Clear and Present Danger:

a Queensland Union’s Defence of Public Service Employment in the 1980s.

By Linda Colley

The 1980s saw the collapse of the conservative government that had ruled Qld for 32 years

That government had escalated attacks on unions, politicized the public service, and was faced with increasing revelations of corruption and administrative and parliamentary abuses (sounds all too familiar). The traditional career service model of public service employment decayed and was virtually abandoned. The major public service union in Qld struggled to defend the model. It broadened its range of strategies to include stronger relations with other unions and greater membership involvement, and eventually discarded its non-partisan strategy to take an active role in the 1989 election campaign.