Rebecca Fawcett has been appointed National Secretary of the Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU) at a meeting of the union’s Governing Council.
Rebecca is the CPSU’s first working single mother to serve as National Secretary and the fourth woman to hold the role. She steps into the position after serving as Deputy Secretary, where she worked alongside former National Secretary Melissa Donnelly – who was recently elected to lead the ACTU – to significantly grow union membership.
“I am incredibly proud to be appointed National Secretary of the CPSU and to continue standing alongside members right across the public sector.”
“CPSU members do essential work for the Australian community every single day. They deserve secure jobs, fair pay, safe workplaces, and public services that are properly staffed, properly funded and properly valued,” Ms Fawcett said.
Since joining the CPSU as an organiser in 2001, Rebecca has played a central role in major union campaigns, including the Your Rights at Work campaign against the Howard Government’s WorkChoices laws.
Over more than two decades, she has held senior roles across the union, including as national organiser for the Defence Department and Legal Director. Rebecca has extensive experience negotiating enterprise agreements and has overseen the CPSU’s national legal and industrial work, including the union’s landmark Same Job Same Pay case in the Australian Taxation Office.
Rebecca has led campaigns that protected regional jobs by stopping the closure of Australian Electoral Commission offices in regional Australia and helped stop attempts to privatise Airservices Australia firefighting functions. She has also coordinated APS-wide industrial action to defend workplace rights and convened the CPSU’s AI reference group, which is leading the union’s approach to artificial intelligence.
As the CPSU’s lead negotiator in the first round of Australian Public Service-wide bargaining, Rebecca and her team secured significant improvements for public sector workers, including groundbreaking flexible work and working from home rights, genuinely negotiated pay increases, 18 weeks paid parental leave for both parents, stronger consultation rights, significant pay increases for the lowest paid APS workers, 25 per cent casual loading and new leave entitlements.
“Together, we have won important improvements, but there is more to do. We will keep fighting to bring public sector work back in-house, strengthen protections around AI and automated decision-making, and make sure workers have the pay and conditions they need during a cost-of-living crisis,” Ms Fawcett said.
“Our union is strongest when members and delegates are at the centre of every decision we make. I will always be focused on making sure members’ workplace issues and concerns are heard and acted on.”
The change in leadership came about as a result following of the appointment of Melissa Donnelly as the new Secretary of the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU), the most senior leadership position in the nation’s labour movement.
Melissa is the youngest ACTU secretary in two decades, and as a working mother with school-aged children, representing the changing demographics of union membership in Australia.
She has pledged to address the rising cost of living as her top priority and continue the push for worker protections against artificial intelligence.
“The number one priority for the union movement is to continue to address cost-of-living pressures and advocate in workplace rights and other policy areas for things that will make it easier for people to achieve that balance,” Ms Donnelly said.