Rules, Structure and Democratic Culture

Empower members to understand and navigate union structures
At present, new CPSU members are not given any kind of how-to guide to
understand how the organisation they have just joined functions. There is little in
the way of any explanation of how the union’s democratic structures operate – from
members’ meetings to delegates’ committees to Section Councils, to the Governing
Council, to the Executive Committee.
The way members are oriented to the union is still fundamentally in the approach
of service-model unionism. If they are lucky, they might be contacted by their
local delegate or patch organiser upon joining or receive a call from the Members’
Service Centre. But they are not educated on how to directly engage with the union
structurally.
We intend to change that – every member will be provided with a comprehensive
induction, including a how-to guide explicating clearly how they can exercise their
democratic power inside the union. This content will also be supported by video
resources and a podcast-style audio recording to support members’ learning styles
and time constraints in an accessible format. When you join a business unit in the
public service, your first day you are usually provided with your organisation chart –
the CPSU should not just do the same, it should do better!

Strengthen Section Councils and Delegates’ Committees as decision-
making bodies
We will decentralise power away from the Executive Committee and Governing
Council and put it back in the hands of the Section Councils and Delegates’
Committees. We will create limited discretionary budgets for Section Councils for the
purposes of running their own local campaigns in their workplaces without needing
to seek funding approvals from the Executive Committee.
In the past sub-branch agency delegates’ committees functioned as schools of
unionism: generalising both the experiences of experienced activists and skilling up
new rank-and-file activists. We will restore sub-branch delegates’ committees as
forums that draw rank-and-file activists into the life of the union and increase active
membership participation.
We will amend the “minimum necessary formalities” rule to ensure that Terms of
Reference are established for each Section Council and Delegate’s Committee,
making it clear how they ought to operate and how they are empowered to provide
pathways forward for members to achieve their interests. They will no longer
function as focus groups for the Executive Committee – instead, they will function as
the empowered structural units of the union that they should be, determining their
own priorities and campaigns.
We aim to strengthen the democratic control of the union by rank-and-file members
through democratic decision-making as the basis for organisation, industrial action
and all relevant discussion including workplace, agency-based and cross-agency
meetings.

Revitalize a culture of mass meetings, ensuring proper meeting
procedures are followed
We contend that a great failing of the CPSU’s current culture is that mass meetings,
in effect, no longer occur. When there is a general meeting of members, they are
usually both framed and structured as “briefings” where members are provided
information and a call to action, alongside a Q&A component.
We will do away with that. Instead, we will organise democratic meetings that use
formal meeting procedure – with a call for agenda items, a draft of the agenda
circulated ahead of time, a Chair, a speaking list, and the ability to put and vote on
motions. When this happens at a general meeting of members, any carried motions
will be referred to the agency’s Section Council for organising. Where it is a cross-
agency meeting, those motions will be referred to either the Governing Council or
the relevant Section Councils as appropriate.
This does not mean that a Members United leadership will not take a position to
those meetings. We intend to provide leadership – but we will not manufacture
consent for our proposals by depriving members of basic entitlements like
democratic meeting procedure.
Further, we will aim for maximum member involvement in meetings. We will rely less
on reactive polling to guide our strategy than the incumbent leadership does, and
we will certainly not push-poll members towards a certain outcome using leading
questions. We intend to provide leadership to the membership in a way that respects
their intelligence and empowers them to engage with us critically and constructively.

Restore regional and local democracy through the direct election of
State and Territory Secretaries
The appointment of Regional Secretaries by the Executive Committee does not
meet the needs of our members. We should return to the approach held in many
unions and the CPSU - PSU Group historically, where the Secretary responsible for
each state or territory is democratically accountable to the members of that state
or territory through direct election, rather than imposed top-down by a national
leadership.
We consider it self-evident that the ACT Regional Secretary should be elected by
members in the ACT, that the WA Regional Secretary should be elected by members
in WA – and so on. This reform will restore a level of regional democracy to the union
that was taken away.
We aim to strengthen the democratic control of the union by rank-and-file members
through democratic decision-making as the basis for organisation, industrial action
and all relevant discussion including workplace, agency-based and cross-agency
meetings.

Set nine-year term limits for individuals to serve on Executive
Committee and introduce minimum service requirements
The CPSU is a union with over 40,000 members. We are full of members who have
all the skills necessary to lead the union. Long-term incumbency of union officials
creates a barrier to generational change, innovation and fresh ideas. We contend
that three full consecutive terms over nine years are enough for any individual to
spend on Executive Committee – after which they are free to return to the rank-and-
file, continue to remain engaged with the union’s democratic structures, and provide
advice and support on an ongoing basis.
We also contend that any person seeking to become an executive of the Community
and Public Sector Union will need to evidence they have worked at least three years
minimum within a public sector body in the membership coverage area. We will,
in effect, create a rule against our leadership being able to comprise career union
officials with no experience in the industry they represent.
To support this change, we will continue to develop rank-and-file leaders within the
union to ensure that those with the skills and dispositions to come into Executive
Committee are well-prepared to do so, to prevent any skills vacuum arising from
outgoing EC members over the nine-year period.

Reform the Governing Council to a whole-of-union structure, with
proportional representation (PR)
We will move to a new system of Union elections which prioritises a whole-of-union
approach in the governance of the union. We consider that the move to service-wide
bargaining has created an opportunity to reform the Governing Council so that all
members can vote for all candidates for Governing Council, and that the Governing
Council will be proportionately representative to the number of votes received for
each candidate or slate of candidates.
While Section Secretaries will continue to lead their Section Councils at the agency-
level with expanded resources for decentralised grassroots organising, their position
will not automatically convert to a seat on the Union’s Governing Council. There will
be no prohibition to a Section Secretary holding a position on Governing Council
concurrently except that they will need to nominate and win enough votes to be
elected under PR rules.
This creates an opportunity to further develop agency-level organising without
automatically tying up agency-level union leaders in the governance of the whole
of the union – while also creating an opportunity to break down democratic silos
that prohibit a member from, for example, the Bureau of Meteorology voting for a
candidate for Governing Council that hails from the Fair Work Ombudsman if their
positions and ideas for the union’s direction align with their beliefs.
This will also do away with the majoritarian “winner-takes-all” system which locks
out candidates with genuine support across the whole of the union and within
their own agencies from being able to be elected to the union’s decision-making
structures. This will support a wider diversity of views and experiences in our union’s
democracy.

Enhance direct democracy through all-member plebiscites
We will create a viable system of member-led direct democracy by amending Rule
1.13b to introduce a new system for member plebiscite petitions to be launched and
conducted on the member portal.
Because of the limitations imposed upon CPSU members being able to communicate
with each other across workplaces, agencies, and between the APS, ACTPS and
NTPS, it is functionally impossible without effective systems for anyone to organise a
member petition sufficient to invoke a plebiscite.
Consequently, Rule 1.13b has become a dead letter. It is never enlivened because
the conditions to meet it are impossible. We will implement a system that allows
members to communicate for the purposes of member petitions to be developed.
This will restore a culture of direct democracy within the union, which was clearly
the initial intent of Rule 1.13b.
We will also use the Executive Committee’s powers to run significantly more member
plebiscites on important questions and put the choices in the hands of members
through all-member votes.

Hold an all-member vote on ALP affiliation
One of the significant democratic deficits of our union was that our Union’s
affiliation to the Australian Labor Party was never put to a vote of the whole of the
membership. We will put that right and give members the chance to decide for
themselves whether affiliation with the Australian Labor Party is in their interests.
Our view is that the current status quo around affiliation cannot carry on – we will
turn the matter of affiliation over to the members.
The CPSU membership’s vote for or against affiliation will be honoured and actioned
at the first available opportunity.
In the event affiliation is ended there is no intent to affiliate the CPSU with any other
political parties. If there are any further proposals to affiliate the union to any political
party, this will be put to the whole of the membership for another all-member vote.
If the CPSU membership votes to retain affiliation, we will use the mechanism of
affiliation to pursue the interests of members much more critically and aggressively
than the current leadership does.