BY ANA KAILIS
PERTH — Recently, the Western Australian branch of the Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU) decided to discontinue the appointment of Sarah Harris to its delegation to the WA Trades and Labor Council (now known as Unions WA). The reason given was that the union leadership was not confident that Harris's political views allowed her to adequately represent the CPSU members.
A more accurate reason for Harris's exclusion is the CPSU branch leadership's intense opposition to those members who propose a different strategy to that of the Labor-dominated national union leadership, headed by Wendy Caird. Harris is a candidate for the militant Members First rank-and-file group within the CPSU.
The union's branch secretary, John Theodorson, criticises Anthony Benbow for inaccuracies in his article "Activist thrown off union body" in Green Left Weekly #405 [see letter on page 10]. While there were two errors in Benbow's article — Harris had not been spoken to in person about being left off the TLC delegation (it was by phone) and she had contacted the CPSU office several times (not "many times") during the year — this is nitpicking by Theodorson to divert attention from the real issues.
After the Coalition took federal office in 1996, more than 100,000 public sector jobs were lost, many of them belonging to CPSU members. Rather than fight the job cuts, the CPSU leadership accepted the government's mass redundancies by mounting only a token campaign.
Similarly, when the government decided to abolish the Commonwealth Employment Service, the CPSU leadership refused to mobilise the full strength of the union against the attack, leaving union members in the CES isolated and demoralised.
This failure to launch a union-wide campaign against any of the government's major attacks on the public sector has resulted in the erosion of public sector workers' conditions. For Centrelink workers, for example, the Caird leadership supported an enterprise agreement that includes the introduction of payment linked to individual performance — individual contracts by the backdoor.
Because the CPSU leaders have failed to fight the government's broader political agenda — cuts to welfare, health, education, etc. — the general community has also suffered. The extension of work for the dole, the public employment agency's demise, cuts to public broadcasting and the loss of services in regional areas have all been made easier.
In my eight years as a CPSU union delegate, I saw many of the best and most committed union activists leave the public sector in despair, demoralised by the inaction of the CPSU leadership.
The union leadership continues to peddle the myth that members are not prepared to fight the attacks. This becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy: the failure to fight by the union leadership is the main affliction holding back public sector workers.
Fortunately, there is an alternative and this is the voice that the CPSU leadership so desperately wants to silence. Grassroots movements within the union, such as CPSU Challenge and Members First, have questioned the hegemony of the Caird leadership. The Canberra branch, led by CPSU Challenge, launched significant campaigns against the government attacks, as well as increasing democratic participation within the union.
Members First activists are campaigning strongly for a fighting, democratic union that does not roll over when the government attacks. Members First activists present a threat to the Caird leadership because they expose its inaction and betrayal. The national leadership's attempts to silence dissent in recent years include the introduction of a sectional structure which undermines local branches and the recent proposal to set up a central call centre to replace branch organisers.
A strong and bold union would encourage differences of opinion and discussion, and ensure the representation of all members on representative bodies of the union. The union would be so much stronger if active and committed union members were drawn into the leadership of the union. The present CPSU national leadership is doing the opposite.
One can only laugh at the accusation thrown at activists like Harris that their political views undermine their ability to represent members' views. Harris is a member of the Democratic Socialist Party; the attack on her has all the hallmarks of "reds under the beds" scaremongering.
The main external political force intervening in the CPSU is not the DSP but the ALP. Time and again I have witnessed the damaging role that the Labor Party, under the shadowy guise of the "progressive caucus", has played in the CPSU. Members' interests have been sacrificed to help Labor's electoral fortunes and to allow Labor governments to implement policies that negatively affect public sector workers.
Public sector workers deserve more. They desperately need a CPSU that puts the interests of its members first, involves, inspires and mobilises them, and opposes all anti-worker policies from whatever quarter.
[Ana Kailis was a CPSU delegate for eight years and was a proxy delegate to the WA TLC in 1999.]