Australia
This week’s blog post is going to be a little bit different
than normal. Below, I will be writing a letter to the Australian Prime Minister
Tony Abbott suggesting any changes and improvements to selected employment relations
in Australia.
Dear Mr. Prime Minister Tony Abbott,
Since the 1980s Australia has been slowly moving towards an
American-style approach to employment relations. Gould (2010) reveals that
trends such as deregulation, increased workplace negotiation, abolishing
industry protection, marginalising unions and encouraging individualism in
workplace bargaining that Australia has begun adopting since the 1980s are all
very close to the US model of employment relations. While all these trends have
contributed to the employment relations model we see in Australia today, the
union movement of the past 30+ years is of great interest to me. So my question
to you Mr. Prime Minister is do you believe that the union movement have
impacted positively or negatively on changing employment relation structures in
Australia?
Union density in Australia fell from 49% in 1990 to just
19.5% in 2007 (Bamber, Lansbury & Wailes 2011). In the early 1980s to 1990s unions in
Australia were quite powerful and had a strong voice in the labour market, but
as labour market reform has slowly transpired over the past 30 years Australia
unions have been facing some humungous challenges to stay afloat. Some of the
biggest challenges that Australia unions have faced include deregulation of the
labour market, privatisation and cutbacks in the public sector, increase in the
instance of ‘flexible’ work (more people participating in part-time and casual
work) which have much lower rates of unionisation than permanent work (Peetz
& Bailey 2012). The challenges then led to unions experiencing a loss of
economic power, loss of political power and a decline in resources (Peetz &
Bailey 2012). This just goes to show that labour market reform has had a huge
impact on unions in the Australian Labour Market.
In response to these challenges Australian unions have embarked
on a wave of structural reform in reply to their diminishing numbers, resources
and power in the neoliberal Australia. Mergers began to occur, but were quite unsuccessful
in increasing union membership (Peetz & Bailey 2012). When the focus of
bargaining shifted to the enterprise level, the weaknesses of unions’
organising really began to come through; hence structural reform in the
organisation of unions was born (Peetz & Bailey 2012). In 2005-2007 the ‘Your
Rights at Work’ campaign was designed and implemented to activate the public
against the Work Choices legislation that had been brought in, and was
successful in doing so. Unions had a new ideological strategy that while did
not increased membership to where it once was but did give them back some
political influence (Peetz & Bailey 2012).
Mr Prime Minister, What is your take on the labour union
movement in Australia since the 1980s? With the rise of non-standard employment
especially, do you believe that unions are still playing an influential role in
employment relations? Like I said above, loss of membership equalled loss of
power; if unions have such low power is it even worth an employee joining a
union? If you were a regular citizen working permanently, would you join a
union?
Regards,
Kassandra Boules
Employment Relations Student
University of Western Australia.
Sources:
Peetz, D & Bailey, J 2012, ‘Dancing alone: The
Australian union movement over three decades’, Journal of Industrial Relations, vol. 54, no. 4, pp. 525-541.
Bamber, GJ, Lansbury, RD & Wailes, N (eds) 2011, International and Comparative Employment
Relations Globalisation and Change, 5th edn, Allen and Unwin, NSW.
Gould, AM 2010, ‘The Americanisation of Australian
workplaces’, Labour History, vol. 51,
no. 3, pp. 363-388.
