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LHMU growth wins ACTU accoladesDate: 02 December 2004
An LHMU campaign, which increased our union's size in Western Australia by 2550 members, and dramatically increased our workplace density among educational support staff, has just won the prestigious 2004 ACTU Workplace Campaign Award. " The real win from this campaign is the power the workers have won over their own workplaces - especially in the build up to our enterprise bargaining campaign," Sue Lines, WA Assistant Secretary said.
Power and workplace vitality" The power and the workplace vitality created by this union growth has given us the ability to win permanency for more than 2000 temporary workers." Without the growth, without the workplace density, without the organising effort we could never in our wildest dreams have hoped to win permanency for this huge group of largely women workers."
Living Labor movement legend congratulates ACTU prize winners"LHMU WA should be congratulated and commended on achieving such fantastic results through their Government Education Support Workers Campaign," ACTU President,Sharan Burrow, said.The results of the campaign are outstanding, doubling union density in the section and achieving a collective union agreement which delivered significant pay rises and gave temporary staff permanent employment.
Stand out strategy for growthThere was a strong field of nominations for the award but the LHMU WA campaign stood out on the basis of its multi-layered layered character and powerful results."Sharan was joined by former Prime Minister Gough Whitlam to congratulate the winners and finalists - capping a memorable night for the more than 150 people present at the union movement's big night. Submissive workers turn into powerful delegatesA key LHMU Education Assistant Delegate said the real win from this growth campaign was to watch members change in their attitudes as they felt their newly gained power." Watching timid and submissive non members turn into members; turn into delegates; turn into school leaders, has been the best reward of the past two years," one of the key WA LHMU member organisers said after the campaign. " The personal development which then flows on into not only their work lives but their entire lives has to be what we are all about."
Campaign focus on strong union organisingThe WA branch has covered of education support workers in the public and private sector. This group includes Education Assistants, gardeners and cleaners.The campaign focused on the need to build a strong union organisation in the lead up to the next Enterprise Bargaining Agreement ( EBA) campaign. Last EBA campaign did not deliver" Our problem - recognised by our activists - was that we really had no power in the sector," Sue Lines said." The last EBA campaign had not actually delivered all the industrial outcomes that we had sought. We knew this but we knew we had one important gain from those negotiations: the recognition of our delegates rights and quarterly one hour paid union meetings."
Our workplace delegate heroesMuch of the win can be placed on the shoulders of 17 member organisers.Here are the heroes who took on the burden of enthusing fellow workers to ensure victory:
Massive campaign" Throughout 2003 and 2004 this group of delegates involved their workmates across the State in organising new members into the union ." They committed members to effective work bans; they ensured member delegations went to meet politicians and Ministers , they put special effort into fax and letter-writing blitzes as well as organising some of the biggest stop-work meetings seen in this state backed up with rallies and delegations to the Premier."
Without workplace density we could not have won a good EBAThis campaign has established the WA LHMU as a powerful union for education support workers within the broader education industry in this state.It has established new standards in the public education system and provided an organizational and resource base for achieving similar outcomes in the private sector. " We've won this because we've won workplace density. Up from 33% to 66 % and, wherever we have got a trained delegate structure we have an 80% density in the workplace. " Without winning the density of members across workplaces we could not have won a good EBA for Education support workers," Sue Lines concluded.
Read about the ACTU prizewinners in some of the other categories
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