Governing Council 08: Celebrate the past, look to the future

Governing Council (GC) is the CPSU's principal policy-making body and is comprised of around 60 Governing Councilors elected by members from their agency, and seven CPSU national officials, elected directly by a vote of all CPSU members.

The themes of this year's Governing Council meeting were:

• What did we learn? Reflecting on Your Rights at Work and other campaigns in 2007
• What do we need to do now? Identifying the union's key objectives for the next five years
• How do we get there? Identifying what we need to achieve those outcomes.

Key note speakers: Guest speakers included; Senator the Hon. John Faulkner, ACTU President, Sharan Burrow, Ian McAuley from the ANU School of Public Administration, Tony Douglas from Essential Media Communications and Richard Wagstaff from the New Zealand Public Service Association.

Highlights from 2007: Delegates heard reports about the CPSU's leading role in the Your Rights at Work campaign (YRAW). This campaign played a pivotal role in changing the Government and has paved the way for fairer workplace laws. GC warmly acknowledged the strong financial and practical support of tens of thousand of CPSU members and activists. Some impressive statistics include:

• 850 CPSU members distributing YRAW material on election day
• 1400 CPSU members taking part in community campaigns
• 2845 YRAW activities in CPSU workplaces
• 12,000 voters in marginal seats door-knocked by CPSU activists.

To find out more about the CPSU members recognised by Governing Council for their outstanding work on the campaign, click here http://www.cpsu.org.au/news/6545.html

Bargaining outcomes: GC also considered reports on more than 60 new collective agreements negotiated last year in workplaces such as Customs, DIAC, ACT Government, the NTPS, AGD, DoHA, DCITA, Medibank Private, and the Workplace Ombudsman. These agreements delivered average pay rises of 4.3% and protected and improved a range of conditions.

Core claim revamp: In May 2006 the CPSU established a centralised bargaining unit and developed a 'core claim' as a response to WorkChoices. Following GC, this claim has now been updated to reflect the new Government and new laws. It includes;

• strategies for the attraction and retention of skilled workers

• revamped permanent part-time, mature age workers and working hours claims

• updated performance assessment and classification standards

• inclusion of environmental issues in CPSU bargaining claims

• initiatives to boost indigenous employment in the APS

• decent 'whole of Government' redeployment, retraining and redundancy standards.

Job security and quality public services: GC strongly supported a motion for a new campaign to deal with immediate and on-going threats to public sector jobs and quality public services. As well as trying to prevent forced redundancies, over the next 12 months the union will campaign for abolition of arbitrary efficiency dividends from future budgets. One significant outcome was the announcement by Senator John Faulkner of a new APS redeployment facility designed to minimise the need for compulsory redundancies as a result of Budget cuts. Addressing CPSU delegates, Senator Faulkner said: “We want to ensure that excess staff are provided with the opportunity to remain in the APS, that the APS is able to retain experienced and qualified staff and redeploy them to areas of need, and that the requirement for the compulsory retrenchment of staff is minimised.” Find out more here http://www.cpsu.org.au/news/6498.html

Work / life balance: Another hugely important outcome was GC endorsement of the plan to improve paid maternity leave in the APS to 14 weeks by 2008, 20 weeks by 2011 and 26 weeks by 2013. Find out more here http://www.cpsu.org.au/campaigns/news/6538.html

Securing decent rights at work in the future: According to CPSU National Secretary Stephen Jones, Australia has not automatically become a "workers’ nirvana" since Labor's election.

"The CPSU makes no apology for campaigning for a change of Government. However the election outcome will not change the way the union operates. We will still need to stand up and fight for the things we believe in under this Government, just as we did under 11½ years of Coalition Government. How well we do will depend, as it always does, on how much support and new membership we can build in the workplace. The Your Rights at Work campaign is about more than getting rid of unfair laws and the Government that made them.

"It's about securing decent workplace rights into the future and ensuring Australian workers' rights are never again threatened as they were by WorkChoices. While the actual WorkChoices legislation is on its way out, there remains plenty of unfinished business around existing agreements made under WorkChoices, transitional issues and fixing the previous Government's changes to health and safety rights, workers' compensation and superannuation," said Mr Jones.

Campaign and levy to continue: Therefore Governing Council has resolved to continue the current voluntary $1 a week campaign levy for 12 months, until 30 June 2009. The continuation of the campaign will help support a range of activities designed to ensure workers' rights are locked in, including;

• professional research to build community support for ongoing workplace rights and quality public services
• paid advertising, media and community campaigning in support of workplace rights and quality public services
• training for workplace delegates on rights and conditions
• iconic campaigns against 'bad faith' employers such as Telstra

Members who no longer wish to support the campaign levy can opt out of paying it by contacting the CPSU - email members@cpsu.org.au, call 1300 137 636 or visit https://www.cpsusurveys.org.au/PTW_OO.asp

Future steps: GC discussed the CPSU’s agenda for the next five years and beyond. This was informed by a detailed report called Next Steps which provides a snapshot of the facing workers in our sector. Issues the union will seek to have a significant influence on include:

• paid maternity leave
• transition to retirement
• professional and career development
• environmentally friendly workplaces
• a modern and equitable superannuation system for all members, including bringing super in the ACT and NT Public Services up to 15%
• engaging members as volunteers around issues and beyond workplace activism
• building union capacity.

There will be a comprehensive consultation process to get members’ input into all of the above beginning in May-June with section councils and issue groups. There will also be externally provided focus groups, polling and research on these plans. This will be followed in August by regional delegates' conferences before presenting the results for endorsement at the next Governing Council in September.

Executive Committee changes: There were a number of changes to the CPSU Executive Committee announced at GC. Mark Gepp, who was National President, is now Assistant National Secretary. Louise Persse takes over as National President and Michael Tull and Lisa Newman are the Deputy National Presidents. Rupert Evans and Nadine Flood are now Deputy Secretaries.