By Daniel Kelly
DARWIN — On April 5, the Northern Territory branch conference of the Community and Public Sector Union voted to call for action by the CPSU national executive to back up negotiations with the federal government for an Australian Public Service-wide agreement.
The motion proposed a well-orchestrated ongoing industrial campaign, to be guided by regular mass meetings of members, and that the campaign be launched by a national day of action combined with a 24-hour stop-work on May 8, in conjunction with education sector action against the federal budget.
Conference delegates supported the motion eight votes to five. The motion explicitly rejected "any moves towards Australian Workplace Agreements or agency level agreements".
NT branch secretary and national executive member Janet Crews moved an amendment that the words "or agency level agreements" be deleted, arguing that some agencies might be able to negotiate a good agency level agreement, and that the CPSU could then seek to extend that gain to other agencies.
Delegates with the CPSU Challenge group, Tim Stewart and Tom Flanagan, argued that the agency by agency approach had already been shown to be a failure, leaving agencies to be picked off by the government one by one, rather than being defended by the full strength of the union.
Speaking to Green Left after the conference, Stewart explained that the last 12 months had demonstrated that the Caird leadership of the CPSU was still clinging to an ineffective strategy.
"Continuing to respond to government attacks in this way is a betrayal of union members. We are under the most serious attack that the Australian public sector has ever experienced. We are rapidly losing ground, and the CPSU leadership is still reluctant to use the union's strength as a united body to fight the attacks", Stewart said.
CPSU national president Marg Sexton spoke to the conference on issues of international solidarity. Her talk was followed by a screening of the documentary There is only one word — Resist, which features jailed Indonesian trade union activist Dita Sari.
A motion was passed calling on the CPSU national management committee (NMC) to adopt a policy of formal recognition of the PPBI (Indonesian Centre for Labour Struggle) and the SBSI (Indonesian Prosperity Trade Union) as legitimate trade unions in Indonesia.
The motion also called for the NMC to demand that the Indonesian government release all trade union activists charged with subversion, stop intervening militarily in industrial issues and allow trade unions to operate freely. The motion called on the national executive to launch a solidarity campaign demanding the release of the imprisoned unionists.