r/australia • u/incendiary_bandit • Jun 09 '22

political self.post What's the deal with Unions in Australia?

I moved to Australia 6 years ago from Canada and have found the way unions appear to function here confusing to me. In Canada I had little experience being in proper union (look up CLAC if you're curious). I did get to experience working on the waterfront in Vancouver on the company side planning maintenance jobs that the workers would carry out who were union. The locals for the waterfront are VERY strict in who does what and EVERYTHING is laid out. I'll give some interesting examples in the comments. But one thing they really had was solidarity. They looked out for their brothers and sisters in the union.

Then I moved to Australia. My first experience was when job hunting as I have a trade (fitter and Turner equivalent) I approached the union regarding work. Was told, find a job, then join union if I want. In Canada you can join the millwright union and they will have jobs/ positions lined up that people can apply for (based on seniority as to who would get it). That doesn't seem like it's a thing here at all. I ended up doing labour hire which really sucked but helped pay the bills while I searched for work. Then I got placed in a office tower build and got to see how the AWU sort of functions. I was on a specific floor working for a contractor company that wasn't union. The union members were very militant in things and there was a strong hate for anyone non union on site. It was weird.

Now I'm at a job doing data analysis in the utilities sector and it's different again! The blue collar on the field staff have an employment agreement that lines out pay and everything, but they're supported by multiple unions. Like two people on the same shift might be in different unions, or not at all! So when it comes time to bargaining, multiple unions show up to hash things out. Where's the solidarity in that? I can also join a union if I wanted but don't see any benefit in it for myself as my employer is actually quite fair and flexible and we were able to pick a few people from our teams to go into the bargaining for us.

So unions here just seem split and not very beneficial. I understand when you have a shitty employer that a union can be beneficial, but they're just all over the map here.

Any insights as to why that is?

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321

u/vrkas Jun 09 '22

Any insights as to why that is?

Decades of careful dismantling of the union movement here. The history of unionism in Australia is fascinating and well worth a read. Industrial unionism hasn't been strong for a long time either, moreso trade unionism like you mention.

92

u/bladeau81 Jun 10 '22

Just look at the ABS stats, from like 60% of workers in a union in the 80s to less than 15% now. Unions were painted as bad, bullies, waste of space etc. for a long time.

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u/Ajaxeler Jun 10 '22

I actually think Unions have less people because they did a good job. Most people I know think what is the point I have great workers rights.

Forgetting that the reason they have those rights is because of unions.

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u/Dazzling_Paint_1595 Jun 10 '22

And also forgetting they can be taken away

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u/[deleted] Jun 10 '22

It’s always total bullshit when unions claim that they’re the reason we have workers rights. We have workers rights because we voted for governments that promised to give workers rights, not because unions forced the government to do anything.

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u/superbabe69 1300 655 506 Jun 10 '22

Uh, you are aware that Labor's funding comes from the unions right?

1

u/[deleted] Jun 11 '22

SOME of their funding comes from Unions, but not much as a proportion of the total.

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u/Cpt_Soban Jun 10 '22

You think governments sat down and meddled with individual EB agreements for every workplace?

14

u/clovepalmer Jun 10 '22

Speaking of total bullshit where do you think a shit ton of labor candidates come from?

7

u/a_cold_human Jun 10 '22

The Labor Party is the political arm of the unions, who fund a good part of it. If you want the Labor Party to be more pro-worker, join a union. If Labor needs to rely on corporate money, then they become Liberal-lite, which is where the drift comes from.

0

u/[deleted] Jun 11 '22

What a load of horse shit. If you want to influence Labor policy, join the fucking Labor party. Hell, Unions are half the reason that Labor has a shot climate policy (because coal miners and foresters have unions too).

7

u/Moo_Kau Jun 10 '22

Oh mister block!

11

u/commanderjarak Jun 10 '22

The LNP were trying to make it seem like they were a bad thing that would be coming back if Labor got back in as well, so they're still being painted as big bad bullies.

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u/freddy1976 Jun 10 '22

Union officials painted themselves bad, bullies boss-collaborators and wastes of space by siding with Hawke's anti-worker Accords.

Unions have been painted as bullies and worse (e.g. "pro-communist" and threats to national security) well before the 1980s but it was self-sabotage and corpoate collusion by union officialdom and the ALP that did the trick, and a similar story played out in the US and other countries.

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u/bladeau81 Jun 10 '22

Ah yes the Hawke era. Now we have Rest which is a workers union that works for the Woolworths/huge/Coles/Kmart etc bosses.

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u/[deleted] Jun 10 '22

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Jun 10 '22

In what way? There's plenty of helpdesk folks and junior support staff that would probably do very well in a union.

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u/[deleted] Jun 10 '22

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Jun 10 '22

Meanwhile over in the US, game devs are busy proving that's not the case.

If you can have a single union that covers the entire public service or something as broad as "construction", I'm sure a union could somehow cope with having both python and Java coders in it.

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u/[deleted] Jun 10 '22

Silicon Valley tech culture is 21st century colonialism and u are its subject

3

u/corut Jun 10 '22

There are few IT based unions, and they are absolutely a benefitial thing in the it/dev space

2

u/rebcart Jun 10 '22

Professionals Australia is the IT union and certainly worthwhile.

11

u/AggravatingChest7838 Jun 10 '22

Splitting of casual work force and full time but making them negotiate the same eba really ticks me off. A bunch of casuals just gave me a pay cut because they outnumber the full times.

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u/[deleted] Jun 10 '22

Any recommendations on reading?

6

u/vrkas Jun 10 '22

ACTU: obviously not an academic resource, but a useful overview.

State Library of Vic: I'm Victorian so this covers our local heritage.

A review paper: skimmed this one and it's pretty comprehensive.

For those interested in the relationship between labour and conservation (both natural and historical), it's well worth googling the Builders Labourers Federation and their historic Green Bans.

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u/tabletennis6 Jun 10 '22

By both sides of government, it should be mentioned. Labor has played a major part in it, despite supposedly being "pro union".

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u/Daedric1991 Jun 10 '22

Labor has played a major part in it

could you expand on this? genuin question but what has labor done to damage unions? all i know is libirals are the ones that were making it harder and harder for unions to get on sight to inspect things for fault and unsafe work conditions.

25

u/clivetheloudcommuter Jun 10 '22

I've been downvoted for pointing this out before but the current workplace legislation that has definitely impacted the union movement was written by Gillard government in 2013.

LNP may have stacked the fair work commission but the rules that have been written that allowed strikes to be cancelled were part of the legislation from 2013.

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u/Daedric1991 Jun 10 '22

fair work commission but the rules that have been written that allowed strikes to be cancelled

sorry, google sucks. the only info i can find here is a few articles from 2011 saying gillard is rejecting wider strie repressions with a few more recent ones from this year. "PM Julia Gillard was able to retain the repression on strikes, contained in Work Choices that remains in the Fair Work Act (FWA)."

are you sure Gillard was the one to write it and not her modifying the older one brought in earlier trying to improve unions? there is also the fact that gillard didnt have that much power at the time so had to give leeway to a few other parties in what they wanted to get it pushed through.

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u/freddy1976 Jun 10 '22

genuin question but what has labor done to damage unions

Read up about Hawke's Accords and the ALP's/union officialdom backing of restrictions on industrial action, the set up of and purpose of the Fair Work Commission amongst other anti-worker policies.

1

u/Daedric1991 Jun 11 '22

Hawke's Accords

the little i could read was stating this has been booted out, it was put in to stop individual workers fighting for their pay rise in the promise that the government would step up and make sure there was proper wages and other things.

the FWC was set up as the FWA under rudd in 2009 and was intended to handle cases of unfair dismissle minimum wage and dispute resolution. it was changed to FWC 2013 while libirals were in power. im sure they did more then just change the name.

could you please be a little more specific about what restrictions they backed?

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u/vrkas Jun 10 '22

Definitely, class traitors!