Finance Sector Union (FSU) national secretary Fiona Jordan, who was elected 13 months ago on a platform to make changes to the union’s structure, has told members she is being “undermined by a series of extraordinary actions designed to stymy change”.
“For the past 13 months, since being elected national secretary, I have tried to implement my commitments to you,” Ms Jordan wrote.
“The truth is, attempts to change our union, to restore confidence in it, to pursue the agenda of making us a more professional organisation equipped to deliver on member needs, have been blocked.”
Ms Jordan pointed to a “hostile response” from local union secretaries as well as the majority of the union’s national executive (which is, in effect, the FSU’s board).
“The national executive confuses its role in overseeing the strategy of the union with wanting to manage the operational affairs of the union without a mandate to do so,” Ms Jordan said.
Ms Jordan listed 12 specific grievances aimed at the national executive, including its adoption of budgetary measures that curtail restructuring efforts, “rejecting and overturning recommended operational changes”, and “using the upcoming national conference to promote a strategy paper to hijack [Ms Jordan’s] mandate as your elected leader”.
“The level of interference by the members of the National Executive has been extraordinary and has had the deliberate effect of frustrating my efforts to make the changes I undertook to implement,” she wrote.
Ms Jordan urged FSU members to contact her to voice their support for her.
