From ‘Uncharted Seas’ to ‘Stormy Waters’: How Will Trade Unions Fare under the Work Choices Legislation?

Abstract

The 2005 ‘Work Choices’ legislation builds on earlier legislative and policy measures of the Howard Coalition Government that have restricted the activities and undermined the traditional legal rights of unions. This article highlights the key aspects of the 2005 legislation affecting trade unions. The constitutional basis of the new framework for regulating registered organisations is considered, as it presents unions with the challenge to revisit the validity of their registration under Federal law or to ‘opt out’ of registration altogether. The new union ‘right of entry’ provisions provide employers with far greater scope to resist or limit unwanted union influence at the workplace. Amendments to the freedom of association ‘provisions will restrict unions’ capacity to engage in a range of tactics to support the collective representation of workers' interests, and limit their ability to block de-unionisation or individualisation strategies by employers. We conclude that the 2005 Act constitutes the most serious threat to Australian unions yet, but that the high-profile debate generated by the reforms, and the erosion of conditions which will inevitably follow for some workers, provide opportunities for unions to re-establish their relevance and reverse declining membership levels.

Maintaining union voice in the Australian university sector: Union strategy and non-union forms of employee participation

“…This means in practice that unions and works councils have become mutually dependent, with the works councils offering unions the opportunity to reach workers beyond their membership. The story is similar in other European countries, such as France, Spain and Italy, where works councils also complement unions in mainstream practice, and union candidates account for large majorities of elected works council representatives (Escobar, 1995; Knudsen, 1995: 65–80; Markey, 2007; Regalia, 1995; Tchobanian, 1995).…”

Managerial support

“…While in 1979, just over half (51%) of the Australian workforce were union members, by 2013, less than a fifth (17%) of workers were unionized, with steeper declines recorded for men (ABS, 2013). These changes have affected the influence of unions considerably as well as the extent to which they can provide support to employees in the workplace (Forsyth and Sutherland, 2006). On one hand, managers have gained greater control to make their organizations more efficient, cost-effective and productive.…”

Agency and the deunionisation of managers in an Australian telecommunications company

“…These began in the late 1980s and gained impetus with the Howard Coalition government's Workplace Relations Act 1996 (WRA) which encouraged employer militancy and facilitated decollectivist strategies (Cooper, Ellem, Briggs, & van den Broek, 2009). The WRA favoured a direct relationship between the employer and employees and introduced a number of changes aimed at reducing the role of third parties such as unions (Forsyth & Sutherland, 2006). A central aspect of the WRA was the preferencing of individual over collective agreements through the introduction of individual agreements, Australian Workplace Agreements (AWAs), which overrode collective agreements and allowed employers to bypass unions.…”