Decline of Trade Union Membership in Australia: Antecedents and Consequences

Running head: EMPLOYMENT RELATIONS
Employment Relations
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author Note:

1EMPLOYMENT RELATIONS
Introduction
The essay aims at providing an insight into the significant decline of the trade union
membership since the year 1980s, discusses their increasing irrelevance and the consequences
and antecedents of the decline of the trade union in the context of the Australian economy. While
exploring factors that contributed to the growth and the decline of unionism of industrial labor
in the Australian economy, it is found that the unionism emerged because of the support from the
working class and represented an unusual history of the economy. The implementation of the
systems related to compulsory arbitration during the twentieth century mediated the industrial
conflict and led to the reinforcement for unionism. The support for the unionism was at peak
during 1948 that faced a gradual decline with the disintegration of the working class due to the
structural changes in the economy. The dismantling of the arbitration after the year 1986
worsened the established pattern of this decline along with the growth of uncertainty in
employment and implementation of the various anti-union strategies. However, the twentieth
century saw the unions as an integral part of work life of most of the employees. Between the
years 1914 to 1990, there were two workers in every five workers who were the members of the
union and it acted as a dominant force in the industrial scene of Australia.
Discussion:
Antecedents of Trade Union Membership Decline

2EMPLOYMENT RELATIONS
Twenty years ago, close to 50 percent of the workers were the members of union. This
percentage has declined to about 23 percent in the present times (Randolph and Tice 2014). The
public sector also has lower representation of union members and strength. The era of
feminization, deunionisation, computerization and casualization represented the most significant
change brought about in the labor market. The decline of the union power has not only led to the
reduction of the strikes but also led to the prevention of the industrial disputes to the level of one
quarter in Australia. Decline of Trade Union membership became a popular pattern across the
developed world leaving aside Denmark, Sweden and Norway although the pattern has been
quite rapid in the Australian continent (Junankar 2014).
According to Leigh (2013), there exist two common explanations for the decline trade
union membership. The first reason for the decline was the skeptical nature of the workers
against them. The attitude of the workers represented as the mirror image of the union strength
that resulted in the swelling of the union membership during the 1970s. Moreover, the belief of
the Australian in thinking union membership possessing too much of power also declined
steadily. The second reason for the decline of trade union membership has been the decline of
the real wages. In this context, Peetz et al. (2015) pointed out that the decline in trade union
membership has been more since the 1980s with the biggest fall occurring during the 1990s.
As per Cregan (2013), it can be asserted that the decline in the trade union membership
boiled down to the four factors that included changes in the laws governing the unions, increased
competition in the product market, structural change and rising inequality of the labor market.
However, the significant factor in the decline of the trade union membership has been the
changes in the legal regimes that governed the unions. According to Bailey and Peetz (2014),
between the year 1990 and the 1995, the conservative governments in the five out of the six