Persistent. Principled. Positive. These three attributes were highlighted by many of the speakers who gathered to celebrate Kerry Davies’ significant contribution to the PSA and the wider trade union movement over a 41-year career last month in Wellington.
ORGANISING ACROSS THE MOVEMENT
Kerry’s first union role was as a member of the Theatrical Workers Union executive committee while she was an usher at Auckland’s Mercury Theatre in the 1980s. Life as a union organiser soon followed at the Northern Cleaners and Caretakers Union, the National Distribution Union, the Engineers Union and also at the Nurses Organisation, where she worked as a delegate educator. At the turn of the millennium she was based in Kuala Lumpur to deliver a regional project to empower women leaders for our global union federation, Public Services International.
A FIERCE ADVOCATE
It was following her return to Aotearoa that Kerry’s skills as an advocate really came to the fore organising workers impacted by the profoundly important deinstitutionalisation of our mental health system. She ensured they had a genuine voice during the transitioning of these services into the community and that planning for continuing care emphasised safe and good work for our members. Later during the creation of the Auckland supercity Kerry impressed even ACT leader and Local Government Minister Rodney Hide for the constructive process she championed as 8 councils, collectively employing 7,000 workers, came together under an intense Parliamentary spotlight.
MAKING CPS A UNION PRIORITY
Undoubtedly Kerry’s most significant legacy is the creation within the PSA of our Community Public Services sector, who deliver essential government-funded services largely in people’s homes. While these workers were able to, and did, join the PSA, Kerry working with delegates Jenny Goodman and Vince Densie, persuaded the union’s 2010 Congress that they needed their own focus and a different style of organising to successfully challenge persistent low pay and poor working conditions. There have been many wins for these workers over the past 15 years – notably guaranteed hours and in-between travel time costs in 2015, and the landmark initial pay equity settlement in 2017. Maintaining fair pay for these workers remains a key priority for the PSA, especially following the gutting of the pay equity bargaining system overnight by the current government earlier this year. The CPS sector Kerry championed – now 10,000 members strong – has positioned the PSA as a leading industrial and political voice to continue to push until we succeed in achieving good and fairly paid work in this vital sector.
“BOXING AND DANCING”
Never one to push herself forward, Kerry has championed building union organisation and collective action as key foundations on which to make progress. Her style of organising – which she termed ‘boxing and dancing’ – emphasises constructive engagement from a position of membership strength. As we face down a hostile government her example will help us to navigate tough times.
