Sally is the 10th ACTU Secretary in the organisation’s 90-year history and the first woman to hold the position. Sally was previously an ACTU vice president.
Prior to joining the ACTU, Sally was the Branch Secretary and an Organiser with the Australian Services Union (ASU) in NSW and the ACT for 22 years. She has led many successful campaigns in the private, public and community sectors including a campaign preventing water privatisation and the Equal Pay campaign for community and disability workers that delivered between 18-40% pay increases.
Raised in western Sydney, Sally’s father was a cabinet maker for the NSW Railways and her mother, worked as a clerical assistant in a pharmaceutical factory. Her two brothers are tradies. She was the first in her family to finish high school and completed an arts degree at Macquarie University studying philosophy.
From the age of 14 years and nine months, she took on a series of part-time jobs working in a cake shop, delivering pizza, and as a school cleaner and school maintenance employee. At 19, she was elected student union president and in her final year at university applied successfully for the ACTU organising program which ytrains young people to work in unions.
Sally spent 22 years at the Australian Services Union, including eight years recruiting and organising workers in call centres and the information technology sector.
Follow Sally @sallymcmanus