Melissa Donnelly has been declared the new secretary of the ACTU. She will be taking over a much-diminished union movement from Sally McManus who is stepping down on 31 August.
When Sally McManus became ACTU secretary in 2017, she famously defended the CFMEU’s willingness to take unlawful strike action to defend the safety and conditions of members, declaring that when a law is unjust “I don’t think there’s a problem with breaking it.”
McManus never lived up to the promise and later infamously provided willing support to the Albanese government’s takeover of the CFMEU.
So did Donnelly, a member of Labor’s left faction. As secretary of the Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU), she was part of the Labor Party’s National Executive that twice approved placing the CFMEU under Administration.
Donnelly, as a 44-year-old mother, has been hailed as a new face representing the more typical member of Australia’s majority-female union movement. But Donnelly has never been a public servant. Donnelly began working for the CPSU as a lawyer, then joined the CPSU executive in 2015!
Donnelly told The Mandarin, “I am eager to get to work delivering real outcomes for working people and advancing the interests of workers across the country.”
But the outcomes in the CPSU under her leadership tell a different story. In 2024, the CPSU accepted an 11.2 per cent pay increase over three years, including a 0.92 per cent sign-on bonus, well short of the claim of 20 per cent.
One CPSU delegate told Solidarity, “In real terms, our pay, declined by about 10 per cent over the period of her [Donnelly’s] leadership. At best Melissa Donnelly could be described as providing uninspiring leadership with no real gains to pay.
“I think Melissa’s biggest weakness is that she failed to stop the decline in union density. It is true that when she left the CPSU the membership numbers were slightly higher than when she started. But this was mostly driven by a large increase in the total number of APS staff. In contrast, density plummeted from over 30 per cent to just over 20 per cent by the time Donnelly left.”
Not surprisingly, both Albanese and Labor’s Minister for the Public Service, Katy Gallagher have welcomed Donnelly’s appointment to the ACTU. Gallagher highlighted “their close working relationship in efforts to strengthen the public service”.
The ACTU has focused on lobbying Labor to get legislated pay rises such as those for aged care and early childhood educators, but real wages keep falling. The OECD reports that average real wages in Australia have fallen by 5 per cent since 2021, meaning many are even further behind. (In Britain they have increased by 8.8 per cent!)
Donnelly’s former union, the CPSU, has just started agency bargaining for their new enterprise agreement. The claim is for a pay rise matching cost of living or 5 per cent per year (whichever is greater), for three years.
Chris Warren, CPSU delegate, former governing councillor and spokesperson for the Members United reform group ticket in the upcoming CPSU elections, told Solidarity, “The ACTU needs leaders who have won inflation-adjusted wage gains and have built real union density. During her tenure as CPSU National Secretary, Melissa simply has not done that. She had a chance to do it now, in the upcoming APS bargain, but she is taking the next step in her career instead.
“Obviously members will be feeling let down, but there are opportunities for the rank-and-file to organise around the current bargaining claims.”
Unjust laws do need to be broken. The enterprise bargaining laws that limit strikes to protected bargaining periods are shackling workers’ ability to fight back. Recent changes to the Fair Work Act, like the intractable bargaining clause, have further strengthened the bosses’ hand in industrial disputes.
Before the recent Labor Party national conference, the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union released a policy paper demanding that the federal government remove all legal restrictions on the right to strike, and legal hurdles like notice periods before stopping work. It was a breath of fresh air, but it did not make it to the floor of the Labor conference.
Not only has the ACTU not fought to break the unjust laws against unions, it has also facilitated the bosses’ and government’s attack on the CFMEU, the most prominent militant union known for breaking them. Don’t expect anything more from Donnelly. Any real change will have to be fought from below.
By Ian Rintoul and Judy McVey
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