If you’re like me the stinking mess wafting up from the HSU East Branch makes you want to vomit. What pains me most is the gap between the reality of that Branch and what it could be. Their membership base is a range of allied health professionals and blue collar workers in the wider sector, i.e. a membership base intrinsically working around a key anchor institution in our society that cannot be either outsourced or shut down; hospitals. This should be a fighting union that wages huge campaigns and inspires other workers around Australia. But then again the strategic nature of the membership in building genuine people power in this country combined with what immediate difficulties that might cause for State (read Labor) governments probably provides a potent push for an (un)representative swill to take over to keep things ticking along (so to speak). The whole putrid affair shows up the mortality and limitations of the representative  Union. The tale of the credit card and the prostitutes provides the media fodder but the wider story really is what appears to be the systemic fraud and large salaries of a few key operators combined with the lack of meaningful results/power that the membership exercised. Continue reading “An Indestructible Union (Part 5)” →