The Australian Services Union would like thank Linda White for her enormous contribution to the union and its members.
Linda is one of the great servants of our union and her experience, skill and knowledge will remain a massive asset to the labour movement and other progressive causes in the future.
She coordinated our airlines activity for more than 20 years including her role representing workers in the Ansett collapse and you would be hard pressed to find a more knowledgeable person about the industry and its workforce than Linda.
In her time at the ASU, Linda negotiated eight EBAs with Qantas and ran national industrial action in a number of other airlines including Jetstar, Virgin, Qantas and Singapore airlines.
Linda played an important role in some of the union’s big achievements in recent years including the achievement of equal pay for social and community service workers and putting the issue of women’s unequal superannuation outcomes on the map.
Having originally come from the legal profession, Linda also maintained a commitment to her colleagues in the profession, as the union achieved the first federal award in the legal industry and campaigned for better industrial conditions.
Linda’s political knowledge is an important asset and her work across countless parliamentary inquiries, productivity commission inquiries and policy issues will be missed.
Most recently, Linda’s work leading the national campaign and growth team has seen major change and innovations such as the Career Launchpad professional development platform, and a range of member journey and retention projects, focussed on data and analysis.
Working with all branch Secretaries and officials, she also played a major role with the brand change which has brought all branches under the one branding this year and which forms an integral part of the wider organisational strategy moving forward.
These initiatives will live on well beyond Linda’s time with the union.
Fortunately for the union, Linda’s commitment to professional development and succession planning means that we are rich with talent to fill her shoes and we thank her for the careful and deliberate planning she has put into her departure in the past 6 months.
We look forward to remaining in contact with Linda and wish her the very best with her plans for the next stage of her professional life.
There will be a period of handover in the coming weeks and Linda is continuing to work with the team during that period.