If you don’t fight, you lose. That was the position adopted by Australian Services Union members at Rape and Domestic Violence Services Australia when we decided to fight Medibank and the federal Liberal government.

Twelve months ago we learnt that Medibank – a health insurance giant – was after our funding and our jobs. In collusion with the federal government, it wanted to take over and privatise the national domestic violence and sexual assault telephone line – 1800RESPECT.

The plan was to turn a crisis line into a profit-making venture, sack skilled workers and hand out to the lowest bidder the provision of specialised counselling on 1800RESPECT. For the profits to flow, the union workforce would need to be replaced by lower skilled non-union workers paid rock bottom wages.

This is neoliberalism 101. The notion that social services should be of a high quality and delivered by workers on decent pay is anathema to most governments – Labor and Liberal. The poor and working class people who rely on these essential social services are customers to be dealt with on the cheap, while the profits make their way to the growing section of Australian big business enriching itself off the privatisation of community and public services.

Speaking at a Credit Suisse investment forum on 19 September, federal treasurer Scott Morrison outlined the brave new world of making a market out of poverty. “Bringing change to the circumstances of the most vulnerable Australians is something worth investing in”, he said. “Good intentions are great, but they’re not enough to get the best outcomes.” When investment bankers and Scott Morrison get together to talk about “the best outcomes”, they’re referring to their profits, not ordinary people’s lives.

Other than a few notable exceptions – such as the 2014-15 campaign against the closure of women’s refuges in NSW – the drive to cut and privatise social services has largely gone unchallenged. We wanted to make sure the attack on our service didn’t go the same way. We fought to make the campaign to save our jobs and the service a public stoush. We rallied, we called for solidarity and support from other unions, and we were loud.

Ultimately, however, we lost. Social services minister Christian Porter and the corporate fat heads at Medibank stitched up a backroom deal in which a number of other not-for-profit organisations will replace our workforce with non-specialised counsellors on much lower wages. The 1800RESPECT service will become yet another degraded cut-price enterprise designed by the rich and powerful to fob off people in need rather than help them.

We knew we might not win when we decided to fight. On reflection, we didn’t always push as hard on every door as we could have, and perhaps we pulled too many of our punches.

If you don’t fight, you lose. It’s a key slogan of the labour movement, emerging from the lessons of many battles fought within a system that’s rigged against us. When you don’t win, the slogan is no less true. When you fight but don’t win, you learn for next time, you build solidarity, you see your enemy more clearly, and you claim a collective dignity.

At RDVSA we set an example of what we hope others in our sector will do when the next group is targeted. We can’t wait around hoping for governments and their profit-hungry corporate mates to throw us some scraps. We have to fight to keep everything we have and win much more.