PSU and agency bargaining

Bronwyn Taylor

PSU members reject agency-based bargaining

Rank-and-file members of the Federal Public Sector Union are sending a clear message to their union officials, the ACTU and the federal government that they will reject agency-based enterprise bargaining as a model for pay bargaining in the public sector.

Members nationally have supported a motion which attempts to prohibit the national secretary of the union, Peter Robson, from entering into any negotiations which might lead to agency-based bargaining in the APS.

Federal industrial relations minister Peter Cook has stated that the federal bureaucracy could become a "leader in workplace bargaining". The government has stated that its recent pay offer to public servants is conditional on a commitment to move to agency-based bargaining.

After prolonged failure by PSU officials to make clear to the membership how agency-based bargaining would be dealt with in negotiations, the membership has called Peter Robson and the PSU National Executive to account.

A campaign has been launched in a recent round of national membership meetings at which officials sought the views of members on a wages claim. Members at many of these meetings around Australia have demanded assurances that officials would not enter into negotiations which would lead to agency-based bargaining in the APS.

In a move that served to reinforce the rank-and-file backlash, Robson entered into negotiations with the government three days before the conclusion of the national round of membership voting authorising him to do so. This hostile and contemptuous attitude to the views of the ordinary members is one more reason to build a membership-based response to attempts to foist agency bargaining on public servants.

At a meeting of PSU members from Customs in Canberra, the National Executive's position on wages was rejected overwhelmingly. The rank-and-file motion opposing agency-based bargaining was passed unanimously. Customs is an agency where, it is claimed, benefits from agency bargaining would be most widely accepted and supported. Members have rejected this myth and made their position clear.

A national coalition of rank-and-file activists is resisting attempts by the PSU National Executive to appease their political masters in the ACTU and Labor government by inflicting a rash of New Zealand-style enterprise bargaining agreements on the public sector. This current action puts the PSU National Executive between a rock and a hard place. The government has clearly been confident that PSU officials would be stitching up agreement by the membership to agency bargaining.

National caucusing among rank-and-file members is continuing.
[Bronwyn Taylor is a PSU national delegate from the Department of Health, Housing and Community Services in Canberra. She recently initiated a motion against enterprise bargaining which was supported by PSU members nationally despite the opposition of the union's officials.]

From GLW issue 70