Rank and file strengthen CPSU ACT campaign
By Stuart Martin
CANBERRA — Nationally, the failure of the ALP-dominated leadership of the Community and Public Sector Union to defend the 5000 Centrelink jobs threatened by the Liberals shows it hasn't learned from the massive defeats of Commonwealth Employment Service dismemberment and public service retrenchments inflicted in 1996 and 1997.
Then, it pursued a lobbying strategy and discarded industrial action and workplace bans, resulting in the divorce of the rank and file from the struggle for their own jobs and their eventual demoralisation. As a final insult, the leaders then used the demoralisation they had helped to cause as an excuse to give in to the government's demands.
The confidence this has given anti-union forces proved to be misplaced, though, when they took on the CPSU's ACT government section in its current enterprise bargaining round.
The section is putting up a defence against the drive to push down wages and conditions and reduce the size of the public sector.
The ACT government wants to reverse the success of workers in the ACT Government Service in their 1995-6 enterprise bargaining campaign, when they won a 10% pay rise without forced redundancies.
The government has tried two key tactics: division of the ACTGS into 49 separate "agencies", each to have its own certified agreement; and pushing non-union agreements, either collective, known as "LKs" (after the clause of the Workplace Relations Act allowing them; union agreements are called "LJs") or individual ("Australian Workplace Agreements"). These include provision for forced redundancies and stripped-back awards (eliminating or curtailing penalty rates, higher duties allowances and other payments).
The government's confidence was boosted by the actions of other unions with ACTGS members, notably the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union and the AMWU, which negotiated as individual unions on the basis of the 49 "agencies". This meant there could not be a single all-union ACTGS-wide campaign and agreement.
However, the CPSU ACT section has waged a sustained public and industrial campaign for nine months for union agreements and pay rises without trade-offs, in which the morale and fighting capacity of the union membership have grown.
The key has been participation and inclusion of members in decision-making and campaign activity. The section keeps members informed through full reports in the ACT branch's monthly journal, and special bulletins are produced fortnightly. Stop-work meetings and rallies have decided the basic elements of the campaign, built the confidence of the members in their collective strength and put pressure on the government, while delegates' meetings have determined the strategy and tactics.
Membership participation has strengthened the union and spread a consciousness amongst the work force of their rights and how they can defend them.
Three non-union agreements have now been put up by the government, all including forced redundancies and reduced working conditions. Two were LK agreements in the housing and chief minister's departments, and an LJ agreement was signed at Canberra Hospital by the small Hospital Services Union to the exclusion of the other five unions there. All of them were voted down by at least two-thirds of workers (union and non-union).
The government then tried to get its way through AWAs, using both bribery and coercion. Existing workers who had expressed an interest in an AWA were given two more days' leave over Christmas. In the housing department, the government tried to force new staff onto AWAs (the section has challenged this in the Industrial Relations Commission).
The CPSU has restricted the government's plans to break the workers' morale with this tactic. The only people opting for AWAs have been senior management.
Industrial action has been taken twice during the dispute. In November, during a four-hour stoppage, a mass meeting was held; members then marched and rallied as part of the successful campaign to oppose the privatisation of the power and water utility ACTEW.
Twenty-three picket lines were set up to support the campaign's first 24-hour strike in December, which gained wide supported from unionists and the community.
The government is now being forced to negotiate and is moving for more LJ agreements. The CPSU is pursuing the fundamental principle adopted by the delegates' committee: "that any condition lost would be because the employer took it, not that the union gave it away, and any condition won or maintained would be the result of a strong union campaign".
[Stuart Martin is a CPSU deputy workplace delegate at the National Film and Sound Archives in Canberra.]