NTEU delegate Carl Buttler was jointly named the Athan McCaw Young Activist of the Year at Ballarat Trades Hall's night of nights, the 2024 Labour Day Dinner, in recognition of his service to his workplace, union and community.
The Fed Uni NTEU Branch Vice President (Professional Staff) shared the award with Alex Marinelli from the Australian Education Union and Stephanie Cooper from the ANMF Vic Branch, but NTEU Fed Uni Branch President Mat Abbott said that Carl's award was especially significant for the branch.
"This is an especially significant result for our Branch considering that the award is named after Athan, an NTEU organiser at our university who tragically died in an accident 10 years ago," he said.
"Carl joined the NTEU soon after becoming employed at Federation University in 2018. From the outset Carl was active as a member and quickly became involved in more formal ways. Initially showing leadership as an elected HSR (a position in which he remains), Carl was then elected to the NTEU Branch Committee and last year took on the role of Branch Vice President (Professional Staff)."
As an active Health and Safety Representative (HSR), Carl has been instrumental in demanding improved Occupational Health and Safety outcomes for staff in the library. More recently Carl has been taking the lead on Branch efforts to develop a university-wide HSR network.
"As an NTEU member Carl has worked tirelessly to improve union density across the various campus library facilities, which has resulted in these areas having some of the highest member density at FedUni," said Dr Abbott. "The benefits of this increased density were clearly demonstrated during our Bargaining campaign when library members participated in powerful collective industrial action, repeatedly shutting down library services in the interests of building a better university for staff and students."
Since the successful conclusion of Bargaining for the new Agreement at Fed Uni, Carl has taken carriage of the many issues confronting Professional staff at the university, including running regular member meetings and leading important campaigns.
Tribute was also paid to the McCaw family for their support of Ballarat Trades Hall and the Labour Day dinner - Athan was the President of Ballarat Trades Hall when he passed away, a widely respected and much loved NTEU organiser and activist who is greatly missed.
This year's Labour Day Dinner marked 166 years since the first Ballarat Trades Hall dinner in 1858, and is the 140th consecutive dinner.
Carl (2nd left) receiving his award from the McCaw family (Athan's father and sister) at the 2024 Ballarat Trades Hall Labour Day Dinner.