Jobs threatened by market testing
BY STUART MARTIN
CANBERRA — The announcement the Liberal government to market test every public sector function with the intention to outsource to the private sector threatens thousands of jobs.
The first jobs to be market tested are "corporate services": personnel, payroll, property services, financial services, registry and mail rooms. The departments of finance and administration and the prime minister and cabinet have already outsourced their corporate services and Community and Public Sector Union members have lost their jobs. Other departments are proceeding with the tender process or waiting to see which testing methods will suit their intentions.
The response of the national CPSU has been to issue an information leaflet and to hold members meetings in selected departments. The leaderships' approach to the market testing of corporate services is disturbingly similar to the failed strategy used when information technology (IT) was outsourced.
Once again the CPSU is locking itself into fighting the government agency by agency, thus splintering its resources and weakening its position. The failure of the CPSU to defend the jobs in IT was not through any lack of commitment on the part of the delegates and organisers concerned, but because the national leadership allowed the government divide members agency by agency. Had the national CPSU leadership fought IT outsourcing through an public sector-wide campaign, the result may have been very different.
At the recent CPSU ACT branch conference, four on the market testing issue were presented to delegates. The motions put forward by the ACT branch executive and national president both confined action to "affected members" and agency/department committees. Motions from the Australian Bureau of Statistics and ScreenSound Australia delegates' committees demanded delegates' meetings from across the public sector.
The final motion that was put to the conference, after brief negotiations between the movers of the four motions, compels the branch secretary to convene a delegates' meeting, to which all interested members may participate. This was successfully amended to include the holding of a general branch meeting of all members to follow the delegates' meeting.
[Stuart Martin is a CPSU workplace delegate and a member of the Democratic Socialist Party.]