Australia’s largest trade union, widely believed to be behind the failure of a motion to support same-sex marriage being voted on at the Australian Labor Party’s (ALP) NSW conference earlier this month, will not poll its members on the issue before the national ALP conference in December.
Numerous sources after the conference pointed at Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees Association (SDA) delegates threatening to use their numbers to have any motion supporting same-sex marriage defeated.
Instead of a vote, the issue was deferred to the national conference, despite all other ALP state and territory conferences voicing support for same-sex marriage law reform in the lead up to the NSW conference, making it the only state not to cast a ballot on the issue.
The powerful union, which boasts more than 230,000 members across the country, is headed by Joe de Bruyn, who is also the vice-president of the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) and an ALP national executive member.
The SDA represents employees in the retail, clerical, security, cleaning, pharmaceutical, cosmetic, hairdressing and call centre industries, among others.
Australian Marriage Equality national convenor Alex Greenwich told SX it is important the SDA surveyed its members, particularly given its large Generation Y membership base.
“I can say with a hundred per cent certainty that Joe de Bruyn and the SDA do not want this to be an issue at the national conference. They want this issue to go away and they want Labor’s policy to stay the same.
“I’m also confident that a majority of SDA members are supportive of the issue. If you have a look at the demographic of SDA members, they are younger people between the age of 18 and 30 and that is the strongest group of supporters for marriage equality,” Greenwich said.
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