Trade Union Membership in Australia

This essay evaluates the decline in membership in trade unions in Australia and highlights the reasons behind the decreasing trend.

Running Head: TRADE UNION MEMBERSHIP IN AUSTRALIA
TRADE UNION MEMBERSHIP IN AUSTRALIA
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1TRADE UNION MEMBERSHIP IN AUSTRALIA
Trade unionism has a long history in Australia that started a big turn with the industrial
booming in 1911. It can be stated that the trade unionism had a significant role to play and it did
as well by conducting the Australian Labour Movement at the early phase of 19th century.
Despite of all the efforts and unionisation of the workers, there was a sharp decline in the union
membership since 1980s that posed great threat to the existence and relevance of the trade union
practice in Australia. In this context, the purpose of this essay is to evaluate with the decline in
membership in trade unions. Moreover, the reason behind the decreasing trend in Australian
trade union practice is also highlighted in the discussion with the background of the trade union
activity since latter half of the 18th century in Australia.
From the historical perspective, it can be stated that the trade union activities in Australia
was started during the latter half of 18th century specifically the after the event of 1788. Through
the research of theconversation.com (2017) it was confirmed that after the settlement of New
South Wales as an English penal colony by Captain Philip on 26th January, the majority of the
First Fleeters who were essentially convicts, recognised as the workers. The first strike of the
convict workers had been seen in case of demanding daily issue of rations. From the research of
actu.org.au. (2019) it can be stated that the convict strike of 1791 was the initiation of the trade
unionism in Australia. Gradually, the power and solidarity of the workers was turned into a big
strike and pushed the White government to enact the Masters and Servants Act to suppress the
voice of the workers and their continuous agitation for hike in wages and increase in rations. The
year 1830s witnessed a number of trade unions formed like the Shipwrights Union, Boatbuilders
Union and so on. In 1844 the Early Closing Movement made a possible adjustment with the
masters on reducing the working hours from 14 to 12 hours per day (Wright and Lansbury 2014).

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It was identified as one of the major achievement for the trade unions to settle down with the
masters effectively.
In the period of 1850s to 1940s, the trade union movements was developing into a
staggering manner and despite of outlawing the unions in Britain the Colonial government in
Australia failed the keep the pace. As a result of immense pressure from different trade unions
the Trade Union Act was passed in 1871 that bolstered the practice of trade unionism effectively
in Australia. In 1904, the first federal Labour government was formed in Queensland and NSW
Industrial Arbitration Act was also passed. Moreover, the union membership was also increasing
at a rapid pace where within 1911 the number of union members was amounted 364,700
(theglobaleconomy.com 2019). In the wake of World War II, the trade Union practices in
Australia was transformed rapidly as women were getting membership in the trade unions.
Moreover, the labour relations was also transformed a lot where Australian Council of Trade
Union created a big blow to the dominance of the industrial owners effectively. As a result of
that number of members was increased robustly with 1,076,600 in 1941 (abs.gov.au 2019).
Nonetheless, in course of time there were huge problems that the trade unions are facing
nowadays in the form of declining in the number of membership among the Australian workers.
According to the statistics of Hodder et al. (2017) it can be derived that the trade union
membership has been declining since 1992 and the proportion of trade union members from
August 1992 to August 2016 was fallen from 40% to 15%. In the year 2016, there were 1.6
million employees having a membership in trade unions. Most of those people were working in
the education and training and public administration. As per the data of Fairbrother (2015) the
public office workers had the largest proportion of membership in trade union with a rate of
31%. Besides this, professionals were comprised of 20% whereas the machinery operators and

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drives were 18% of the trade union membership. Among the union members 51% were females
and 92% of employees got the paid leave entitlements. In addition to this, there were 38% of the
members belonged to the public sectors where as only 9% of the private sector workers were
engaged to the trade union membership. Only 7% of the union members were of 20-24 ages
whereas the 21% of the employed person aged 55-59 years (theconversation.com. 2017).
In this context, the Australian bureau of statistics posed a clear projection on the decline
of employees in trade unions. In the private sectors the union density is comprised of 10.1%
while the public sectors witnessed a sharp decline by 4.9% to 38.5% within the time period of
2013 and 2016. The Australian trade unions are segregated into three categories in terms of the
managers and professionals, blue collar workers such as labourers, machinery operators and
drivers and the final category is allocated to the unskilled and semi-skilled workers engaged in
sales, clerical jobs and community or personal services. In this regard, the article of Kelly (2015)
tried to figure out the politics within the trade union membership that was predominantly
dominated by the blue collar membership. As a result of that a tussle or clash between the white
collar and blue collar workers was inevitable in the context of Australian trade unionism where
the managers or the professionals shared the majority of the trade union membership in
Australia. However, change in the Australian workforce mode affected the composition of
Australian unionism because the industries largely employed professionals and semi-professional
people in different sectors like information system, finance and health. In fact, the union density
is rapidly falling despite the number of professionals as union members is increased steadily. For
an instance, in 2013 the number of professional membership was 45.3% whereas in 2016 it was
increased to 45.67 in 2016. On the other hand, in 2013, the Union density was 18.2% that
decreased greatly in the year 2016 with a percentage of 14.5% (theglobaleconomy.com 2019).

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In this regard, there are several factors that are responsible for the declining trend in
union membership in Australia. there are plenty of social and economic trend attaching with the
legal framework that are considered to be the root cause of declining trend in the Australian trade
unionism. For an instance, from the economic perspective, globalisation has a great deal of
impact on the autonomous practice of trade unionism. It creates huge competitiveness among
private firms that curbs down the role of the trade unions to secure the employee interests.
According to Fraussen and Halpin (2016) due to the global competitive nature within the
Australian market it becomes pertinent for the big corporate firms to take decisions on their own.
As a matter of fact, those companies are paying employees handsomely with other privileges.
The reason behind creating such lucrative job opportunity is to employ skilled and efficient
workers and retain high attrition rate so that it will provide strategic advantage in the
competition. In addition to this, it can also be stated that safeguarding employee interests is also
a part of the sustainable policy of the organisations. Globalisation poses a great deal of
importance on the employee efficiency. Therefore, workers have become one of the major
driving tool for the business organisations to increase profitability and sustainability. Thus, it
curtails the role and purpose of trade unions and make better decision making without further
intervention of the trade unions.
In the social front, there are some key factors like unemployment and condition in the
labour market that affects the relevance of trade union in Australia. Since the wake of
globalisation in 1970s, the rate of unemployment was 7.46% and still there is high
unemployment rate in the market with 5.58%. This triggering threat of unemployment questions
the role of the trade unions in dealing with the existence of unemployment in Australia. In fact,
the unemployment rate was reached at its peak with 12.13%. Therefore, labourers are losing their

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hopes on the efficacy and relevance of trade unions. On the other hand, change in the market is
also responsible to create huge obstacle for Australian trade unions. Since 1980s, the private
organisations are flourishing effectively and keeping their eye on employing professionals in
business. Those people are identified as the white collar employees. On the contrary,
employment of the blue collars jobs like driving or machine operating were decreased intensely.
I response to this, the trade unions of Australia failed to find out an alternative method to revamp
the blue collar jobs effectively and the rate of unemployment was also increased desperately.
Therefore, Fidan and Öztürk (2015) opined that the role and responsibility of the Australian trade
unions was under scrutiny and people lost their faith on the efficacy of trade unions. The
declining rate of membership in trade unions was also a result of this lack of efficacy in trade
unions activities.
On the other hand, Holgate (2015) pointed out some regulatory frameworks that are
responsible to create huge impact on the autonomous strength of the Australian trade unions. In
association to this, the research of Fairbrother (2015) also mentioned the difference in rights
enjoyed by the trade unions before and after 1977. That year was the culmination of industrial
boom with the help of globalisation. The ban clause of the Australian government on trade union
activities and other orders of the administration made it very clear that the existence of trade
unions was no longer important for safeguarding the employee interests. There were some events
and legal cases that curtailed down the power of trade unions in Australia. For instance, section
45D and 45E of the Trade Practice Act, 1977 prohibited the trade unions for secondary boycotts.
Moreover, in 1983 the Conciliation and Arbitration Commission proposed ‘no extra claims’ for
the employees and banned trade unions to instigate the workers in accordance to this.
Furthermore, Section 494 of the Workplace Relation Act of 1996 was re-enacted in the Fair

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Work Act 2009 alleging all unprotected actions of the trade unions as unlawful an injunctible. As
a result of that the free practice of the influencing and instigating the workers became a problem
for Australian trade unions and loss of trade union rights was also seen in course of declining
trend in the trade union membership as well.
The role of the trade union in Australian market was also curbed down due to the
bargaining and free rider problem. Based on the research of Toubøl and Jensen (2014) it was
seen that trade unions in Australia by law are not entitled to secure the interests only the
members but also the non-member employees can seek help from the trade unions. Moreover,
the trade unions are bound to help the non-members in any kind of employment issue without
pushing the non-members to pay for the efforts. Section 346 of the Fair Work Act, 2009 creates
huge impact on the organisations in order to restrict the power of the trade unions and
membership is not required to get help from the trade unions. Besides this, Wright, C.F. and
Lansbury (2014) advocated that the ILO Convention 87 put a ban on the trade union interference
in negotiating with separate enterprise agreements in small companies. As a result of that a great
majority of the employees will suffer from lack of collective bargain as they are not under the
jurisdiction of the Australian trade union. It costs huge for trade union to face challenges in
maximising its members.
From this point of view, it can be argued that there are different regulatory framework
linking with the social and economic factors facilitate severe challenge to the practice of trade
unions. As a matter of fact, the Australian legislative does not comply with the process of
pushing the employees to get membership in order to render benefits from trade unions. The
legal practice compels the trade unions to offer benefit to all the employees irrespective of
membership or non-membership. Therefore, it can be concluded that the essay effectively

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discuss the present status of the trade union membership in Australia and projects the factors
behind the declining trend in trade union membership after 1980s.

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Reference
abs.gov.au, 2019. Trade Union Membership in Their Main Job. [online] Abs.gov.au. Available
at: https://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/Previousproducts/6333.0Main
%20Features5August%202016 [Accessed 5 Apr. 2019].
actu.org.au., 2019. History of unions. [online] Actu.org.au Available at:
https://www.actu.org.au/about-the-actu/history [Accessed 5 Apr. 2019]
Fairbrother, P., 2015. Rethinking trade unionism: Union renewal as transition. The Economic
and Labour Relations Review, 26(4), pp.561-576.
Fidan, T. and Öztürk, İ., 2015. Perspectives and expectations of union member and non-union
member teachers on teacher unions. Journal of Educational Sciences Research, 5(2), pp.191-
220.
Fraussen, B. and Halpin, D., 2016. Assessing the composition and diversity of the Australian
interest group system. Australian Journal of Public Administration, 75(4), pp.476-491.
Hodder, A., Williams, M., Kelly, J. and McCarthy, N., 2017. Does strike action stimulate trade
union membership growth?. British Journal of Industrial Relations, 55(1), pp.165-186.
Holgate, J., 2015. An international study of trade union involvement in community organizing:
Same model, different outcomes. British Journal of Industrial Relations, 53(3), pp.460-483.
Kelly, J., 2015. Trade union membership and power in comparative perspective. The Economic
and Labour Relations Review, 26(4), pp.526-544.

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theconversation.com., 2017. Three charts on: the changing face of Australian union members
[online] Theconversation.com Available at: https://theconversation.com/three-charts-on-the-
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