The CPSU would do well to heed a few lessons from its election. Photo: CPSU.
The Community and Public Sector Union has just had a bout with democracy and has emerged still firmly in the grip of the Australian Labor Party.
As reported, Melissa Donnelly has been returned as the union’s national secretary and her team remains intact on the CPSU national executive.
Also remaining in place is the union’s strong affiliation with the ALP and Ms Donnelly’s seat on the party’s national executive.
There is nothing particularly unusual about this, except that the CPSU isn’t used to being challenged from within and having its top jobs contested in a formal election.
The breakaway group, Members United, challenged all six seats on the union’s PSU Group national executive – winning none.
It was, however, the first fully contested election for the union in almost two decades and it rattled the establishment.
That the Melissa Donnelly Team felt threatened was obvious by their refusal to publicly acknowledge their opponents and how things played out in the APS wages row.
Members United candidates campaigned to be more representative of the public service workforce and less linked to Labor.
They wanted Ms Donnelly to resign her position on the ALP’s national executive; they wanted a membership vote on whether the CPSU should remain affiliated with the ALP; and they wanted the union to take a much tougher stance against the federal Labor government over salaries and conditions for APS employees.
These points all resonated with many public servants, and that’s why the threat was real.
The CPSU doesn’t make a noise about Ms Donnelly’s Labor Party position. Quite the contrary; they try to shut down any talk of it.
So it was more than a little concerning when Members United made that issue front and centre of the union’s election.
How could the current leadership, the MU team asked, really fight the government for a better deal for workers when the union is so close to that government and its leaders have political aspirations?
We here at Region were making those same points independently and before Members United highlighted them in the context of an election campaign.
And it was quite obvious by the end of the workplace bargaining round, which coincided with the CPSU’s elections, that the union wanted to please the government perhaps more than it did its own membership base when it came to employee pay packets.
It did, however, secure some seriously good wins on workplace conditions.
Members United candidates made the mistake of trying to drag Katy Gallagher into their campaigning.
They went as far as suggesting (welcoming) the possibility of the Finance and Public Service Minister losing her preselection as an ACT senator if Members United took control of the CPSU.
That’s probably where they lost the campaign.
Public servants – particularly the Canberra-based ones – know and like Senator Gallagher.
After years of disrespect from the Coalition, the Labor minister is a refreshing change for them.
They’re not going to vote to kick her out of office – even if that vote is just at the union level.
Attacking Senator Gallagher’s preselection seemed a little too easy and maybe a tad undergraduate on the part of Members United because it was never going to fly.
But their overall campaign was focussed and determined, and it highlighted some serious issues that the union would be foolish to dismiss into the future.
The election was close enough for the Australian Electoral Commission to take a week to count.
There remains a significant disgruntled element within the union’s membership.
The CPSU has had some excellent secretaries in recent decades (Stephen Jones and Nadine Flood to name just two) who have fought hard for their members’ rights without having too much internal dissent to deal with.
Melissa Donnelly is counted on that list of hard-working and successful union leaders.
But she’s just endured – and so far survived – one big career scare.
Original Article published by Chris Johnson on Riotact.
