As CPSU leaders retreat, public servants demand action
By Greg Adamson
CANBERRA —Anger is rising among Australian Public Service workers at the feeble and disorganised response of the Community and Public Sector Union to the Howard government's public sector cuts.
While APS managers move to implement the cuts, the Wendy Caird leadership of the CPSU is dragging its feet on a national campaign of bans voted for by CPSU members in most states at a recent round of mass meetings.
While differing slightly from state to state, the bans would stop support to ministers and government MPs, provision of statistics, banking revenue, devolution of work to the states and territories and participation in preparation of the August budget.
But the national CPSU leadership is now acting like people who want CPSU members to forget that they ever voted for a real bans campaign: neither the national votes tally of the May 9-13 mass meetings nor the CPSU's Bulletin to members even mention the pro-bans vote. In addition, national executive (NE) members have decided to accept the current round of proposed cuts, although 98% of members voted to reject them.
The May 13 ACT CPSU mass meeting voted in favour of imposing a series of bans in the ACT, and some of these have been set in place at agency level. What's more, although the NE has formally authorised the ACT bans, it has done nothing to generalise such bans in other centres, despite the mass meeting votes in support of such a course. Instead the CPSU national leaders have passed the buck to National Delegates Committees for decisions on bans. Despite the mass meeting votes, many of these have either delayed putting bans on the agenda or have hesitated to impose bans in the absence of national leadership.
This dithering, to give it the most charitable interpretation, has already brought a sharp rebuke from one CPSU state branch. At its May 27 meeting the Queensland branch executive carried a resolution noting the "widespread anger and resentment and perceived lack of leadership" of the union's national leaders. The Queensland executive also called for an immediate discussion with the national union on the future direction of the campaign, canvassing mass meetings of CPSU members to consider a series of specific bans.
The Queensland action arose because of bans placed by CPSU members in a Brisbane office of the Department of Employment, Education and Training and Youth Affairs. The workers called for the extension of their bans to other DEETYA offices and other agencies.
No industrial action on 'day of action'
Further evidence of lack of commitment to any serious fight against Howard came last week when the NE called off a half-day ACT stoppage set to coincide with the June 6 National Day of Action. In marked contrast to the National Tertiary Education and Industry Union walkout on May 30, the CPSU "day of action" will consist of lunchtime rallies unbacked by any stoppage.
So keen was Caird to quash the ACT branch's stoppage that, along with assistant national secretary Sally O'Laughlin, she flew from Sydney to Canberra to direct operations after the NE resolved that the stoppage required endorsement by a mass meeting of ACT CPSU members. Yet, the May 13 ACT CPSU mass meeting had already resolved to call on the NE "to organise a National Day Action, involving stop work or strike action and mass rallies in States and Territories".
In order to disguise the role of the NE in preventing the industrial action, Caird personally instructed ACT branch secretary Cath Garvan to have the ACT branch executive vote on cancelling the stoppage. The only basis on which the ACT branch would have been allowed to go ahead was to have put the proposal to the June 6 rally, and it would then only apply to those CPSU members present.
Caird clearly wanted to shift responsibility for the call-off to the ACT branch executive: she informed Garvan that branch executive refusal to submit this no-win proposal to the ACT branch executive would see the NE meet and instruct the ACT branch secretary to do so.
The decision to call off the stoppage provoked anger and disappointment in the ACT delegates campaign committee, which advises the branch executive on the anti-cuts campaign in the ACT.
Managing the cuts
Clearly the national leadership approach is ever more one of acquiescence in the cuts. Faced with many members who want voluntary redundancies, CPSU national industrial organisers are pressuring government departments for information on redundancy plans. In some departments organisers seem to see themselves as co-managers of the voluntary redundancy process. For the NE, the problem areas are those where fewer people want voluntary redundancies than there are jobs to go.
So, while CPSU members view the bans campaign as directed against the cuts, the CPSU leadership sees bans as the way to get "reasonable consultation" from management.
In effect, by imposing agency-by-agency bans, departmental managements— and not the government — are being targeted. The point is to achieve adequate consultation around managing workloads after many jump ship.
If allowed to continue the result will be to undermine members' confidence, so that people will see no point in turning up to "national days of action" which can be little more than stunts in the absence of serious industrial action.
The way forward
The current confusion is being made worse by the campaign's agency focus. For example, while Australian Tax Office members are in an important position if the union decides to implement bans on collection of revenue, there has been no call for public service-wide support for their fight against regional tax office closures.
In other areas the union is showing no sign of opposing the sale of assets such as Commonwealth Funds Management, which handles members' superannuation funds.
We are just at the beginning of the campaign. But to date the best leadership the NE has provided is to take to members ideas that had already come from the floor at the previous round of meetings. At the present rate, based on NE campaigns in recent years, the next proposal will be for a fixed 24-hour stoppage, with plenty of advance warning to minimise its disruption to government, or rolling stoppages to further emphasise the agency-by-agency approach of the campaign.
It is vital that CPSU members call the national union leadership to order. This can be done in all the usual ways (workplace resolutions, motions through state and national delegates' committees and branch conferences and executives). Such motions should call on the NE to:
- immediately endorse all bans, rather than the current delay of up to a week;
- extend the bans campaign nationally;
- call mass meetings to consider dynamic and effective industrial action, and;
- empower rank-and-file campaign committees at branch level to oversee running of the bans campaign.
Through such action it is still possible to force the Howard government to reverse the cuts that members rejected in May.
[Greg Adamson is Assistant Branch Secretary of the ACT Branch of the Community and Public Sector Union.]