Industrial Strategy

Set membership density targets and report progress regularly to
members
Presently, the CPSU leadership only reports on raw membership numbers. They
simply never calculate and communicate the size of the membership expressed as a
percentage of the APS, ACTPS and NTPS workforces within CPSU coverage. This is
a critical omission because it is possible for the union to grow while being outpaced
by the growth of the public services more generally. And density is the critical metric
for the union’s industrial power – because it measures how much of the workforce
can be mobilised to withdraw their labour power in strike action.
As our membership numbers are publicly available in election results and our
operating reports, there is no strategic benefit to not calculating and publishing our
density levels. The Australian Public Service Commission could calculate the union’s
density (including by agency) with reasonable accuracy if they chose to do so. The
decision not to provide this information to the membership is inexplicable, save for
the fact it obviously reflects poorly on the leadership themselves.
We will implement transparent density reporting regularly to members, so they
are fully apprised of our level of industrial power. We will set density targets for all
members to involve themselves in the work to build that industrial power. This will
give the whole of the union meaningful objectives for real density growth, rather
than simply reporting nominal growth that masks a decline in industrial power.
We will continue work to update and modernise the union’s databases so that
workplaces are as mapped as clearly as possible, and involve delegates in the work
of that mapping.

Establish a robust strike fund, supported by the central CPSU budget
Within our financial capacity, we will do everything that we possibly can to limit
members’ income losses as a result of taking strike action. This inherently involves
strategically investing in a strike fund over time. This will improve our industrial
power because it means that members can strike harder and longer, and that the
cost of that is socialised collectively and spread out over time rather than borne in
the immediate by the member taking industrial action. As an immediate priority, we
will invest $1 million in a fighting fund in our first year of office.
This will create a situation where our industrial action is more effective, putting us in
a better position to win better pay outcomes for members in any bargaining round
because we can carry out expanded strike action.

Develop an ongoing education program on the significance of strike
action
Everything significant that unions have won has ultimately rested on the employer
understanding that the union is capable of taking industrial action. That is how
unions win things. The current CPSU leadership is tepid on this self-evident fact of
unionism. We are not a professional association – we are a union, and a union must
be ready to strike.
To remedy this, we will develop an education program with a specific focus on the
importance of strike action, including an overview of the process and strategies and
tactics for carrying it out.

Launch a tailored Political Economy for Public Sector Unionists
program
It’s our view that to understand your industrial position in the public sector, unionists
need a broader understanding of the economy and the social structures that govern
it – namely, that we currently live under capitalism, and in particular neoliberalism.
This is qualitatively different to the social-democratic Australian capitalism
established post-war.
This contextualises many of our industrial demands and our industrial strategy –
things that public sector workers used to enjoy are now no longer provided for.
Living standards have declined over the last forty-five years. A public sector worker
in the 1970s would find it absurd that an EL1-level APS worker could find it difficult to
afford a two-bedroom apartment as a single person in Canberra, or that they would
likely have to work to 67 years old. Further, many of the services that public sector
workers used to provide have now been subject to privatisation and are now done
on a for-profit basis.
Consequently, we need a historical and economic account of why that happened,
including the underlying class relations, an analysis of inequality and the struggle
over national income, and where public sector unionists are situated in the broader
Australian working class. We will collaborate to work with experts inside and outside
of our union membership to develop a tailored program that explains key Political
Economy concepts to public sector unionists in an accessible yet empowering way.
 

Review the current curriculum for delegates’ training
We will review delegates’ training to include a sharper focus on the skills associated
with the Organizing4Power program and the methods articulated by prominent
organising theorist Jane McAlevey. We will focus on being critically engaged with the
latest and leading practices in trade union organising and provide delegates with the
skills and methods they need to organise in their workplaces.
We will support delegates and members to develop and use escalating structure
tests in our workplaces that engage current members and their colleagues to take
tangible action during bargaining and other campaigns. This would include pledges,
petitions, rallies and strike actions. We will support members in having actual
structured organising conversations with training, scripts, debriefing and tracking
our success. We will support members to identify key decision-makers to influence
them to win pro-union outcomes. This will be crucial for the rebuilding of the union.
Engage in both broad-based and targeted strike action
We will engage in a rolling perpetual education campaign which builds the
knowledge and capacity of the union to undertake service-wide strike action, rather
than a long-run strategy of keeping members in a low-information environment
about protected industrial action and then relying on pockets with high density once
bargaining kicks off.
However, we will locate specific areas of the public services that would cause a high
level of disruption were the workers engaged in those services to take industrial
action. There are some sections of the Australian Public Service with technical skills
located in critical areas where, if those workers could be persuaded to join their
union and carry out lawful industrial action, that action would have outsized effects
on the operations of government.
These are the areas where the union must pay specific attention to while it builds
density across the whole of the public sector, so that we are ready in the short-
term to conduct actions which will be difficult for the employer to ignore and
consequently more likely to induce them to cede to our demands at the bargaining
table. This will be a key plank of our approach at attempting to win outcomes quickly,
rather than over multiple bargaining cycles.