cuts at my work is like this – there isn’t a hope of saving anyone’s job but it evens up the score on the good/bad tally in the universe nonetheless.

The reality is though, and it hurts to write this, I need to accept the inevitability of changes even though I believe them to be wrong. This is a painful realisation that feels like giving up; abandoning friends and colleagues to a fate they did not ask for.

I don’t want to give up. I want to save their jobs but I have no power to do anything to stop this from happening. It’s like trying to hold back the tide, it’s going to happen whether I push against it or not. So, with regret, I accept the changes will happen and understand that by doing so friends and colleagues will lose their jobs. And that hurts even though I know there is nothing I can do.

Can I then both accept and resist? And if so, what does resistance even look like. For me, resistance is fighting for a fair process and for the most vulnerable in our community. It’s supporting colleagues who stay and colleagues who may not. Resistance is considering my feedback, pointing out flaws, making suggestions for improvements and trying to make things as good as it can be.

During times like this, it becomes very easy to demonise people making these decisions. I think it is an act of resistance in refusing to do this, which does not mean they are not accountable or that I can’t be angry or disappointed. Just that it helps no one to make out they are bad people when they are people trying to do their best with the crappy hand Covid-19 has dealt.

This may all seem counterintuitive and more like capitulation. Purists in the union movement may consider it so. Accepting an outcome that you can’t control is hard but finding ways too resist within the process is still possible and there’s always hope that it may make a difference.

Doing what I can, with what I have to make this process better is this the only act of resistance left to me. So, I’ll do it and do it well because it matters. It always matters, even if we don’t win.