Rae Cooper

The Neoliberal State, Trade Unions and Collective Bargaining in Australia

For nearly 12 years from 1996, the Australian government pursued a neoliberal industrial relations agenda, seeking to break with structures based on collective bargaining and trade unions. In the name of choice and deregulation, this agenda involved unique levels of state intervention and prescription - and anti-unionism. In the last round of legislative change, the 2005 laws badged as Work Choices, the government overreached itself and in 2007 was defeated in a general election. As in the UK after Thatcher, the extent to which collective bargaining can be restored and trade unions regain a voice is problematical. Copyright (c) Blackwell Publishing Ltd/London School of Economics 2008.

Getting Organised? A White Collar Union Responds to Membership Crisis

This article examines the responses of a white-collar union to massive membership decline in the period 1996 to 2000. During this time the union’s officials attempted to adopt a new mode of operation based on the ‘organising model’. The role of the organiser was redefined, attempts were made to split the union’s ‘servicing’ and ‘organising’ functions so that more resources could be directed to organising, and an increasingly planned and evaluated approach to organising was adopted. Whilst the impact of these changes is still emerging, the article discusses the significant organisational impacts their formulation and adoption has engendered. The article suggests that although the ‘organising model’ emphasises the active participation of members in union affairs, there has been little member involvement in the change process in this union to date.

Anti-unionism, Employer Strategy, and the Australian State, 1996-2005

One of the outstanding features of contemporary Australian industrial relations has been the dramatic growth in employer de-collectivization strategies. Four dimensions of employer strategies, sometimes interlinked and overlapping, are identified and analyzed in this article—employer lockouts, individualization of bargaining, counters to organizing campaigns, and the use of human resource initiatives in areas such as recruitment and selection. While some tactics have emerged organically through new management practices, the reconfiguration of employer strategies has been primarily state-led; legislative and non-legislative interventions have created opportunities, incentives and pressures for firms to adopt anti-union strategies.

Peak council organising at work: ACTU strategy 1994–2000

Abstract While our knowledge of the dimensions of the crisis facing Australian trade unions has grown substantially during the past decade, we still know surprisingly little about the union response to this situation. This is despite the significant developments in union organising strategy since the mid-1990s. This article attempts to begin to fill this void by presenting an analysis of the role of the ACTU as an organising agent during the period 1994–2000. The article sets out the ACTUs organising initiatives, analyses changes in the organisations approach and, building upon research on union change, analyses the influences over the national peak councils organising strategy during this time.

The ‘New’ Industrial Relations and International Economic Crisis: Australia in 2009

While the sphere of industrial relations was overshadowed by the global financial crisis, 2009 was a year of immense change in the regulation of work and workplaces. Many provisions of the Rudd government’s Fair Work Act 2009, including the new collective bargaining regime, came into effect. Unions and employer organizations were preoccupied with the monumental process of award modernization throughout 2009. The AIRC has ceased to exist and it, along with a number of other regulatory bodies, has been subsumed into the new institution Fair Work Australia. The remaining key provisions of the Fair Work Act 2009, including the NES and modern awards, are effective on January 1 2010. This article analyses the early days of the operation of this ‘new’ Australian industrial relations.

Bringing the “right to request” flexible working arrangements to life: from policies to practices

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to understand how the “right to request” flexible working arrangements (FWAs), located in national policy and in organisational policy contexts, are brought to life in the workplace by employees and their managers. The authors seek to understand the nature and content of requests, the process followed in attending to requests, the scope of the arrangements which resulted and the implications for the work of both employees and managers. Design/methodology/approach – The authors employ a case study method, investigating how formal “right to request” FWAs policies translate to practice within two large companies in Australia. The primary data focuses on 66 in-depth interviews with line managers, employees and key organisational informants. These interviews are triangulated with legislative, company and union policy documents. Findings – Most requests were made by mothers returning from maternity leave. Typically their requests involved an attempt to move from full-time ...

Between Individualism and Collectivism? Why Employers Choose Non-Union Collective Agreements

ABSTRACT Why do employers choose to make, or not make, non-union collective agreements? Based on a study of s170LK (LK) agreements in the federal jurisdiction, our key finding is that employer choices in relation to these agreements are rarely the product of ideological frames such as collectivism or individualism, or overarching human resource strategies. Whilst LK agreements were sometimes chosen because of their fit with ‘soft’ human resource strategies, agreement choices were more commonly driven by practical, utilitarian assessments of the administrative cost, efficiency and practical efficacy of agreement instruments for achieving particular workplace changes (usually reconfiguring the award wage—hours nexus). The s170LK agreements are rarely offered or successfully implemented in well-organised worksites, but they have nonetheless been used in particular circumstances to exclude, marginalise and substitute for unions. As the recent WorkChoices amendments open up new opportunities for lowering labour costs through agreement-making and remove or ameliorate the key disincentives identified as sometimes discouraging employers from making non-union collective agreements, they can be expected to grow rapidly—perhaps even more so than individual AWAs.

The Gender Gap in Union Leadership in Australia: A Qualitative Study

Women make up close to half of all trade unionists in Australia, but senior leadership positions and the culture of unions evade a corresponding feminization. Through interviews and focus groups with women at various levels of the paid official hierarchy across a diverse group of unions organizing in different sectors, this article reports on the representation of women in the senior and strategic leadership positions of unions. Despite high levels of commitment to union work and enjoyment of many aspects of the job, women working within the union movement keenly feel that they are under-represented in senior roles and they view sexism and a ‘masculinist’ culture as alive and well within unions. They believe that this has a strong impact on union ‘business’, such as union collective bargaining agendas.

Trade Unionism in 2003

In 2003 Australian trade unions continued the campaign to improve employees’ ability to balance work and family responsibilities. This, along with push for the introduction of ‘industrial manslaughter’ legislation, was the key industrial priority of the year. During the year, unions witnessed a political changing of the guard. There were no union tears when Workplace Relations Minister, Tony Abbott, departed the industrial relations scene. On the other side of politics, Mark Latham was elevated to the leadership of the Federal Parliamentary Labor Party. While his candidature was not strongly supported by union leaders, Latham has won himself a number of union admirers since his election. Despite the enthusiasm for revitalising the union movement exhibited at the Australian Council of Trade Unions’ Organising Conference, statistics from the Australian Bureau of Statistics released in 2003 showed that both union density and aggregate membership had slipped. The biggest ‘organising story’ of the year was the disintegration of the joint union campaign to reorganise the Pilbara, which in 2003 fell victim to competitive union pressure.

Trade Unionism in 2001

Early in 2001 it looked set to be a bumper year for Australian trade unions, with a change in government seemingly inevitable and the release of figures that showed membership growth for the first time in many years. Instead, the year was characterised by a series of defensive campaigns aimed at salvaging workers’ entitlements in the face of corporate collapse, the third successive election of the anti-union Coalition Government and the establishment of a Royal Commission purpose-built to demonise trade unions. In the face of adversity Australian unions nevertheless secured improvements in the maternity rights of women workers, and commenced in earnest the campaign to win reasonable working hours. This article reviews Australian trade union matters in 2001.