Struggle to save CES enters crucial phase

By Bruce Marlowe

On October 30, workers in the Department of Social Security, and the Department of Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs will be asked to vote for a campaign of lightning bans.

The Howard government has rejected the Community and Public Sector Union's demands over government plans to corporatisation the CES as a Public Employment Placement Enterprise and transfer all social security transactions to a "one stop shop", the Service Delivery Agency.

CPSU members recently voted for a comprehensive log of claims covering a host of issues arising from the plans, including to maintain public service wages and conditions.

CPSU rank-and-file activists contacted by Green Left Weekly said that putting the bans campaign to DSS and DEETYA members is a step forward from the agency-by-agency approach usually adopted by the Wendy Caird CPSU leadership. Darwin Student Assistance Centre delegate Tom Flanagan warns, however, that "it still falls well short of what will be needed to stop the Coalition's plans for shrinking the Australian Public Service to a policy development role."

Flanagan explained that, for this reason, the opposition rank and file network — CPSU National Challenge — will continue to press the union to adopt an APS-wide approach in the battle to save the CES and DEETYA.

In a separate development, the DEETYA National Delegates Committee last week rejected ACT delegate Paul Oboohov's proposal for the results of all motions put to CPSU meetings to be made known to members. The current practice of only counting the results on official motions means that a motion opposed or additional to the official line can actually win a national majority and still be disregarded by the incumbent CPSU leadership.

Oboohov told Green Left Weekly that the practice "reeked of paternalism" and that he would continue campaigning for union members' right to know the results of all motions on which they had voted.

From GLW issue 252