We’ve changed: HSU wants back in the ALP fold

The scandal-ridden HSU is seeking to return to the Labor fold, promising it has reformed itself.

HSU NSW secretary Gerard Hayes said it had taken more than three years of hard work to put the union’s troubles behind it. Picture: Craig Wilson

The scandal-ridden Heath Services Union is seeking to return to the Labor fold, promising it has reformed itself.

HSU NSW secretary Gerard Hayes said it had taken more than three years of hard work to put the union’s troubles behind it. “We have earnt our stripes to come back in and to have a say,” he told The Australian.

But Mr Hayes vows it is not for his own advancement, and there will be no repeat of the exploits of former union boss Craig Thomson, who used the union to get elected to federal parliament.

“I’m going to put it in the rules — anyone who sits in my seat can never go anywhere,” he said. “So if you want to run this union and look after your members, go hard at it. If you want to go somewhere, you are not going to use this union as a launching pad.

“It’s important for me to say that, because it takes away any option that people could offer you.”

The HSU was suspended from Unions NSW in 2011 amid a series of scandals involving its office holders, including Thomson, Michael Williamson and eventually Kathy Jackson. It disaffiliated from the Labor Party of its own accord, however.

Thomson was found guilty in the Victorian County Court of 13 charges of theft, and later convicted and fined $25,000 after allegations of misuse of credit cards, including visits to brothels. Williamson, a former national president of the HSU, is serving a jail sentence of 7½ years for fraud, while Jackson, once hailed as a whistleblower within the union, has been ordered to pay $1.4 million in compensation after a court found she had misappropriated union funds.

The royal commission into union corruption found in its final report that “misappropriation and deceit flourished in a culture then pervasive at the HSU”.

“Senior management operated with a sense of complete entitlement in respect of the use of members’ money,” it said. “They lacked any scruple and they operated without proper control or supervision.”

The HSU, a right-wing union, is likely to be welcomed by both Labor factions, although there is some caution within the party about being associated with the union so soon after the royal commission and in the lead-up to the federal election.

After a lengthy consultation process that involved polling its membership, the NSW branch of the union has written to the Labor Party, seeking to be reaffiliated.

Some powerful unions are affiliated with Unions NSW but not with the Labor Party.

In a consultation paper, Mr Hayes noted that three powerful unions were not affiliated with the Labor Party — the Police Association, the Teachers Federation and the Nurses and Midwives ­Association — but the HSU’s ­disaffiliation had disadvantaged his members. He said that state elections were generally fought on issues of health, education and law and order, with governments ­vowing to protect “frontline ­workers.”

This meant that budget cutbacks were often felt by his members. He said there were only 500 paramedics, whom the HSU covered, compared with 8000 fire fighters and 19,000 police.

Affiliation would give the HSU a say in developing future laws affecting privatisation, health and safety issues, and the aged-care sector. Mr Hayes said: “If this doesn’t work, at the end of the day we will try something else. There’s no way in the world this union will be beholden to anybody who is not going to work for the betterment of our members.”

NSW ALP general secretary Jamie Clements has obtained legal advice that the union can be re­admitted only by a decision of the party conference.

This would mean the HSU would not be able to send delegates to the Labor Party state conference next month.

Critics of Mr Clements believe this manoeuvre is designed to stop the HSU, which is not a supporter of Mr Clements, having its numbers counted at the conference.

Although the right wing would retain a clear majority, the absence of the HSU and the equally disgraced NUW would narrow its majority and make Mr Clements potentially vulnerable, given the Right is not united behind him.

According to some within the party, Mr Clements’s decision to refer the readmission to conference could be overturned by the party’s administrative committee.

Critics cite previous examples, such as the Flight Attendants ­Association, which was readmitted without a vote of the party’s conference.

Mr Hayes said he had not received a reply to the application.

In reply to those people who might be wary of readmitting the union, he said: “Come and walk a mile in our shoes.”

The union had made its financial affairs transparent and, before being readmitted to Unions NSW, it had to pass an inquiry into its ­operations by KPMG.

Mr Hayes said the HSU had pursued all the people accused of misappropriating the union’s money on its own initiative, without waiting for government authorities or the Fair Work Commission to do so.

Even a member of a rival union acknowledged the HSU’s changed ways. “The HSU has cleared up their act, have become a real effective democratic union in aged care, science, public hospitals, fighting privatisation in public hospitals aimed at reducing their members conditions and wages, and have recruited more members than what they had before the scandal,” the unionist said.