Dancing Alone: The Australian Union Movement Over Three Decades

Abstract

We investigate the challenges faced by the Australian union movement over the two decades since the early 1990s, the renewal strategies it employed and their success or otherwise. We locate the Australian union movement historically, outline core internal and external challenges faced by Australian unions, and consider their key responses. Australian unions utilized strategies focused on the external level (in the political arena, actions aimed at framing ideas and shaping values or ideologies, or at altering the embeddedness of unions within support networks) and at the internal level (actions influencing the extent to which power is held centrally or vested in membership, and whether policy is controlled, coordinated or dispersed; the mix between industry, occupational, general or enterprise-based structures; and the development and deployment of resources). We focus on the 'Your Rights at Work' campaign aimed at defeating the 'WorkChoices' legislation, and two other core strategies: amalgamationism and organizing. We show the relations between these strategies, each aimed at increasing the strength of unions. Achieving stronger workplace organizing on the one hand, and stronger regulation on the other, are currently the key aims of the movement.

The Sydney Alliance: A broad-based community organising potential for trade union transformation?

“…Union leaders were unanimous in explaining that antagonism from the state, employers, and the media, as well as a decrease in political legitimacy, were the main factors causing them to look for new alliances. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this resonates with the research by Peetz and Bailey (2012) who show unions have still to devise an effective strategy to counteract these attacks. The YR@W campaign had a significant influence on the way some union leaders had started to think about the potential in community-based organising.…”

“…After decades of union decline there is no need to repeat the debates and arguments explaining the impact it has had on the union movement in Australia. Other authors have synthesised this material well elsewhere, setting out the current state of Australian industrial relations and the difficulties unions are still facing in demonstrating their relevance to the majority of workers who remain outside the union movement (Bailey and Peetz 2013;Peetz and Bailey 2012;Todd 2013). That said, it is important to restate a few key figures: over 80 per cent of Australian workers are not members of trade unions; union density is lowest in the private sector (12%) where the majority of workers are to be found; and although union density in the public sector was 42 per cent in 2013, this sector is facing increasing attacks on terms and conditions, as well as the loss of significant numbers of jobs (Brace 2013).…”

A Marketing and Industrial Relations Alliance to Generate Positive Brand Awareness for Gen Y: The Case of the National Tertiary Education Union

“…The most expedient solution is to organise workplace visits by official NTEU elected delegates with wearable NTEU visibility such as brand name tags and/or NTEU lanyards, to communicate with members about current industrial relations campaigns. Taking a longer term focus, with an important emphasis on workplace delegate training (Peetz & Bailey, 2012) would achieve higher visibility of the brand, thereby strengthening brand image and increasing the likelihood of successful recruitment campaigns.…”

The global spread of community organizing: how 'Alinsky-style' community organizing travelled to Australia and what we learnt?

“…Australia is predominately a Christian nation -even in 2011, 61 percent of people identified as Christian in the census (ABS, 2010) -and yet frequent church attendance has declined from 44 percent of people attending church one Sunday a month in 1950, to 15 percent in 2009 (NCLS, 2011). Unions have similarly experienced a halving of membership, declining from 60 percent of all workers in unions in 1951 to 19 percent in 2010 (Peetz and Bailey, 2012). For community organizations, the decline has been felt as a shift from membership advocacy-based organizations to service-based organizations, whose activity is restricted by government contracts that fund service provision but often limit or prohibit advocacy (Hamilton and Maddison, 2007).…”

“…Many union leaders recognized that this transformation in union practice would require a transformation in union culture. At the time, a key measure of the 'shift to organizing' was an increased investment in staff 'organizers', the training of organizers and workplace delegates and leaders in the skills of workplace bargaining and grievance handling, equipping unions with skills in industry research, and the development of staff with expertise in campaigning, public communications and data management (Crosby, 2005;Tattersall, 2010;Peetz and Bailey, 2012).…”