By Jon Singer
CANBERRA — The PSU Activists Conference held here on April 23-24 was "very positive", according to Maree Roberts, PSU National Challenge candidate for PSU national secretary. "The conference drew together a very broad range of activists opposed to the undemocratic decision-making in the union and to the direction in which the union is moving", she told Green Left Weekly afterwards.
There were about 50 registrations, with all states and the ACT represented. The conference was organised around a series of panels and workshops, but also included a press conference by PSU National Challenge candidates contesting the upcoming PSU national elections and a closing plenary session. There were opportunities for activists to discuss the National Challenge campaign and organising within federal government departments.
Panel discussions took up major questions now facing PSU activists. "Defence of public service jobs" dealt with the arguments against the contracting out and privatisation of public sector work, and discussed how to advocate the expansion of the public sector.
A panel on agency bargaining started by examining the attacks on federal public sector workers as a result of the enterprise bargaining regime. The conferees then proceeded to debate the best methods with which to oppose enterprise bargaining.
The final panel looked at attempting to overcome the fragmentation of the union resulting from the divisional structure established as a result of amalgamations. It discussed situations where, within a single enterprise, different divisions of the union have taken separate approaches to enterprise bargaining. Professional differences have been exaggerated at the cost of unity in action.
The workshops took up longer-terms concerns of unionists: internationalism, "best-practice unionism", young people and unions, training wages, alliance-building and budget strategy.
The plenary session concerned the national coordination of PSU activists, with discussion of the use of the new union newsletter Active Voice, and the adoption of the proposal to draft a PSU Activists' Charter.
There was an ebullient mood at the close of the conference, a response to what one of the conference organisers, Greg Adamson, senior deputy president of the PSU ACT branch, told Green Left was the conference's "fruitful discussion".