CPSU: Time to fight back, or to raise a low standard?

May 7, 2003
Issue 

BY ANDREW HALL

CANBERRA — Members of Australia's largest union, the Community and Public Sector Union, have begun voting for national office bearers to lead the CPSU for the next two and a half years.

The broad left coalition Members First, campaigning under the theme "Time to fight back", is challenging the ALP-aligned Progressive Caucus team. Headed by Adrian O'Connell and Margaret Gillespie, the Progressive Caucus' campaign theme is "Raising the standard".

"This is such an appropriate theme, because the 'Progressive Caucus' leadership has set the standard in how low a union leadership can go in accommodating the employer", Paul Oboohov, Members First candidate for deputy national president, told Green Left Weekly.

Other Members First candidates include Jonathon Sherlock for national secretary, Judy McVey for assistant national secretary, Mick Burnside for deputy national president and Phillip Hilton for professional officers secretary.

O'Connell and Gillespie are seeking election to the positions they currently hold — secretary and assistant secretary respectively. They were appointed to these positions by the ALP-dominated CPSU National Council in 2002, following the retirement of Wendy Caird and Doug Lilly. After repeatedly failing to win ALP Senate preselection, Caird took a lucrative position in France with the Public Service International.

Under Caird's and O'Connell's leadership, the Progressive Caucus has worked to reassure the ALP's economic rationalist supporters in big business, by keeping industrial militancy off the union's agenda.

"The union leadership has passively watched the axing of 100,000 jobs since 1996, caved in on agency bargaining and has even begun the process of caving in on allowing individual agreements. This undermines collective agreements, one of the union movement's main strengths.

"We have seen rampant privatisation and no decent campaigns to stop these attacks. They are now trying to spin a disaster as a positive", said Oboohov, explaining that the O'Connell and Gillespie election leaflet boasts that the union has been "following outsourced public sector workers into the private sector".

Despite the success of unions that have used industry-wide pattern bargaining to strengthen pay and conditions, the O'Connell and Gillespie team encourages members to work through agency bargaining.

Tens of thousands of members are forced to pretend that they are not working for a single employer, the government, but rather dozens of separate entities. Rather than using their collective strength to negotiate a good deal for everyone, they can only get what is possible in their own agency. Divide and rule is a bosses' tactic — under pressure from the parliamentary ALP, the Progressive Caucus has made it a union one, too.

The mismanagement of the Progressive Caucus has even led to industrial action by CPSU staff against their managers, as well as a series of expensive legal disputes involving the wrongful dismissal of union employees.

Members First supports the traditional union values of solidarity and active campaigning. The grassroots, non-Labor-aligned group is committed to pattern bargaining, publishing details of the salaries and expenses of union officials and holding members' meetings to direct campaigns for better wages and shorter hours.

Leafleting outside workplaces and distributing statements through our growing email network, positive responses are filtering in, with comments such as "Good to see there is finally going to be a viable alternative!" and "I agree with all the information in your flyer, you have my full support".

Members First is open to any progressive unionist interested in a stronger, more democratic union and improving working conditions in the public service.

Voting closes at 9am on May 21. To assist our campaign or to find out more phone 0438 624 744 or visit: <http://www.users.bigpond.com/membersfirst>

[Andrew Hall is convener of Members First in the ACT and is running for national president of the CPSU. He is also a member of the Socialist Alliance.]

From Green Left Weekly, May 7, 2003.
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