Resolution, 15 June 2021: First Nations AEU members forum delegation to Branch Executive. First Nations Forum recommendation to Branch Executive.
This Forum calls on the AEU to listen deeply and with quiet awareness to enable respect for, understanding of and engagement with Australian First Nations members.
Furthermore, this Forum calls on the AEU Vic Branch Executive to commit to and hold themselves accountable for developing a culturally safe organisation that is responsive to the needs of First Nations members.
It is formally requested that this commitment include (but not be limited to) the following:
- Development of a Reconciliation Action Plan (or Work Plan) in consultation with First Nations members.
- Creating time, timelines and a process that allows a considered and rigorous engagement with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Members.
- Beginning urgent discussions on resourcing this work as a part of the AEU’s core business.
- Resourcing of two identified First Nations Project Officers, who may have the option to work remotely, with a view to establish ongoing roles.
- Convening a formal committee of First Nations members to provide advice to AEU Vic.
- Funding initiatives to increase Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander representation, employment and engagement in the AEU including a minimum of two face-to-face forums per year for the next four years.
- Working with members to identify and address challenges facing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander educators.
- To ensure Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander members get to work with the broader union movement and key stakeholders to engage and change the existing educational structures at a local, state, and federal government level to the benefit of first nations educators and the wider community.
- Building advocacy strategies to develop First Nations members through recruitment, training, retaining, organising and representing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander members.
Branch Executive 26 July 2021: First Nations Forum recommendation. Recommendation to Branch Executive – Response to First Nations Forum recommendation.
That the AEU Victorian Branch acknowledges that the union needs to learn how to fully and properly listen to, understand, recognise, and engage with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander members.
We acknowledge that the union has not done enough to be a culturally safe organisation and to stand in active solidarity with First Nations members to raise our voices together to address the dispossession and alienation experienced by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. This includes the racism, prejudice, and other oppressions faced by First Nations educators in the union, within public education, and in society more broadly.
We acknowledge that the absence of action reveals an absence of respect for First Nations members and contributes, in its own way, to entrenching the effects of colonisation.
We take responsibility for our inaction and we are sorry.
The AEU Victorian Branch commits to make the union a culturally safe organisation and decolonise union structures through these initial actions:
- Provide cultural understanding and safety training, and other relevant training including about the Uluru Statement from the Heart and the Victorian treaty process, to all AEU Victorian Branch elected officers and employees.
- Development of an AEU Victorian Branch Reconciliation Action Plan (or Work Plan) in consultation with First Nations members to be finalised by June 2022.
- 12-month employment of two identified First Nations Professional Officers (Project Officers), up to a combined 1.6 time fraction, commencing in early 2022, with a view to establishing permanent positions from 2023. First Nations Professional Officers are to be able to work flexibly, consistent with the union’s employee enterprise agreement.
- Immediately establish a committee of First Nations members to provide advice to the union, and establish a process for considered and thorough engagement with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander members to alter the union’s rules with a view to establishing a formal committee under those rules in 2022.
- Investigate the changes required to the union’s rules to enable up to two representatives from the formal committee to be members of the Branch Executive, with a view to establishing such arrangements under those rules in 2022.
- Immediately commence work to allocate in the union’s 2022 budget, following consultation with First Nations members, funds to enable:
- the regular operation of an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander committee, including resources to enable attendance at committee meetings where necessary
- up to four First Nations member forums
- attendance of First Nations members at relevant union, DET, or government meetings and events.
- Commence mapping of the ways in which First Nations members can directly participate in relevant union, employer, and government structures so to change the existing educational structures at a local, state, and federal government level to the benefit of First Nations educators and the wider community.
- Develop with the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander committee and First Nations members more broadly:
- an action plan to engage First Nations members in the work of the union; provide training opportunities; identify specific and relevant issues to focus organising; build capacity to recruit and retain Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander educators as members
- advocacy strategies to enable appropriate and effective First Nations member representation.
In acknowledging past inaction and the actions outlined above, the AEU Branch Executive commits the union to listen carefully and conscientiously to First Nations members. Our solidarity is directed to decolonisation and we pledge to undertake that solidarity in a decolonised way, and be accountable for it.