Between November 18 and December 7, members of the Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU) will be electing their union leadership bodies for the next three years. Green Left Weekly's Graham Matthews spoke to candidates from the Members First ticket, which is contesting all seven national executive positions, as well as many governing council and section council positions.
"We now face a government and employer hell-bent on sacrificing Australian workers' wages and conditions for the sake of political power and the profits of their big business mates", Judy McVey, Members First candidate for national secretary, told Green Left Weekly. "We need the power and solidarity of a united union, rather than accepting agency-by-agency bargaining", she explained.
McVey has been a CPSU member and delegate for more than 20 years. "Members First argues for a union-wide pattern bargaining strategy to spread the best wages and conditions to all members."
"The current national leadership talks about being 'stronger together', but has presided over more than 100 certified agreements with widely differing pay and conditions", Paul Oboohov, Members First candidate for assistant national secretary, told GLW. "The national leadership proclaims workplace organising and empowering members, but it has super-centralised the union, and closed offices and regional bodies."
Paul Aalto, Members First candidate for the union's executive committee, joined the union last year and quickly became active in the Hunter Alliance, dedicated to defending the union's Newcastle office against closure by the CPSU leadership. Aalto told GLW that when he heard about the office closure, he couldn't believe it. "How could the union leaders argue against centralising resources by our bosses if they were doing the same things themselves? My determination to see things changed was reinforced when, on the day of our picket of the CPSU national office, the current management put security guards on the door and told staff not to come in. Which side are these people on?"
Members First is also campaigning vigorously against federal workplace relations minister Kevin Andrews' efforts to spread Australian Workplace Agreements (AWAs) across the public service. "As a delegate in the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations national office, I have seen first hand the government's plans to reduce wages and employment conditions by putting workers on individual contracts and pitting them against each other", executive committee and Employment and Workplace Relations section secretary candidate Nick Everett told GLW. "Under the current CPSU leadership, more than half of DEWR staff have signed AWAs".
Everett explained: "Some have been obliged to sign AWAs. Others have signed because the CPSU has not resisted them, arguing that our members are free to make a 'choice'. If this policy is not changed, our union will lack the strength to defend our pay and conditions."
In Telstra, more than 23,000 of the 42,000 staff are employed under AWAs. Mike Byrne, a delegate in Telstra in Brisbane and Members First candidate for CPSU deputy national president told GLW: "Time and time again our current leadership has missed opportunities to stop the introduction of AWAs, the increased use of casual workers, outsourcing, increased operating hours and the erosion of our hard won conditions." Byrne said this trend is likely to accelerate with the full privatisation of Telstra.
"The Members First Team, if elected, will actively and effectively organise against AWAs, the casualisation and outsourcing of jobs, and the privatisation of Telstra", Terry Costello, Members First candidate for national president said.
Jonathon Sherlock, Members First candidate for deputy national president and community services section councillor, told GLW, "In Centrelink, only one in two staff members are in the union. Management knows this fully well and are pushing individual contracts and a nasty agreement that puts the rules governing our conditions into a 'policy' handbook that can be changed by management."
"We can't fight the government by centralising the union and taking away the power from members. We need to be empowering members to fight the government's anti-union agenda", Sherlock added.
Kathryn Kelly, Members First candidate for ACT government governing councillor said that the closure of the ACT branch of the CPSU, under a previous union restructure, had dealt a heavy blow to grassroots organising within the union. "The ACT public service will be under strong pressure from the federal government to implement the legislation — we'll be in the firing line", said Kelly, who was acting assistant secretary of the CPSU's ACT branch in 1997. "If elected, I will work with ACT section councillors to build the union in ACT government departments and to increase union membership."
Members First is committed to "mobilising and directly involving the CPSU membership in the fight against Howard's plans to destroy the trade union movement", explained Costello. "The real power of the union resides in the membership's resolve to take direct action, both in the streets and in their workplaces."
[For more information, visit < http://www.members-A HREF="mailto:first.org/"><first.org/>.]
From Green Left Weekly, November 9, 2005.
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