ALP challenges SPSF left leadership

By Adrienne Barrett

MELBOURNE -- The State Public Service Federation (Victoria) elections in May-June promise to be a showdown between the current left leadership and several ALP-aligned tickets.

The current leaders were elected in 1990 on a platform which opposed the Labor state government's policies of privatisation and cuts to the public sector and exposed bureaucratic ALP leadership of the union.

Since 1990, for the first time in years, the SPSF has played an active and progressive role in the trade union movement. Inside the union, however, a battle has raged between the non-Labor left (general president Kay McVey and co-vice-president Bill Deller) and ALP-aligned forces. In the context of the Kennett government's wholesale attacks on both the union movement and the public sector, ALP forces clearly hope to show themselves in a more favourable light and regain control of the union.

The current leadership is organised in a broad left ticket called the Members Action Team. There is speculation, however, that co-vice-president Karen Batt could split and run for general president on a ticket supported by members of the ALP's “Socialist Left” faction.

Two other ALP-aligned tickets are proposed. SPSF United, linked with the ALP's Centre Unity faction, has distributed a three-page red-baiting exercise against McVey and Deller. A grouping linked with the ALP Centre Right is putting together a separate ticket.

Bill Deller told Green Left Weekly he is confident of a broad left win. The membership remembers the union's inactivity under an ALP leadership too clearly to give them their vote again, he said.

This article was posted on the Green Left Weekly Home Page.
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