Our objectives

Our key objectives

Our major objective is increasing and protecting the wages and conditions of our members.

Our members are highly skilled and motivated to gain further skills via additional training. This additional training allows us to achieve higher wages for our members in recognition of their skills and training.

Our focus on the skills and training of electrical and electronic workers is what sets us apart from other unions.

Being a skills based union we have fought continually against government and employer moves to dilute the trades, to decrease training requirements, to deregulate the industry and to decrease the portability of our skills by introducing industry and job specific training.

Our policies support:

. Full portability of skills across industries and sufficient training to support this portability.
. Uniform training requirements
. Higher pay for higher skills
. Maintaining licensing requirements for electricians

Our second key objective is to maintain an active, involved and vibrant membership. To this end we have implemented the organising model. What is the organising model?

The Organising Model

In recent years many members have come to think the Union is separate from the membership. This is not the case. The age-old principle - that a union is a collective of members, and "a union is only ever as strong as it's members" is as true today as it was when unions were formed by active members.

To overcome members feeling remote from the union the Divisional Executive has decided to ensure local level activity and organisation is the focus of the union.

This doesn't mean we were not already involved at a local level. Enterprise bargaining has meant we are more than ever involved at a local level. Over the past 5 years we have negotiated around 6,000 federal enterprise agreements. This is in addition to state agreements and state and federal awards.

Enterprise bargaining has stretched our resources, making it difficult to attend to other local issues. This in turn has allowed a "servicing model" of unionism to develop. This means members pay union fees in exchange for services in much the same way as they buy an insurance policy. Members are not involved in business of the union only turning to it when they have a problem.

The servicing approach does not encourage members to see themselves as the union. Instead they rely on "the union" (or someone else) to fix things. This leads to the question as to "what "the union" is doing for us?" How often have you heard a workmate complain of just that?

Winning improvements to our wages and working conditions requires active delegates and members at the workplace.

The "organising model" is about workers taking control of their workplace to achieve improvements, rather than relying on "the union" to always fix things.

It is about shop stewards and delegates having the skills to maintain highly organised workplaces themselves, including taking responsibility for keeping members informed, recruiting and coordinating industrial action when required.

To gain these skills, delegates need training. Training gives delegates the confidence and knowledge needed to tackle daily industrial problems on their own. It encourages the growth of active unionised workplaces.

So, national and state offices are increasing the level of training available for stewards and delegates and have kicked off several projects to introduce organising pilot projects.

Our full time union trainer, criss-crosses the country delivering basic and advanced level courses for stewards and delegates. Any shop steward or delegate who is interested should contact their organiser to attend a course.

Our future relies on remembering how trade unions were originally formed. Active members created unions. Unions didn't create a membership. Our future demands that our members control their own destiny by being involved and active. This is the aim of the organising model of unionism.

So get involved. Run your union. Be your union.