Hands up if you know which is the state’s most powerful union

The most powerful union in the state doesn’t fly flags from cranes, donate to political parties or make statements on climate change. The most powerful union in the state doesn’t threaten to go on strike or need to visit work sites for membership drives.

And it doesn’t struggle for funds – an estimated $650,000 pours into its coffers every fortnight.

Police Association secretary Wayne Gatt announcing last month the latest industrial campaign.Credit: Luis Ascui

While only 12.5 per cent of employees are union members this one has 98 per cent of its workforce signed up. The members of the most powerful union in the state don’t wear high-vis vests but ballistic ones. That union is the Police Association.

Any politician with the capacity to count and the instinct to survive knows you don’t pick a fight with the PA; doing so would be about as popular as graffiting a statue of Florence Nightingale.

The union has 17,500 members, a new office in Jolimont and has just sold its National Trust building in East Melbourne for a massive profit. It has assets over $100 million and even owns a smattering of holiday houses.

Established in 1917 as a social club, it is now an efficient lobby and workplace machine. While secretary Wayne Gatt is a sergeant, he is probably second only to the police chief commissioner when it comes to power and influence.

Gatt is the public face of an association that has started an industrial campaign, which – while not headline grabbing – could be the start of something ugly.

He joined the police force in 1995 before stints in general duties, the mounted branch and the dog squad. He is a trained police negotiator, studied at Harvard University and is no pushover.

It was 100 years ago last month that police in Victoria went on their only strike, which, oddly enough, was not supported by the Police Association. What began as a wildcard refusal to work by a handful of cops escalated to a point where more than 600 police went on strike, and were sacked.

Disturbingly, it showed how quickly anarchy could descend on Melbourne when a large part of the city went unpoliced. According to A People’s Force, by Bob Haldane, “The absence of so many men from their posts unleashed a wave of violence and looting on a scale never before witnessed in Melbourne.”

The work-to-rule vote at the Police Association meeting on October 18, 1976, the day the PA came of age.Credit: John Hart

The Police Association was for decades hardly a union at all, with its own licensed club (squash courts downstairs, steamed dim sims on the bar), annual family picnics (the woodchop was a highlight) and fundraising for widows. It was more RSL than CFMEU.

All that changed on October 18, 1976, when police were one voice away from a second strike.

At a mass meeting of 4200 police – out of a force of 6000 – at Festival Hall, anger turned to a standing ovation when chief commissioner Reg Jackson (an association member and former president) walked in to address the crowd.

The meeting was to protest the findings of a Victorian board of inquiry headed by Barry Beach, QC, into police malpractice. He wanted 55 police charged and directly presented for trial. After Jackson urged restraint, the meeting passed a work-to-rule direction, which included doing multiple roadworthy checks on each police car before patrol.

It demanded charged police have the evidence against them tested at committal. The government folded like a cheap camping chair at a rock festival and of the 32 police charged, not one was committed for trial.

The Police Association then started a legal-cost fund which each member contributes to, so they are covered for legal action (on approval from a PA subcommittee). The fund is now massive and is one of the reasons just about every cop in the state is a PA member.

The association is running an industrial campaign pushing for a 4 per cent pay rise and nine-hour shifts.

A patrol officer is expected to turn up about an hour early to complete the handover, kit up and then head out on the road, meaning they are already working a nine-hour day – just not getting paid for it.

Let’s compare the police from the Festival Hall days to now.

Police in the 1970s.Credit: Les O’Rourke

About 15 per cent of recruits were female, the chief commissioner was supported by one deputy and six department heads. Today, Chief Commissioner Shane Patton has a command team of six deputies and 27 department heads.

There were no counter-terror police and there were 23 annual arrests for cocaine (you get more today on a Saturday night in a yuppie pub).

Footy was played on a Saturday afternoon, pubs shut at 10pm and closed on Sunday, shopping hours were restricted, there was no 24-hour casino, and illegal gambling was restricted to dubious pinball machines in Lygon Street, the two-up floating around Carlton and Red Aces at St Kilda.

A year earlier the Hells Angels opened small chapters in Melbourne and Sydney and had yet to discover how to make amphetamines, while the heroin market was just starting to take root.

There were few homeless people visible on the streets, Melbourne had several large mental health institutions with live-in facilities and ice was something put into Eskys to keep beer cold at the cricket.

While specialist squads get the headlines, it is the general duties cops who will be the first to come to your aid.

It was a simpler time but perhaps no less sinister. Family violence was often ignored, and institutional sex offenders were protected at the expense of victims.

Premier Jacinta Allan will soon introduce new tough-on-crime laws, but she will lose the law and order vote if cops are driving around in graffiti-covered divisional vans and masses decide to quit.

We need to make this clear. This is not about wages. Police are no longer paid poorly, they have a guaranteed superannuation scheme that is bulletproof, and they get nine weeks’ leave.

It is about conditions and a vicious spiral that, if unchecked, will result in disaster.

General duties police are the first responders from local stations. While specialist squads get the headlines, it is the GD cops who will be the first to come to your aid.

A spike in post-COVID callouts, 800 unfilled positions and 900 police on long-term sick leave (with about another 200 going sick daily) means many stations struggle to get patrol cars on the road. Ask any police supervisor, and they will say the first job of the day is shuffling patrol numbers.

Antiquated IT (they still fax documents to court, no doubt because smoke signals have been banned due to global warming) means operational police spend too much time with paperwork. So-called correspondence days no longer exist.

Cops used to pride themselves on not taking sick days. To fail to turn up on a night shift (for anything less than an amputation or an exotic foreign disease) would usually result in a rostered month of nocturnal duties.

Now a surprising number are using their full 10-day quota – through illness, burnout, a changing culture with young officers and a form of silent protest.

This means the on-duty staff are run ragged. Even in the Great War, generals knew they had to relieve their front-line troops, but for police, there are no reserves.

Off-duty police are called back to work. They are paid a fortune in penalties but at what long-term costs? We are only scratching the surface relating to post-traumatic stress.

The work environment has changed. Full-employment means job security offered is not such a priority. Working from home and flexible hours are options police can’t routinely offer. As senior coppers always say, “You can’t drive the van from the couch at home.”

And it is regularly reported that younger employees expect to have various careers over their working lives.

So let’s try to think laterally and build a package that rewards loyalty and longevity. Senior police need to be smart to compete in the changing job market.

• A sick leave buyback: After 10 years in the job, unused sick leave is paid as a lump sum. At retirement, all unused sick leave is paid out. Cut random sick leave by half and you win back nearly 50,000 shifts a year.
• What the HECS? Any outstanding HECS fees are paid out after five years’ service.
• A change is as good as a holiday: Australian police forces are struggling for numbers. Allowing transfer between states slows the brain drain.
• Take a break: Fifty non-operational positions reserved for cops returning from mental health leave or requiring temporary respite. Just watch a flock of ducks. They all need a chop out at the back of the formation. Rather a slow duck than a dead one.
• Loyalty bonus: After 20 years you get a medal and a bonus of 20 weeks’ pay.
• Sabbatical: After 10 years, police are entitled to one year’s unpaid leave.

Don’t think for a moment every cop is a blue knight protecting the innocent and bringing scoundrels to justice. There are the lazy, the stupid and the cunning who play the system to their own advantage.

But every day, general duties police deal with the violent, the broken, the sad, the lonely and the downright evil. They provide a hand for the needy and handcuffs for the seedy. Then they do it the next shift, then the next and the next.

It comes at a cost that we as a community need to pay. And remember what happened 100 years ago when they did walk off the job.

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