A Message from Melbourne Branch

Our union’s future shape

In the context of debate over the future of our union, the Victorian Branch Secretary Louise Connor has written this piece to open up debate:

I support elected honorary and full time officials and I support strong sections and branches as part of the future structure of our union.

Our union’s problems don’t stem from too many elected officers or from branches that are too active or independent. The reality is that the federal secretary has been moving to a more centralised governance model for more than the past ten years, reducing the numbers of elected officers and increasingly focussing leadership and decision-making in Sydney, freezing out people who don’t agree with him from information and decision-making. I fear the new structure leads to more of this and less transparency and inclusion.

Internally, a mix of full time and honorary officers working together is best for identifying and training activists as the next generation of leaders, providing continuity while ensuring we’re continually refreshing our ranks so we hear from a range of members and views, especially as we seek to encourage new members from emerging areas of coverage.

Externally, we work best when honorary and elected officers represent us in our lobbying and work with politicians, employers and employers’ organisations, other unions and community organisations. We command respect and authority as elected representatives of our community.

Similarly, having strong branches helps us organise our members, lobby on issues at the state level (on for example, arts funding, media laws) negotiate with the large number of single-state employers that engage our members.

We can have national campaigns and goals, but we organise locally to ensure the widest participation of our members.

My concern is the corporate model isn’t the best for unions. Unions are political organisations. They don’t just represent members immediate industrial concerns; they – we – stand for a better, more egalitarian society; for workers’ and citizens’ rights; for a more vibrant and creative society and spaces for us to represent and re-create a more diverse view of the world.

The reality is we are having this debate now because we’ve been chopping and changing our shape for many years, primarily in response to looking at other unions’ structures as we’ve ‘kicked the tires’ looking for potential amalgamation partners. We’re looking at the CEO/board ‘corporate’ structure because we last looked at the professional engineers’ union and this is their model.

But is it the best model for us? I don’t think it is.

The real problem here is we haven’t examined it and we haven’t talked to members about it. For the past seven years, the federal secretary has proposed various centralised models of governance and federal council has not adopted them arguing instead for a broad discussion and debate amongst our members. This current set of changes was presented to federal council sixteen months’ ago and they refused to pass them asking, yet again for a broad discussion amongst members. This limited discussion a few weeks’ out doesn’t cut the mustard I think.

Over the past few years there’s been a growing mood for leadership change in our union. This hasn’t manifested itself in a call for a CEO and board structure. It’s culminated in a large number of members wanting to see a generational change at the federal secretary level. They want a new leader with new energy and enthusiasm, who’s more inclusive and truly represents all parts of the union.

They want to participate in electing the first truly ‘post-amalgamation’ federal secretary of MEAA. I don’t think telling them that we’re dramatically changing the rules this late in the game is right.

Louise Connor

Why I Support Democracy (I know, it’s a very controversial position)

by Charles Firth

Whenever I bump into Chris Warren (usually at a booze up), I always make a bee line over to him to discuss one thing: term limits for union officials.

I do this partly because I like seeing his flushed, pink cheeks tense up with irritation, but also because I have been a frustrated member for many, many years.

Unless you’re of the generation where the Vietnam War was the major issue, you probably feel a similar level of frustration.

The MEAA’s business model has been broken for a long time. For years it seemed to be based on a rather optimistic hope that the internet would go away, so big newsrooms would come back into vogue.

It certainly has never worked out a way to become relevant to the thousands of independent production, digital media and PR professionals who aren’t quite journalists, aren’t quite actors, aren’t quite production staff, and yet do all of these jobs (and many more) on a daily basis.

These people crave the legitimacy, standing and ethical autonomy that a healthy craft union would give them, but for many years there have been few talking points you could make in favour of them joining the MEAA.

Back when I first joined they had this system where they would get vaguely famous volunteers from the Equity arm to ring you once a year, to have a chat, update your details and make sure everything was fine. It was a genuine selling point, and allowed me to organize half a dozen new members, simply off the back of a great anecdote about being rung by that guy who was in that movie we saw.

But as Equity was dragged down by declining density in the rest of the union, those calls dried up, and for many years, I heard nothing from them at all.

At its nadir, the only communication I received from the union (beside the annual schedule of fees) was a condescending “survey” which was a thinly veiled attempt to get us to happily acquiesce to an undisclosed merger with the CPSU, in order to save the union’s dire financial situation.

But in the last year or two, the green shoots of hope have started to appear. Marcus Strom started holding the fantastic Media Drinks events, which allows for professional networking within a highly social context, and more to the point, gives you anecdotes to talk about when you’re trying to convince people to become members (“well, you get to go along to these fantastic drinks where you meet other really interesting people in your own profession”).

And Mal Tulloch has been another brilliant addition to the MEAA. I have no idea what half of his emails mean when he’s organizing deals for the production staff of large productions, but the fact that I’m getting the emails, makes me feel in the loop, and part of something bigger.

Point being: the MEAA is starting to look up. There is a new generation coming through who are changing the way things are done.

But they’re about to get stopped in their tracks, because the Federal Management Council wants to make itself the central decision-making body, and appoint the next leader of MEAA, rather than allow members to elect them.

This is a terrible idea.

For a start, I feel like it’s a condescending throwback to a different era. (“Hey, member, you don’t know who’s best for you, let us faceless people in a smokey room decide for you.”)

Secondly, it feels like a bit of a rip off. Being able to vote for the leader is one of the very, very, very few benefits of membership of the MEAA. Eliminate that, and it’s like the world’s most expensive subscription to the Walkley Magazine.

The only reasonable reason I can think of for abolishing direct election of the Federal Secretary is that you’d never again want to get stuck with the same Secretary for two decades.

This is a specious argument. Making the leader unelected doesn’t solve that problem. To solve that problem, the Federal Council should bring in term limits. Make it so that nobody can be there for more than, say, two terms – eight years. That would do it. Eliminating direct democracy to get there seems a little bit like overkill.

Furthermore, the MEAA is actually in a different situation than we’ve been for the last couple of decades. With the Royal Commission looming, gone are the days that incumbency of a union brings with it a large, imposing election fund that enables you to shit-sheet any potential challengers. If there’s one good thing about the Royal Commission, it’s that union leaders of all stripes know they have to play fair and by the rules.

In fact, I’d go so far as to say that the problem with the MEAA in 2014 is there aren’t more elected officials. The lack of elected officials has meant over the years that purges have been able to occur because the staff have increasingly been there at the Federal Secretary’s behest, rather than as elected representatives of various constituencies.

Indeed, if you look at what has happened to the MEAA as its de-democratised, you could argue that having an unelected CEO will actually allow them to further consolidate their power over time.

In my experience, the whole point of a good CEO is someone who is able to manage their board. Over time, an effective CEO will make sure that those on their board (the Federal Management Council) support them, and make sure the information flow goes that way.

Anyone who doesn’t believe that an effective CEO will, over time, make sure they have a sympathetic Federal Management Council to support them, is being naïve at best.

You could say the same goes for a directly elected Secretary – it’s in their interest to organize the Federal Management Council – but at least we’ll have the possibility of directly unseating such a leader, should the worst occur. If we had an unelected leader, it will be even worse than the situation we’ve found ourselves up till now.

Point is, the proposal to eliminate the direct election of the Federal Secretary is a perfectly understandable reaction to the worry that we’ll end up having the same person there again for another two decades.

But the way to solve that problem is to use this opportunity to bring in term limits, rather than further undermine the already rather marginal value of membership of the union.

MEAA needs Democracy

DO YOU WANT THE RIGHT TO VOTE FOR THE HEAD OF OUR UNION?

Chris Warren has announced he is standing down from his position later this year. So for the first time since forming in 1992, critical elections could decide who should be his successor, and the new federal secretary of your union, MEAA.

But the union’s small management committee has a plan to deny members like you the right to directly vote for who runs our union. They want to appoint the next union leader themselves, disenfranchising more than 16,000 members.

At the MEAA Federal Council meeting on March 17 & 18, your delegates will vote for or against this proposal to abolish the federal secretary as an elected leader.  In this new plan MEAA will adopt a corporate model where the management committee appoints an unelected CEO to run the union.

It will mean you, the people who fund and support MEAA, will have no real say on who runs your union.

As grassroots members we want a more democratic and professional union run by its members for its members. And rather than being less transparent, we believe federal council should ensure basic democratic principles are extended, improved and deepened.

If you are a MEAA member, like this page, make a comment of support, or retweet, so that your federal councillors know that members want them to vote for democracy,  and a direct say in who runs our union.

We  also call on the Management Committee to publish the full details of their CEO model online for full analysis and consultation with members. We will publish it here if it becomes available.