Sandra Bradley writes: I have been a unionist all my life in both my home and adopted country, Australia (“Is Australia’s union movement dying?”). I have refused to cross picket lines, have been blacklisted for my union activities, and have been bullied into resigning employment because of them.
It is not without fear or favour that a person maintains loyalty to a union. I was always a union member while employed because it wasn’t just about wages. It was also about the additional benefits that unions enable, such as sick leave, shift payments, etc.
I am not a slave and never will be. My labour is mine to sell at a price I deem suitable. Unions enable me to determine that value.
John Savidis writes: Unions have been declining for years under Liberal-National governments, starting with John Howard introducing WorkChoices and laws banning industrial protests unless they were during enterprise bargaining negotiations. The mainstream media hasn’t been fair or balanced when covering industrial issues over the years, i.e. the Patrick Stevedores waterfront unions dispute.
Any biases against unions are also against Australian workers, whether they are members or not. I’ve been a member since I started working. It’s just like having insurance on your home and car. Workers need protection from unscrupulous corporations that don’t pay taxes like your average worker.
Margaret Ludowyk writes: Other factors in declining union memberships are the outsourcing and offshoring of many unionised workforces, e.g. banks, telecommunications, utilities; the closure of industries such as the car and textile; and short-term contracts for workers such as teachers and nurses.
Jason Bryce writes: I’ve been a member of the MEAA for decades and now I’m in the 55+ age group. The problem surely is that unions are doing fine without members. They have accumulated properties and investment portfolios and have institutional influence through the ALP, ACTU and the Fair Work Commission. Unions don’t need members and members are a hassle. I’ve heard Sally McManus and other ACTU office bearers say Industry Super has 11 million members — as if that’s the same or similar to being a union member.
In the ’80s, unions gave up their affiliation to trades to merge with other factionally aligned unions. That was when they took their eyes off the ball. There is no organising happening. There is no one visiting workplaces and recruiting employees. No one. Zero union employees are going out and recruiting. No union employee is standing on a milk crate in a carpark at a warehouse talking about joining up to get a real wage rise or real reduction in hours.
Occasionally a union will be active at a traditional unionised industrial site, but there are more union employees engaged in factional demarcation disputes and ALP issues than growing their membership. Union membership numbers can’t be trusted because no union wants to admit it has very few members — and hence lose delegates and influence in the ALP. But they all have money in the bank so they don’t really care about membership. Don’t need to care. Workers are the losers of course. Wages are way too low and hours worked are still way too high.
Matthew Doyle writes: Our employee group has just concluded a hard-fought negotiation for a new enterprise agreement. Negotiations were led by our union, which is funded by members, but non-union employees will also enjoy the benefits of this new agreement — at no cost. What real incentive is there for employees to become paid-up members of a union if they can enjoy one of the key benefits for free?
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I can’t agree with the over optimism and naivety expressed in some of these comments. For instance this: “I am not a slave and never will be. My labour is mine to sell at a price I deem suitable. Unions enable me to determine that value.”
This is incorrect but if you feel you have been getting a fair go with your wages and conditions and you think this is due to your union membership, more power to you and well done!! I love success stories. It is just that there aren’t enough of them. In fact, they are very few and far between. You may think you are not a slave but the terms and conditions of any workplace contract whether it is an Award based one, an enterprise agreement, a workplace contract or whatever, say you are. Some are simply better than others. That is all. In my long, not very productive or rewarding career, gains in life are a matter of inches. It seems that what happens to you outside of work is equally important to what happens to you in your workplace. One cannot walk off the job and go down the pub because you feel like it. I cannot dash off to my mess room and watch the cricket all day even though I really want to. I cannot call a stop work meeting over our working conditions because no one will support me. I have been a militant union member my whole life – Timber Workers Industrial Union and then the CFMEU when it was foisted on us by Hawke Keating fascist governments (even though barely 15% of members of these unions voted in a ballot on amalgamation). I have been a member of the CPSU for a long time and they are a gutless bunch of yellow-bellied snakes in the grass. I am only with them in case of litigation from the public and travel insurance in case of accident to and from work, which as a shift worker, is always on the cards. Not so with flex, regular office hours and work.
In all my working life I may have gained my being a union member but nothing should be done out of faith. An idea or organisation should earn their place on merit. That means unions being active, alert and delivering for their members – not merely being a member because you support unions and unionism. I do support the latter too but there are some bad unions out there. To be truthful I needed travel insurance for an accident I had on the way to work once 9 years ago and the policy helped immensely but it shouldn’t have come to me being a union member and the union having a 3rd party travel insurance really helped as I was off work for 10 months. This arrangement was removed by ‘Old Yella’ Pete, The Treasurer, Costello in 2006 when Comcare wouldn’t cover accidents on the way to and from work. And Rudd and Gillard didn’t reinstate these arrangements. And they and the unions said and did nothing when the Federal Government in 2005, closed off Commonwealth defined superannuation schemes like the PSS, so new employees are on the much maligned PSSap and other lump sum, accumulation plans with interest movements based on market fluctuations as their basis.
Having a materially beneficial work existence is just as much a matter of timing and luck as it is union membership or just plain hard work. I work and pay union fees and the benefits of my employ are as much derived by non-union members as by union members – except if they have an accident on the way to and from work and are physically injured. I would like to see more of my non-union work colleagues on such trouble and see how they suffer with non-payment of wages and super for months on end. Damned ingrates and idiots.
Metal Guru,
Agree concerning the ingrates, who are happy to benefit from union actions and efforts that obtained such as below… as I have always joined the union that represented workers in my various work places.
Annual Leave started in1936 spread through the C of A then came annual leave loading from 1973
Awards integral in ensuring workers get ‘fair pay for a fair day’s work’.
Penalty Rates starting in 1947 for working outside normal hours.
Maternity leave working parents of children born or adopted after 1 January 2011 are entitled to a maximum of 18 weeks’ pay on the National Minimum Wage.
Superannuaion to which prior to 1986, only a select group of workers were entitled.Now it is available for nearly every worker
Equal Pay for Women for women was finally adopt in 1969
Health and Safety and Workers’ Compensation This when unions agitated and campaigned for health and safety laws which compelled employers to provide a safe working environment.
Sick leave
Before sick leave, you turned up to work if you were sick, or you went without pay. Sick leave provisions began to appear in awards in the 1920’s and unions have campaigned hard for better sick leave conditions over the years, across all industries.
Long service leave introduced in NSW in 1951. Now C of A wide.
Redundancy pay The Arbitration Commission introduced the first Termination, Change and Redundancy Clause into awards due to work by metalworkers and their union. This entitled workers to redundancy pay.
Allowances: shift allowance, uniform allowance
Unions in different industries have campaigned for allowances that pertain to their members. Many workers who are required to wear uniforms in their jobs, get an allowance for this rather than having to pay for uniforms themselves. Shift allowances are money that’s paid for working at night or in the afternoon. Different industries have different allowances that were won by workers and their unions over the years.
Meal Breaks, rest breaks
Before unions agitated for meal breaks and rest breaks to be introduced, workers were required to work the whole day without a break.
Collective Bargaining
Enterprise Bargaining was introduced in 1996 which allowed workers and their unions to negotiate directly with their employer over pay and conditions. Evidence from the Australian Bureau of Statistics shows that collective bargaining delivers better wages than individual agreements for ordinary workers.
Unfair Dismissal Protection
Unfair Dismissal Protection came from the concept of a “fair go all round”, after the Australian Workers Union took a case to the Conciliation and Arbitration Commission on behalf of a worker who had bee unfairly sacked in 1971 Since then, unions have campaigned for laws that reflect that ‘fair go’ principle, which is about having a valid reason to sack someone and that the dismissal cannot be harsh, unjust or unreasonable.
Hi. Yes. A great deal of factual information there. Good stuff. I hate to tell you this but according to a Grattan Institute study into the Federal Government Retirement System and Income strategy of 2020, which I made a contribution to, it said that in 1992 when the Superannuation Guarantee Charge came into effect, 70% of all employees were on some form of superannuation scheme. Now this SGC was a statutory 3% to begin with the emphasis on it moving up 1% per annum but the kicker was that in 1998 or thereabouts, for the scheme to each 15% of salary, which was where financial analysts said was what is needed to fund adequate retirement, 9% was to be contributed by the employer, 3% by the employee (ouch! take that salary earner) and 3 % by the government (Take that, taxpayer). So for a much vaunted 15% of salary, Keating often stated 12% in his rare public speeches on the subject to hand picked pliant mass audiences too stupid to know better, only 9% was going to come from the employer. And this after a decade of wage freezes and stop start wage rises from 1982-1992, always not matching inflation or even productivity, and 7 Fraserous years of partial wage indexation. Just as well home prices weren’t excessive then. You’d stand no chance, like the poor sods in the UK and the US.
Once the SGC came into effect federally in July 1992 with its statutory 3% employer salary into an accumulation fund, the NSW State Government abolished its SASS super scheme and the rubbish FSS scheme was established. An accumulation fund not a defined benefit one.
There was no need for a universally applied compulsory super scheme in 1992 for all employees as most had such a scheme anyway and they were better than whatever industry or retail fund your employer set you up with. Keating was rubbish then and he is rubbish now.
Superannuation, especially in its modern form, is a) a tax dodge for the wealthy and b) a way for increasingly right-wing Governments to abrogate their duty of care.
No superannuation and a universal – and liveable – pension would be cheaper, fairer, and provide better outcomes.
You’re damn right. But I would hasten to add I am not wealthy and a defined benefit pension provides those on lesser or moderate incomes to have a decent retirement. I am not sure about the Age Pension which doesn’t come into effect until age 67 for men and women born after 1957. Raising it is good as you say but to wait until 67? That’s tough.
Was not aware of all the intriguing that went on, but you have to admit that nothing would have been forthcoming for most of what I cited, if not for union paid and supported action against the employers s and their cohort in government?
When one is confronted by an employee &/or retiree railing against unions or ‘growth’ one suggest that they simply give back any gains they had through union negotiated awards, for their own advantage; then looks of horror….
I agree with Jason Bryce about the disaster that was union amalgamation. Looking back at it, if you were to look at what it was meant to achieve in the Second Reading Speech, and what it achieved, you would be standing on two different planets.
Put the undemocratic structures and the factions of the ALP and the need for carefully selected yes men and women alongside the bureaucracy of the amalgamated unions and the career opportunities it opened up to union bureaucrats, and it is goodbye meaningful unionism.
This, and the dismantling of the right to strike, has gutted the union movement.
It may be too late to dis-amalgamate the unions and the ALP sure as hell won’t return the right to strike to working people. But until these things are addressed, and specifically the corrupting relationship between the unions and the APL is addressed, I cannot see a way forward for working people who want active fighting organisations to represent and protect them.
Have to agree with most of this.
If non-union members can receive pay and other benefits courtesy of the union and its members bargaining, then it is ipso facto, a contract for which these non-union members, or other effectively 3rd parties, are gaining an advantage. Receiving a benefit without membership. Gaining an entitlement without paying for the privilege. This needs to be fixed. These people are just bludgers. Of course, some of these same people, I was a non-union member once in my department, can say that the deal the union is stitching up with the employer is a bad one and therefore why should they pay union dues for such a poor return. Might as well keep the union fees. This is especially true in my workplace.
My workplace has shift and non-shift areas. I work shift and have wanted to work shift, except for the early days in my “career” because the money is better with the penalties and the work is simpler and the environment, though very imperfect, is better than the nasty, gossipy, back-stabbing world of office politics. Many of us who were unceremoniously moved into a non-shift area, that is, against our will, preferred to aschew union fees as the union was unable to get the employees free car parking on site, instead of shift workers over the road who finally got free parking after having to park at distance away and catch a work bus or walk.
The price for a union stitching up workers or non-delivery of benefits is high. It is reflected in less revenue coming into it. It is reflected in reduced influence in bargaining and day to day or large-scale staff negotiations over important things like Rosters or Workplace Health and Safety. Absolutely crucial. This is how unions die.
I was a paid up member of the Furnishing Trades Association once and they couldn’t do anything about my dismissal. Why could they? So many people are dismissed by employers, not just in the industry I worked but I had to give them 3 months union dues for nothing after I was sacked. I never joined that union again even after I worked in the industry with other employers that year but after that year ended (1993) I never worked in the furniture trade or industry again. Nothing the unions could do about it. They couldn’t stop my employer at the time Amacon Interiors from moving us out of the better super C+BUS into the vastly inferior Wealthpac. I never saw a cent of this super money so unless it was paid out to me on my retrenchment and they aften were, or my sacking from them in Nov. 1993 (they officially went broke at end of 1995) then all I can say to those Labor apologists in this forum is, “So much for your SGC”. “So much for your great Paul Keating”. The receivers couldn’t tell me anything or wouldn’t. They said I wasn’t owed anything and didn’t even work for the company despite a Group Certificate telling me that I did. Without recourse to a lawyer and why would I chasing at best a few hundred dollars, I can not prove anything other than that this so-called SGC is a giant con and a way for unions to get involved in things other than traditional union activities. Things like property investment, investing generally – stock market or private equity or infrastructure projects. Bonds and derivatives maybe. But they never showed on site except once asking for union fees and trying to kid workers to join them. If an industry is failing, if companies are struggling or going broke, if occupations are dying – unions are next to damn useless. Other organisations and structures and programs are needed.
MG,
Thanks for as they say en française, une grande explication!
People are correctly stating and implying in this thread that unions don’t need masses of people joining them because they control or have an influence through industry superannuation funds. I am at a loss to see this 100% because without membership dues, unions are powerless. Financial clout through super funds is not the same thing as a large member base. Industry funds have union bureaucrats sitting on their boards and their Fund is administered by a Trust. Unless the unions have direct financial input and not some distant implicit say on a Board governing a Fund administered by a Trust, a private Trust at that as they all are, even for government super schemes, defined benefit or accumulation plans, then the unions influence is no more than a ‘Greenpeace’ type observer status. Bearing witness we call it. Not many people know this. Government Super schemes when they are non-active and in retirement mode, unless they are fully withdrawn by the client, they are administered through a Trust which is a private concern. It has to be. There is no government department administering the PSS, the PSSap, the CSS, the DFRDF (the old Defence Super defined benefit fund since 1973, abolished in 1994 by future Customs Comptroller or CEO, Michael Woodward.)
To be brutally honest, the best union financially was not in Australia or the UK or even in Europe. It was in the USA. The union was he Teamsters Union. They enriched their members, poor truck drivers mainly, by loaning money to gambling venues largely. They built Los Vegas damn it. You see under American banking and financial rules, it is illegal for banks or regulated financial institutions to lend money to organisations who engage in gambling, drugs, prostitution, etc. So the owners of the casinos had to borrow money from somewhere. To build casinos or enlarge and improve the ones they had, this cost money that they didn’t have readily available. So the Teamsters loaned the casinos and their operators money. If only the chicken-hearted unions here could find something legal but lucrative to invest in other than just infrastructure bonds that screw over poor damned motorists who have no other choice but to use toll motorways due to our poor planning history and poor public transport options.
The conservative are just liars. They say unions control industry funds. In reality they are angry that the leeches, the retail funds and institutions who are profit driven only, not member interest based, can’t get their grubby hands on poor workers’ contributions via their employer. Unions are not permitted to directly invest members funds here in Australia for a variety of legal reasons. yet it seems any mug can become a Financial Planner, a mortgage broker, a Bank lender, a Loan Shark, work for an investment bank, a private equity firm, a financial trading house – something that loans money. People that heap misery onto others more vulnerable but woe betide you if you show an interest in gambling. I remember the ACTU part owned a network of petrol stations called ACTU-Solo. A rubbish 9.5% super contributions in an accumulation fund is not going to enrich members. It will enrich the share market which is what it was meant to do because during the 1980s and 1990s, no one had money to invest in shares. Who are these mum and dad investors? Most people are too busy or broke paying off mortgages and feeding and clothing their loved ones. Had the Keting government given this lousy 3% in super contributions 10 years overdue delivered in worker wages instead, more people would have paid off their homes in the 1980s and early 1990s earlier. Australia might have avoided recession but no. We had to have our miserable super scheme. The system at the moment is rigged worse than it ever was. I wish I knew the answer or had a strategy but the casino options has been taken.