In essence the Commonwealth Conciliation and Arbitration Act forced employers to negotiate with Australian trade unions who gave employees a possible equal stance with their employers. Trade unions could win enforceable rights that the employers would not willingly grant. The advantage the trade unions had were attractive to many employees since they could see that trade unions brought them many desirable outcomes, and hence union membership rose. This is typified in the hard labour sections where employees were uneducated and under-skilled. Employers would take full advantage of their employees and offer much lower wages and poorer working conditions, but with the help of unions, this was not the case. Hence, rarely did the union lose ground during negotiations with the employer or either failed to achieve the employees’ interests. Employees achieved much better working conditions through a union than without.
At first in 1901, union membership begun with 97,200 where Australia’s population was 3,774,000, which in percentage wise is approximately 2.5 percent. In 1941, 1,076,600 people were apart of a union and soon thirty years later membership had reached 2,436,600 people. Australian union membership continued its growth during the first half of the twentieth century towards a peak of 63 percent of the total workforce in 1953(ACTU website 387).
From the 1980s onwards, there has been a general pattern of decline in Australian trade union memberships. During the decade of 1980, there had also been a series of strikes that had a major impact to the Australian economy. These strikes were the result of forty years of prosperous economic growth that led to increased trade union organisation. This growth couldn’t be sustained any longer as the ‘wave theory’ explains: there are upswing and downswing periods in economic growth which directly affect union membership numbers. In turn, with the high number of trade unions and victorious negotiations in the past, employers could no longer lose grounds in negotiations as profit margins contracted prompting increased employer organisations. The weak Australian economy provided momentum for employers to regain power and control over the workplace. The formation of employer organisations challenged and foresaw the destruction and massive defeats of some of the strongest and best organised unions. Employees thus begun to see unions become less useful and lose faith, hence not joining a union far out weighed the cost of joining unions financially and job security wise (Peetz, 1998 p.118).
In theory and through the history of Australia, membership decrease could be explained by a number of broad factors: unemployment, structure of the organisation, attitude of employees and the evolution of the Australian trade sector.
As mention in the growth of union membership which justifies the direct relationship between high unemployment, low wages and poor job security leads to low union membership (ACTU 1999, p 7). With high unemployment there would be an abundance of potential unemployed labour for the employer to select from if the current employee isn’t performing to expected standards hence at the same time lowering the employee’s job security. Low wages are the result of times of economic hardship that force the employers to reduce production costs due to the diminishing demands. These three factors: unemployment, wages and job security, provide the employer with complete monopoly along with the fact that employees are reluctant to join unions knowing the risk they face of getting retrenched if so. Little resistance is given by the employees during periods of economic depressions, them knowing that their employers dislike unions and conceding to all negotiations about contracts simply to maintain their jobs is the best option.
With human resource management seen as a favourable formation of an organisation’s structure in modern times, unions are not endorsed because of the anti-union characteristics of human resource management (Peetz, 1998, 127). This can be seen in the new era of information technology. Many information technology firms ranging from computer related products to the World Wide Web firms and the telecommunication industries all have a human resource management structure where unions representing employees working in these industries have minimal if any representation of unions. Negotiations are most likely to be settled directly between employer and employee. Problems in the workplace are unwanted while prevention is most welcomed. Employers thus cultivate and nurse their employees to maintain a healthy attitude and behaviour.
Surveys show that attitude of women; some ethnic groups and white collar employees are less likely to join unions which greatly accounts for a major loss in union membership (ACTU website 158). The key reason for the anti-union attitude is that unions are not providing the goods and services or the atmosphere that employees require. Loss of faith in unions is another factor that is accounted for. However statistics are changing, and in recent times more female representation in unions and union membership has increased. White collar employees are less reluctant to join unions can be explained as mentioned prior. Australia is experiencing a shift in trade sectors: away from white collar to blue collar labour occupations. White collar employees have valuable skills to offer, thus they enter enterprise bargaining by themselves, knowing that they have the upper hand in negotiations. With fewer members available to recruit due to the phase shift in the trade sector, unions become powerless as they do not have the sizeable threat of employees against employers: defying the true meaning of collectively joining together as employees to become more authoritative.
The peak of union membership occurred during the time when manufacturing plants were in operation with large scale of employees employed (ACTU 1999, p 7). Unions easily recruited new members during these times. Now days, manufacturing plants have decreased in numbers as have other industries: agriculture, mining, manufacturing, metal and maritime. Technology advancement has foreseen many restructuring and in some instances closures of organisations. The production line of motorcars is one instance where restructuring has taken place: robots and computers replace workers. However in recent decades, other industries have flourished and have become a major part of the Australian trade sector such as the financial, tourism and the IT industry which have smaller diversified workforces which are relatively lowly unionised (ACTU 1999, p 26). There are many reasons why these smaller new industries are relatively lowly unionised which could be accounted for, such as unemployment, structural and attitude factors as mentioned. Also, through history, there has been a low union membership representation by the private sector which now dominates today’s markets as the government continues to privatise their services thus less opportunities for industrial actions (ACTU website 158). Overall, unions have failed to adjust their representations of the workforce as the trade sector changes.
A range of strategies were adopted by the Australian trade unions since 1985 to counteract the decline. Once the unions began to notice the decline, intense endorsements were issued in an attempt to initiate large effective recruitment drives to replace the lost members. Unions tried to change to the attitudes of the public and the image of itself. More services provided at a higher level industrially and in a broader social perspective were a must for unions. Not only was wages, working hours and paid leave were a major focus by the unions for employees, other such particulars must be taken into perspective such as: participation in decision making processes, job security and family leave(ACTU website 157).
Another source of union membership recruiting that unions look towards is government legislations. The Commonwealth Conciliation and Arbitration Act of 1904 is an example of government intervention to encourage union membership growth. The legislation was later replaced by the Industrial Relations Act in 1988 by a labour government who had worked in hand with the unions. Unions were endorsing the election of the Australian Labor Party in 1983, which was successful and hence the union ‘friendly’ legislations were created and put in practise (ACTU website 287). i.e. a marriage of relationships for two actors from Dunlop’s System Model between the government and the union. The changes in legislations from the Commonwealth Conciliation and Arbitration Act to the Industrial Relations Act legislation were much needed as most principles within the legislation were outdated and no longer applied to the present day economic environment.
The Industrial Relations Act was shaped with a vast influence of unions through the Accord, which was setup between the ACTU and the Australian Labor Party after the election to acknowledge the partnership and further strengthen the future of unions. More intervention and power was given to unions. The thinking behind the Accord was to try and gain support of employees through increase power of unions; increase faith that the government was a bipartisan with unions; and protection of principles that have already been established in favour of unions (ACTU, 1987 p.8). On a macroeconomic perspective, Bob Hawke and Paul Keating had to steer the Australian economy through the dangerous waters of economic depression in the Asian- Pacific area between 1983-1996, hence with the Accord, major goals were pursued to counteract the depression such as: reducing unemployment and inflation; reducing industrial disputes and also providing the essential goods and services the wider public requires (ACTU 1999, p 11).
The Accord was re-negotiated eight times to reflect the changing economic and social factors in Australia. All services that unions must provide as mentioned previously were the main focus in the Accord plus many other broader social issues, which ranged from wages, prices, improved job protection as the main ones to child care subsidies, superannuation for all workers just to name a few of a whole host of issues. (ACTU 1999, p 6)Even the Medicare system was introduced under the Accord! Though the legislations enacted attempted to stop the decline and in turn induce a growth instead, this was not to be, but instead the rate of decline just slowed.
Once the Asian- Pacific depression eased, the Liberal Party was voted into government spear headed by John Howard who hastily introduced the Workplace Relations Act abolishing the Accord. Employees’ entitlements under awards were dramatically reduced which severely halted the momentum unions were building up during the period 1983 to 1996 in union membership recruitment. Power was being restored to the employers. Individual contracts offered by an employer could in fact overrule the working conditions set out in an award or enterprise agreement. (ACTU 1999, p 19)Thus, employers could abuse this system by offering lower working conditions and rates to an employee.
In 1999, a Second wave of anti-union legislation from the Howard Government. Employees were given more freedom in enterprise bargaining without the help of the Industrial Relations Commission or trade unions. Third wave campaign of anti-union legislation was passed to further stifle unions’ power and influence by penalising any employee or union that takes part in industrial action(ACTU website 287).
In essence, currently, there are three key issues that the Australian trade unions are devoting their resources into their recruitment drive: dominance and availability in the workplace; membership growth in new trade sectors; and a strong union voice and a clear channel of communication between all four parties: unions, employees, employers and the government (ACTU 1999, p i). Unions are a ‘must have’ organisation to help those employees that do not have the equal opportunities as employers to negotiate workplace conditions and contracts. But to supersede the previous statement, the changing nature of the organisational structure to a human resource management is much favoured as the relationship between the employer and employee is much closer which matters can be dealt with internally.
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REFERENCES:
ACTU 1987, Future Strategies for the Trade Union Movement
ACTU 1999, UNIONS@WORK – The Challenge for Unions to create a just and fair society
ACTU website URL: (Fact sheet number)
Gardner, M and Palmer, G., 1992, Employment Relations
Hagan, J. 1977, The ACTU - A Short History
Long, S. 1996, Outsourcing: Life saver or liability
Peetz, D. 1998, Unions in a Contrary World
Wishart, J. 1992, The Challenge For Unions