Cathy Brigden

Unions and Collective Bargaining in 2009

With the global financial crisis posing an ongoing threat to job security, more positive experiences of trade unions were often overshadowed in 2009. The passage and commencement of the Fair Work Act finally brought Work Choices to an end, or so it seemed until leadership change in the federal Liberal Party revived debate over individual contracts at the end of the year. The still difficult relationship between the unions and the Rudd federal government was in evidence throughout the year, and was underlined at the ACTU Congress. The return of Telstra and the major banks to the bargaining table with unions demonstrated a significant shift in the collective bargaining and industrial relations landscape in 2009. Occupational health and safety issues confronting unions included further developments concerning James Hardie and asbestos, workplace fatalities in the Pilbara and harmonization of occupational health and safety laws.

Rethinking factional alliances and union renewal: Inter-union collaboration in the 21st century

In the past two decades, trade unions have sought to counter membership decline, initially through a focus on organizing. More recently the union renewal project has prompted a re-examination of whether unions can use different types of inter-union collaboration to build power for workers and the movement. This article examines two examples of such inter-union collaboration, the Transport Unions Federation and the Australian Workers’ Union–Maritime Union of Australia Offshore Alliance. The development of these organizational relationships is important to the trade union movement in Australia and internationally as examples of new forms of external solidarity.

Beyond Peak Body Authority: Power Relations In The Trades Hall Council (THC)

Abstract This article explores power relationships between the Melbourne Trades Hall Council and its affiliates in the 1950s and 1960s. The emphasis in the Australian peak body literature on authority, and the focus on the national peak body, limits its explanatory power. Turning attention to examining relationships through the lens of Hymans notion of ‘power for’ and ‘power over’ extends the still limited theoretical analysis of peak bodies. Particular attention is given to the role of the Disputes Committee in the construction and interpretation of ‘power over’ and ‘power for’.

Tracing and placing women trade union leaders: A study of the female confectioners union

Studies of union leadership commonly examine full-time officials and workplace delegates. Less attention has been given to those union activists who hold honorary elected roles, on executive or management committees and as office bearers. Women can actively access these positions as a strategy of separate organizing for increasing women’s participation, representation and voice in their union. Separate organizing in the form of a women’s union creates a broader canvas for women workers’ collective activity. Addressing a gap both in the historical literature on women’s union strategies and the contribution of honorary officials, this analysis focuses on the rank-and-file women who emerged as the core leadership group in the Australian women-only union, the Female Confectioners’ Union, in the 1920s. By drawing together analysis of archival records with genealogical sources, the women’s biographical profiles were created and, through the use of thematic analysis, insights were gained into the intersections of the individual women’s industrial and political activism and their domestic experiences. For the next 20 or more years, these women formed the backbone of the union (until an amalgamation with the men’s union in the confectionery trade in 1945) and were instrumental in shaping female collectivism.

Union responses to regulatory change: Strategies of protective layering

Changes to the Australian regulatory landscape over the past three decades of global liberalisation created regulatory uncertainty for unions. Coupled with membership decline and internal restructuring through union amalgamations, they prompted an important reorientation by unions (back) to the workplace, and precipitated different strategic decisions and organising challenges. However, the proliferation of fragmented employment relationships rendered workplace-centred organising an insufficient response. As a result, some unions experimented with ways of supplementing existing legal frameworks by other regulatory initiatives, through campaigns that resulted in the layering of regulation. In this article, we examine attempts by three unions – covering garment workers, road transport workers and aged care workers – to address the needs of members in garment homeworking, road transport and aged care in a contested regulatory environment.

HISTORY, GEOGRAPHY AND GENDER: THE MULTIDISCIPLINARY RE-SHAPING OF INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS AND AIRAANZ

Newcastle is a special place for me to be giving the presidential address, as it was here in 2000 that I was elected to the executive. So it is a privilege and a pleasure to present the presidential address at the Twenty-third Association of Industrial Relations Academics of Australia and New Zealand (AIRAANZ) conference.

No Handmaidens Here: women, volunteering and gender dynamics in the Sydney New Theatre

ABSTRACT This paper considers the role of women in the Sydney branch of the New Theatre, from 1936 to 1969. In contrast to other gendered spaces found in the theatrical, industrial and political spheres, women held together the New Theatre. Not only did the theatre give opportunities to women as performers, but women embraced roles as directors, stage managers, writers, designers as well as holding elected offices. Drawing on oral histories and archival research, this study presents new scholarship on Australian women’s leadership in the theatre, arguing that their pattern of involvement was shaped by the voluntary nature of the work, the longevity of involvement, their political commitment and the theatre’s democratic structure. The blending of organisational and creative leadership created spaces for women’s voices in ways that were crucial to the long-term success of the Theatre, at a time when women were generally expected to focus on the domestic sphere.

Gendered scenes: conceptualising the negotiation of paid work and child care among performers in film, television and theatre production:

The pervasiveness of gender inequality in the media and entertainment industry has become an issue of growing public interest, debate and agitation. Whether it is the gender pay gap, the ongoing presence of the casting couch, the absence of women film directors, the experiences for women and men are strikingly different. Drawing on the findings of a case study of how performers manage care and precarious paid work in film, television and theatre production in Australia, this article provides a context in which work and care regimes can be analysed. Individualised negotiations with agents and producers are buttressed by individualised arrangements with family and extended networks to accommodate complex and changing needs. Despite high unionisation among performers, the key finding is that the overwhelming tendency was to deal with issues individually or as a couple, without reference to the union or through collective avenues.

Work, Identity and Trade Union Responses and Strategies

Trade unions have often grappled with organising workers who differ from the ‘typical’ worker, assumed to be male, white, straight, able-bodied, of indeterminate age. While the union renewal literature generally highlights the benefits of such organising, Australian research is quite uneven. Most attention has been on women and young workers, with sporadic research on Indigeneity and sexual orientation. Older workers and workers with a disability are rarely studied. This chapter explores historical interactions between unions and these workers and examines contemporary strategies addressing the often complex issues confronting these ‘workers with difference’.

Staging international communism: British–Australian radical theatre connections

ABSTRACT Encouraged by Communist parties and left-wing trade unions, radical, or working-class, theatre groups of the twentieth century were crucial in the development of a long-lasting left-wing cultural activist impulse in a number of nations. The branches of the Unity Theatre in UK and the New Theatre in Australia had a highly conscious democratic and explicit working class orientation, and presented various combinations of mainstream and radical dramatic genres and plays. Drawing on oral histories and archival research, this chapter explores the politics of popular culture by focusing on the degrees of mobility of ideas, dramatic texts and people and politics between the two theatres. The emergent mobility patterns across these elements demonstrated the effect of ‘tyranny of distance’ to invoke Blainey’s phrase1 and the sociocultural mores of ‘Empire’ on those transnational flows. Whether it was the mobility of ideas, texts or people, a more complex picture emerged than simple exchange or reciprocal influence. Informing our discussion is the mobility studies literature, following the ‘mobility turn’ in the social sciences. A number of concepts within mobility studies provide a lens for analysing the movement of ideas, scripts and people between Unity and the New Theatre.