Flesh put on the bones of new ACTU campaign
THE ACTU today put the flesh on the bones of its Build A Better Future campaign by outlining a new way of advancing worker rights in the community at elections — and beyond.
The ACTU Congress in Melbourne unanimously voted up funding the $13 million effort over the next three years after Secretary Dave Oliver outlined how it would transform unions’ campaigning capacity and drive for new membership.
Embedding of 21 new full-time organisers in marginal federal seats next month will be the start of community campaigning to oust the Abbott Government, highlighting its attacks on health, education, services and payments to the most vulnerable.
But achieving a “mobile and nimble” campaign capacity means developing a movement-wide data base, enhancing the already-potent penetration on social media and face-to-face contact through street stalls and doorknocking.
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The changed media landscape since the Your Rights At Work campaign in the mid-2000s means unions won’t rely on TV or radio advertising except in specific regional areas.
Dave Oliver, re-elected on Tuesday as ACTU Secretary, emphasised that Build A Better Future went way beyond the next federal election or even the three state and two territory polls due in the next three years.
“The union movement is at its strongest when we are united and campaigning together,” he said.
“This is not just an election strategy, it will be a permanent change to make the ACTU a campaigning organisation.”
New staff would be an adaptable resource available to affiliate unions to help in specific “blitz” industrial or community campaigns, on issues such as penalty rates, temporary visas or protecting the minimum wage.
“We all know that data is gold and we want union data systems that will talk to one another,” he said. “Ultimately we want a union-wide database.”
The data banks used in elections would be grown, combined with union systems and updated to be comprehensive, accurate, flexible tools.
Lessons from state elections
The Build A Better Future campaign is backed by a charter on workers’ rights, universal healthcare, top quality education, better public services, secure retirement and fair tax.
The new campaign team under Sally McManus would build on the strong collaboration with state trades and labour councils, which had delivered election victory through grassroots activist networks in Victoria and Queensland.
Successful officials and activists from both states informed and amused Congress with presentations revealing how unions had triumphed in both states.
Mr Oliver said the effort would be funded separately to existing ACTU operations, by boosting the existing affiliation fee by $2 a member to raise a total of $10.8 million.
Existing funding would top up the amount to $13 million, carefully overseen by the ACTU Executive, Finance Committee and Growth and Campaigns committee.
Build A Better Future was backed by the nation’s largest union, the Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees’ Association.
An umbrella campaign for all unions
SDA National Secretary Gerard Dwyer told Congress the effort was a modern weapon to hit back at the Abbott Government agenda of destroying the credibility of unions, entrenching inequality.
“It gives us an umbrella campaign we can go out and use in our own industries . . . if we do that, it’s amazing the results we can achieve,” he said.
Professionals Australia CEO Chris Walton said the extra $2 fee for members was less than 1% of their union membership fee, necessary because traditional industrial activism was no longer enough in itself to protect living standards.
“We have to tell our members we can’t just win in the workplace, that deals with the symptoms rather than the cause,” he said.
“We have to shape the environment, beyond the industrial. We don’t need this capacity just to win an election, we need it in our campaigning.”
The ACTU Congress unanimously approved the Build A Better Future funding, with no speakers against it.
Shorten outlines Labor’s agenda
OPPOSITION Leader Bill Shorten (pictured) has backed the thrust of fairness covered by the ACTU’s Build A Better Future campaign during his address today to the peak union Congress.
Mr Shorten listed ALP priorities including universal health care, making multinationals pay fair tax, a secure retirement system, accessible education for all and workers’ rights also reflected by a new ACTU charter.
The Labor Leader attacked the Abbott Government for a lack of vision on maintaining Australia’s living standards, which would require investing heavily in high-skill training, science and innovation over the next decade.
Mr Shorten said the ALP stood with the ACTU against attacks on the minimum wage, which would put millions of workers into a poverty trap with no advantage for Australia over competitors.
He said only the labour movement saw the high road of manufacturing, of a high-skilled, high wage nation through education affordable for all.
Low wage jurisdictions, a threat under a continued Abbott Government, would see workers replaced by machines.
“We need to be the nation that designs, that builds the machines . . . that is our future,” he said.
He said the Abbott Government had become high-taxing, high spending outfit funded by bracket creep which put wage and salary earners into higher tax brackets.
“They fuel it by relying on the stealthy, invisible hand of inflation,” he said, adding this reached into workers’ pockets.
Mr Shorten also committed Labor to combatting family violence, and implicitly backed the ACTU push for two weeks domestic violence leave presently before the Fair Work Commission.
“Every woman has the right to be safe in her home . . . and every woman has the right to be supported at work, with the right to claim leave if she is the victim of family violence,” he said.
- NEIL WILSON
