Public sector needs an industry-wide campaign
COMMENT BY CHRIS SLEE
Members First, the rank-and-file group within the Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU), fully supports the struggle by Australian Taxation Office workers for better pay and conditions. We welcome the decision of the CPSU's tax section council to recommend an industrial campaign.
Tax office members are in a strong position to win a better deal because the government needs to implement the GST smoothly.
But campaigns confined to a single public sector agency are not enough. The public sector as a whole is under attack. A united response by the whole CPSU is needed.
Agency bargaining has meant that workers in each agency (such as the tax office or Centrelink) have negotiated separately against an employer with a common agenda of cutting jobs and conditions. The result has been that conditions have been traded off against pay rises.
Workers in the ATO have lost many conditions in previous rounds of agency bargaining. While our current position is stronger, and we may be able to win back some of what we have lost, we need to question the whole approach of struggling as separate agencies rather than as a united union.
A broad campaign in defence of the public sector and for common Australian Public Service-wide pay and conditions would get support from CPSU members if the union leadership was prepared to lead a serious struggle.
If a relatively good agreement is won by tax office workers, this should be used as an example by other sections of the CPSU, and a campaign should be waged by the whole union to spread such pay and conditions to the rest of the public service.
[Chris Slee is a CPSU delegate in the Casselden Place tax office in Melbourne. He is an activist in the Members First group, which is currently contesting office bearer and national executive positions in the union's national elections.]