The Australian Council of Trade Unions is likely to have its first female secretary, with its vice-president, Sally McManus, in the box seat to take the role after the resignation of Dave Oliver.
Oliver resigned on Tuesday for personal reasons and called for “renewal” in the union peak body. The move surprised many in the movement but ACTU sources insisted it came at a time of his own choosing.
McManus appears to be the only contender in the field, after the Community and Public Sector Union’s national secretary, Nadine Flood, ruled herself out.
The ACTU secretary position will be filled at an executive meeting within a few weeks, with the leader to be chosen from the left faction.
The Construction Forestry Mining Energy Union’s national secretary, Michael O’Connor, has not formally ruled himself out of contention but union sources say he is not canvassing for the position.
On Wednesday Flood wrote to CPSU staff and rank and file leaders to say she would not put her hand up because it was “not the right decision for our union, for me or my family”.
“CPSU members are under sustained attack by the Turnbull government and leading them in those fights with you is the job I feel I need to do and a job I love,” she wrote. “Our movement has great people to take on senior leadership roles, including two dynamite women leaders in Ged Kearney and Sally McManus at the ACTU.”
Kearney, who has been president of the ACTU since 2010, will continue in her position and the pair will face re-election at ACTU congress in 2018.
McManus is a former secretary of the Australian Service Union’s New South Wales branch and moved to the ACTU in 2015 to take up a specialist campaigning role.
At the time she took the job, McManus told industrial relations news service Workforce the ACTU had to reverse union membership decline through “activist unions” and “strong union campaigns in workplaces”.
Individual unions had a responsibility to “reach into workplaces” but the ACTU should “coordinate that in the most effective way, to take successful skills and campaign techniques and spread those from growing unions across the movement”, she said.
McManus spearheaded the ACTU’s Build a Better Future campaign at the 2016 election. The nationwide marginal seat campaign focused on public services including education funding and Medicare and workplace rights including paid parental leave and domestic violence leave.
Malcolm Turnbull has been a fierce critic of the so-called “Mediscare” campaign, accusing unionists of frightening elderly Australians with late-night phone calls about the future of the national health service.
In December, McManus said the ACTU was determined not to repeat the mistake of letting its campaign capacity dissipate after the successful 2007 Your Rights at Work campaign.
She said organisers trained by the body for the election would work on community campaigns such as the Carlton United Breweries dispute.
Union sources told Guardian Australia support was consolidating behind McManus because of her strong track record in the vice-president position and her skill set in campaigning.
