Unions are political organisations, always have been , always will be. That's why John Howard hates them.

Some comment that unions are interested in politics, well, duh.. Given the damage and potential damage Workchoices can do to union members why wouldn't unions arc up ?

The fact is unions have so far been very successful in the Workchoices campaign, unions are not dead yet, comrades.

By the way everyone is entitled to have a moan but don't pass off personal experience as being representative of something bigger. If you think your union is not doing its job then become a delegate, or stand for election to the union council.

Unions can be buried in the mire of individual servicing and have to prioritise services. That may mean the union negotiates framework agreements so that members can help themselves, trains delegates to assist members, or trains / supports members to help themselves.

Unions are the whipping boys because they have succeeded in putting Howard on the back foot, it wasn't Beazley or Rudd, it was the unions that took the fight to Howard.

We may stop needing unions when bosses stop being bastards, but I suspect that even then we'll need some organised force to stand up for our human rights.

A thoughtful article, which makes some good points. I’d disagree with only one aspect, the author’s overly favourable view of the Accord process. I think the Accord was an important turning point in perceptions of unions, for a number of reasons.

First, as the article makes clear, it removed any pretence that rank-and-file members could influence their own pay and conditions, and explicitly transferred power from workplaces to the corporatist elite – government, full-time union officials and the bureaucracy.

Second, the decline in real wages under the Accord was not just an unhappy coincidence but a deliberate effort by that elite to cut pay. They may have had good macro-economic reasons for doing so – to attack the unemployment and inflation that followed the wages break-out of the 1970s. And they may have tried to engineer compensating adjustments in the “social wage” by adjusting taxes and benefits. But the fact remains that the only government in Australian history that deliberately and explicitly set out to reduce workers’ real wages was Labor, under the Accord, with the connivance of the unions. Small wonder they lost the trust of some ordinary workers.

Third, under the Accord process, unions’ influence on workers’ terms and conditions was achieved through political not industrial processes. The strong emphasis even today on the legislative and political dimension of Industrial Relations policy reflects the unions’ ongoing attachment to a model in which their efforts are directed mainly at governments and industrial commissions, not employers, and their power is secured by legislation, not the commitment of members.

Forth, as a consequence, their concern for individual members’ everyday concerns sometimes seems cursory at best, as the experiences of many posters in this thread illustrate.

Undoing these damaging effects on the Accord and its aftermath might go some way to restoring the respect and affection with which unions were once held.

Only a retired old Cockie, but reckon there could be a bit of a worry about - we now don't need unions any more?

With the seemingly endless demand from China for our seemingly bottomless pitstocks, as well as China lovelingly smothering us in cheap clothing and smallgoods, what more could a worker and boss together be blessed with?

Yet we must remember Hitler got rid of the unions and even gave wonderful bonuses for extra babies.

Also like Hitler our government now does its own arbitration meaning it makes its own laws, rather than letting them be partisan or politically neutral.

So it's all a matter of the workers trusting the government rather than a union body.

Seeing as never had to work under a boss except my slave-driving Old Man which meant I also had to work with workers, reckon I had lessons in those days about who holds the big end of the stick, the boss or the worker?

Well I guess all one can say from experience, guess it's a case of time and change will tell?

The union movement not only failed to assist me but also actively worked against me. Why should I support them?
The union movement also supports one political party over others. Why should those who wish to vote in other ways have their union fees used to this end?
Rudd claims he will require the return of any TWU funds but the reality is that they will find some other means of accepting them.
I have asked it before but received no answer - why has the South Australian government been allowed to get away with providing the union movement with $3m (for supposed OHS training but in reality a drive for union membership and a means of diverting union funds to the ALP for the election campaign)?

Westernred, I had no workplace rights in 2000, well before Workchoices.

You are right in that the huge sum of money - members union fees - that has been used to employ actors to act out fabricated workplace problems has created the illusion that union members once had workplace rights, and the further illusion that unions protected those rights.

In 2000 I, too, was a gullible, contented little union sheep. I believed in the Queensland Teachers' Union. I had no doubt at all that the union would protect me from workplace abuse.

Then I was attacked at work. And I have been "helping myself" as you put it since 2000.

It is a pretty lonely road.

You are not welcome at union conferences once you know the truth about the union.

You are urged to "move on" - to shut up and stop spoiling the illusion.

The boss-bastards are in the unions, don't you get it? The unions protect the boss-bastards.

And, when union officers have finished protecting the boss-bastards who are in the union, they become boss-bastards themselves and are gloriously "merit-selected" into the well-paid ranks of the Queensland public service.

Because they have been such co-operative little public servants.

Firstly, the writer of the article attacks the unions from the right, from the bosses needs. The writer pushes a political line for even closer integration with the bosses. In other words 'we can all work in together to get things done better.' Not very original as every right wing and Stalinist trade union official espouses the same political line; the ACTU/ ALP Accord expressed this point precisely. Yes the accord that took wage indexation off workers and shovelled it into the banks and bosses; an enormous betrayal. Then there was an agreement to drive down all workers hard won conditions and boost cheap casual labour: This treacherous euphemism was called 'restructuring' the workforce including ripping up all awards.
The writer never explains why the youth see the unions as a dead dog. Why would youth join an organization that only, repeat only, professes to defend them and looks for every possibility to stab them in the back and sell them out. Every workplace in the world has been cut in half and the treacherous unions working directly or indirectly with the bosses either instigated much of it or went along with it. But the media always paint the unions up as militant very much like how they promote the treacherous politicians. Every so often the media too attack the unions from the right, to wheel them into line.