At Independent Voice we take this to be the most serious of accusations.
Let's be absolutely clear - the McMahon Team has accused us of lying to you in the material that we produced. If this were true, we would not be entitled to ask for your support in our campaign to reform the union. You can see why this is deadly serious for us! On the day that we saw the McMahon Team Leaflet (18 May), we wrote to the person who authorised it. PSA president Lindsay Oxlad. After he returned from putting in the hard yards on behalf of members in Surfers' Paradise on 24 May, he finally contacted PSA Independent Voice to let us know that he thought that we had made defamatory statements. Below we have included his letter.
Here is each claim and our responses:
JAN MCMAHON WASTED 600 YEARS OF YOUR MEMBERSHIP FEES ($250, 000) ON ADVERTISEMENT SUPORTTING LABOR AT THE LAST ELECTION
Well, it's hard to draw any other conclusion! Political commentators, journalists, academics, pollsters and anyone else who knew anything about state politics were unanimous in their view that Labor would win in a landslide. Even 5 Liberal MP's knew this and retired.
Unfortunately for us, Jan McMahon didn't notice, and spent our hard earned money on advertisements on an election where the outcome was already clear.
But "hang on" you might say, for such a strong statement of political support for the labor party, they must have secured some important protections for PSA members on job cuts before they signed the cheque. Surely giving away political independence would be worth some rock-solid commitments on wages?
Guess what? Not a cracker!
All we have now is basically what we had under the previous Liberal Government. No forced redundancies, i.e. we'll drive you out by starving you of meaningful work.
This was not worth $250 000 and we stand by our statement that Jan McMahon wasted our money.
Jan McMahon wasted almost a million dollars of your money at our last wage arbitration case.
Again, the result speaks for itself. The McMahon Team has previously dishonestly claimed that the Government 'forced' the union to go to arbitration. According to the rules of the Industrial Relations Commission, claims can only be arbitrated if the union and the employer agree to it. Let there be no misunderstanding-
The McMahon Team chose to arbitrate our claim. But here's the rub: We members were never asked what we thought. The McMahon decision to go cap in hand to the IRC, rather than fighting it out on the ground, cost members dearly. To decide whether our money was wasted or not, you need to look at the case itself, which is available on www.industrialcourt.sa.gov.au
Some of the highlights or lowlights if you are a PSA member include:
- PSA original claim was thrown out of court wrongly run and they had to completely change their argument midway through the case, when the PSA was told the case they had no chance of winning.
- The McMahon Team's economic evidence was exposed as being wrong and was full of basic flaws such as miscalculating the consumer price index.
- Instead of doing proper research and presenting extensive evidence from members in the workplace the McMahon Team presented the annual report of each department to the court to show that we were entitled to a pay rise. The court decided what we already know : Annual reports are full of spin and present the best possible picture of activities of the department and so this evidence was rejected.
- Leaving aside the obvious incompetence of how the case was run, we believe that the union made a fundamental strategic mistake in failing to have confidence in us to take action in support of a fair pay increase.
PSA Independent Voice stands by our claim The McMahon Team wasted our money in the handling of this critical case.
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