Australia

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, 5^th edn, Allen and Unwin, NSW.

Gould, AM 2010, ‘The Americanisation of Australian workplaces’, Labour History, vol. 51, no. 3, pp. 363-388.