The Finance Sector Union suffered a seven per cent decline in national membership last year, but aggressive cost cutting steered a recovery in its financial performance.
Disclosures in the union’s 2022 annual accounts that were lodged with the Registered Organisations Commission in January show the membership base fell by 1916 subscribers to 23,667 at the end of June.
The decline continues a 20-year trend, which has seen the number of paid-up FSU members slide from 62,525 since June 2002.
The latest membership slide eroded the union’s main source of revenue – cash subscriptions – which fell more than A$820,000 to $13.3 million.
However, the FSU turned a net surplus of $6.3 million – its first positive financial performance since 2019 when a revaluation of property assets underpinned a $17.2 million surplus.
Cost-cutting was the main driver of the 2022 financial result following a decision two years ago to slash staff numbers across the organisation.
At end of June last year, the FSU employed only 75 staff – down from 122 in June 2020.
The financial benefit of the headcount reductions was fully reflected in the 2022 accounts, which showed total staff costs at $7.1 million compared to $11.9 million in 2021.
Total operating costs fell by $5.8 million or 31 per cent to $13.2 million.
The FSU maintained an affiliation with five state branches of the Australian Labor Party throughout the year for which it paid total fees of $150,630.
Most of the money went to the NSW ($50,170) and Victorian ($43,258) branches of the party.
In 2021 the union coughed up $151,289 in affiliation payments to the ALP.
During 2022 the FSU negotiated 22 new enterprise agreements across the finance sector that applied to more than 41,000 employees.
The union is currently a party to 96 collective agreements.