Melissa Donnelly
Melissa Donnelly is the National Secretary of the Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU), an Australian trade union with coverage of more than 198,000 Commonwealth Public Servants, as well as those in the Northern Territory Public Service and the ACT Public Service. is the CPSU's youngest ever national secretary, as well as the third woman and the first working mother to hold the role. Donnelly is also a member of the National Executive of the Australian Labor Party.
Donnelly was first elevated to the role, following tenure in the union's legal and industrial relations team and its Executive Committee, when former National Secretary Nadine Flood resigned for health reasons in 2019. Donnelly was most recently reelected to the position in December 2023.
Under Donnelly's leadership of the union, its membership declined by more than 9% between 2019 and 2022. Between 2022 and 2024 Australian Public Service employee numbers grew by more than 16%, leading to the absolute number of CPSU members increasing to be about 1% higher in 2024 than when Donnelly assumed leadership. However CPSU density continues to decline, in line with broader trends in the Australian trade union movement since the 1980s.
| Date | CSPU (PSU) membership | APS employee numbers | Approximate APS union density (%)* |
|---|---|---|---|
| 30 June 2013 | 54,379 | 166,149 | 32.7 |
| 30 June 2014 | 54,725 | 157,943 | 34.6 |
| 30 June 2015 | 55,188 | 152,242 | 36.3 |
| 30 June 2016 | 53,089 | 155,607 | 34.1 |
| 30 June 2017 | 50,193 | 151,948 | 33.0 |
| 30 June 2018 | 46,778 | 150,258 | 31.1 |
| 30 June 2019 | 44,579 | 146,758 | 30.4 |
| 30 June 2020 | 44,500 | 150,363 | 29.6 |
| 30 June 2021 | 43,039 | 153,571 | 28.0 |
| 30 June 2022 | 40,654 | 159,179 | 25.5 |
| 30 June 2023 | Data not found | 170,086 | |
| 30 June 2024 | 44,864 | 184,858 | 24.3 |
| 30 June 2025 | Not yet published | 198,529 |
(*) Note that the PSU Group covers some employees outside of the APS (for example, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, the territory public services and privatised government businesses), so the true APS union member density will be slightly less than shown in the last column of the table.
Following the COVID-19 pandemic, Donnelly was responsible for championing a "groundbreaking" working-from-home deal with the Australian Public Sector Commission in 2023 which allows public sector employees to seek unlimited working from home flexibility arrangements.