Value in global unionism
The Police Federation of Australia has shown good judgement in continuing
to represent all of the nation’s police union members at the International
Law Enforcement Council’s conferences.
Those members were again well represented when world police union
leaders gathered for the most recent meeting in Edinburgh.
Clearly, affiliates of the PFA – of which PASA is one – can only
benefit from the global connection of which CEO Mark Burgess wrote
in Police unions globally connected.
As he outlined, the ILEC formed to:
- Bring national police unions together for dialogue on industrial
issues.
- Share information.
- Establish good relations among members of the international police
labour movement.
The ILEC has realized those goals, with which it started out in the
mid-1990s. And the PFA continues to play a key role in the organization,
with Mark Burgess appointed to a committee to “investigate and report...on
the future conduct...of ILEC meetings”.
So, the benefit to PASA members, of their federation’s growing network
of overseas connections to foreign police unions?
The strength of any representative body lies in both its numbers
and its unity. PASA, for example, performs so successfully – as shown
in its recent EB results – because of its 99.6 per cent participation
rate and the indivisible union among the members that that figure
represents.
Consider, too, the next level of representation, by the PFA. It has,
through a membership of 50,000-odd across an entire nation, emerged
victorious from battles with the highest government in the land. One
classic example was the exemptions it won for police from the fringe
benefits tax.
So one can imagine, then, how much advantage a 1 million-strong
– and growing – global representative body might bring to its membership.
But its industrial clout is, right now, probably unfathomable.
And its value as an intelligence gatherer and information-sharer
and – distributor could never be overstated. Imagine the Northern
Irish affiliate, for example, identifying some alarming police industrial
trend and warning all its global partners before it reached their
shores.
Why would world police union leaders not operate within an international
body, while the world’s police commissioners and ministers gather
to discuss and plan their strategies?
They do it because crime does not confine itself to geographical
boundaries.
Industrial inequities in policing extend as much beyond international
borders as they do across individual nations’ state, regional and
provincial boundaries.
It would be foolhardy of the PFA not to be a part of the ILEC. Australian
police union members can be assured that their national body has hitched
its wagon to a rising star.
