By Reihana Mohideen
National Challenge, the militant rank-and-file group in the Community and Public Sector Union, is running a national ticket against the incumbent ALP-dominated leadership team in the upcoming union elections.
The ticket includes Val Edwards, challenging Wendy Caird for one of the joint national secretary positions; Kim Sumner for national president, Tim Gooden and Robert Finn for the two assistant national secretary positions; Mark Swift and Philippa Stanford for the two deputy national president positions; and Phil Shannon and Bronwyn Asquith are standing for two national executive positions. The ballot opens on May 2.
In the lead-up to the elections, the union's national management committee has called nationwide stop-work meetings for April 23.
National Challenge candidates argue that this is too little, too late. In the face of the most serious challenge in decades to public services, jobs and conditions, the Caird leadership has, they say, failed to defend members' interests.
When the Commonwealth Employment Service is corporatised thousands of jobs will be lost. Staff cuts at the Australian Taxation Office have meant workload increases for the remaining staff and now the government has threatened to farm out ATO work to the private sector. Information technology is being privatised and the meat inspection industry has been deregulated.
Members of the Food Inspectors Group, angry at the union's inaction over the cuts to staff, will also contest the national secretary and assistant national secretary positions.
Edwards says the Howard government is keen to make the APS a test case for its Australian Workplace Agreements and Workplace Relations Act. She told Green Left Weekly, "The government is obviously trying to stop CPSU members from taking action against its moves to amend the Public Service Act and to remove the comprehensive coverage that public servants have under the current general employment conditions award".
"Despite this, the Caird leadership hasn't mustered much of a fight", Edwards said. "The union leadership is only now calling mass meetings to discuss a campaign against job losses! Only a few months ago, members in information technology were told by the national industrial organiser that it was too early to discuss industrial action.
"Now that the government is ready to outsource these functions, which will mean the loss of more than 2000 jobs, CPSU members are being told that it's too late to fight. They are being advised to make sure they will be looked after in private industry — without the award coverage they currently have and without job assurance."
Edwards commented that Caird's call for members to vote on the principle of maintaining service-wide conditions in the face of the government attacks is "too vague".
"We need to move fast now with the May 13 federal budget looming. At the mass meetings we should call for a national day of action combined with a 24-hour strike to launch a well-organised industrial campaign to bring Howard and Reith to the negotiating table."
The government is currently refusing to negotiate an APS-wide agreement in favour of agency level agreements. Edwards suggested that public servants time their protest with the national day of action against education cuts on May 8.
Gooden, currently ACT section secretary, recently led a campaign which won a 10.1% pay rise and a guarantee of no forced redundancies for the whole of the ACT Public Service. "As a union we have the potential to win, but it requires leadership. The Caird leadership has failed the test. To fight Howard's cuts, Caird and company must go", Gooden said.