The IEU explains: What is industrial action in 2024?

IEU Secretary General David Brear explains what the union must do when negotiations stall on a new Agreement.

These days, there is plenty of work to do and many hoops to jump through before workers can take sanctioned actions. A protected action ballot order (PABO) must first be sought from the Fair Work Commission.

During the Tasmanian Catholic campaign, that carefully arranged application enabled the IEU to appoint an independent organisation to run a secret ballot of all IEU members employed in Tasmanian Catholic education to determine whether they wished to have the right to take protected industrial action and what type of actions they wanted to take.

Members got to decide on 18 potential actions, from bans making telephone calls all the way up to ‘stoppages of work for the duration of twenty-four (24) hours’.

IEU members were notified about when the PABO vote would open, then had one week to vote, with the union advocating for them to vote yes to everything to maximise their options.

Once there was a Yes vote to an approved PABO, if CET refused to budge on its contentious claims, industrial action could then follow.

Once the FWC approved the PABO, we had to submit a list with correct details of every member within three days.

So, there was a concerted effort to ensure that anyone who wanted to join the union did so in time, and to make sure everyone we had listed had correct details. For the vote to succeed, at least 50 per cent of IEU members had to vote and more than 50 per cent of those members had to vote Yes.

Next the union discussed with members what actions they wanted to take. Then the IEU provided three working days written notice to management before planned actions, specifying its nature and the day it would start.

All along, we were informing the broader community of why action was necessary and inviting their involvement in the campaign. All that just to get to the starting line of industrial action!

The most important element in every successful campaign remains member actions.