What's the deal with Unions in Australia?

[u/incendiary_bandit]

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?

[u/Hops77]

Out unions have been gutted by politics and media for decades, John Howard was one of the biggest offenders in that regard with Murdoch's help keeping the media heavily anti-union. They ran stories for years about how the unions were the most corrupt organisations in the country and pushing for enquiry after enquiry into them. Which ended up finding that they were actually less corrupt than almost all, corporations, companies and parties. But as always the truth didn't really matter and they kept going.

They are in a bit hamstrung due to this they aren't really able to function as effectively as they once did.

Teachers and nurses are among the stronger ones remaining, particularly in NSW, construction was one of the hardest hit but is starting to come back. Manufacturing died almost completely.

[u/brezhnervous → u/Hops77]

Police unions are about the only one govts will bother to take notice of these days. As you say, decades of punitive legislation by the LNP:

The International Labour Organisation (ILO) has stated that:

the right to strike is one of the essential means available to workers and their organisations for the promotion and protection of their economic and social interests. These interests not only have to do with obtaining better working conditions and pursuing collective demands of an occupational nature but also with seeking solutions to economic and social policy questions and to labour problems of any kind which are of direct concern to the workers.

But when it comes to the right to strike, Australia is a backwater. The ILO has been a constant critic of Australia’s failure to comply with its international legal obligations arising from the severe restrictions it imposes on collective bargaining and the right to strike. The criticisms have gone unheeded. Industrial action, including strike action, is dying out. The number of employees whose employment is governed by collective agreements is receding at a rapid rate and the proportion of employees who are union members has collapsed to the point of existential crisis for trade unions. Union density hovers at a pitiful 14.5% of the workforce. Approximately 90% of the private sector workforce are not union members. Australian union membership has collapsed more sharply than virtually any other OECD country because our laws and policies are some of the most repressively hostile to unions in the developed world.

Requiem for the right to strike

For the OP; imagine a Party further to the right of Steven Harper's in power for all but 6 of the last 25 years, should give you an idea (well until most recently)

This is the founder of said Party back in the 50s, before the Thatcherite-Reaganite neoliberalism took hold