The Authority of the ACTU

Abstract

Most studies of the role of the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) have argued that the peak-council has traditionally had little if any authority over its affiliates. This paper contends that this situation changed during the 1980s and that the ACTU achieved a significant degree of internal union authority. Examples of such authority are documented and the combination of external factors, such as the political and economic environment, and internal factors, such as leadership and reduced factionalism, that contributed to this growth of authority are analysed.

Trade Union Amalgamations: Explaining the Recent Spate of Mergers in Australia

“…On the one hand, this is indicative of a stronger central role for the federal peak-body within the Australian labour movement, as argued by Griffin (1994). The ACTU's pervasive influence across the union movement in this area of policy suggests that the confederation is beginning to more resemble its Scandinavian contemporaries.…”

Who thinks what about capitalism? Class consciousness and attitudes to economic institutions

“…The choices ACTU leaders faced have their origins in structural characteristics of the employer-employee relationship and strategic links between the ACTU and the Australian Labor Party. The decisions ACTU leaders made to centralise union power, first by merging blue and white collar peak organisations in the late 1970s and early 1980s, then by taking responsibility for negotiating and policing the Prices and Incomes Accord with the Hawke Labor government, and finally by pursuing a policy of industry-based union amalgamations to concentrate union resources (Bray and Nielsen 1996;Griffin 1994;Matthews 1991;Singleton 1990) can all be viewed as the articulation of a particular class interest about how best to increase class power. Conversely throughout much of the same period, employer organisations failed to match the cohesiveness and organisational unity of the labour movement (Bray and Nielsen 1996; Matthews 1991; Singleton 1990).…”

Analysing Internal Power Dynamics in Peak Unions: A Conceptual Framework

“…Where there has been a theoretical interest in peak unions, it has commonly been focused on exploring 'authority'. In the Australian literature, for example, this has been primarily through studies of the national peak union, the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) (Dabscheck, 1977;Griffin, 1994;Markey, 1994;Martin, 1962). While this potentially limits the extent to which it can be extrapolated to peak unions at other scales, the main problem is the narrow focus on authority itself when exploring all of the complex relationships between a peak union and its affiliates (Brigden, 2000;Shields, 1996, 2004).…”