A very good paper, thank you. I worked in a union controlled site in my youth and was forced to join a pseudo union, an "institute of professionals". I watched the unions control the site with an iron fist, regularly using extreme bullying tactics. They did almost nothing for their workers and exacted work practices that destroyed the soul they were so boring and menial, but made their control obvious, it was about egos of the organisers mostly it seemed.

They did very little for their employer, the Australian government (taxpayers) with any good grace.

Eventually, the government of the day, a Labor government, could take it no longer and privatised the facility that was a Naval dockyard, thousands of jobs went, the navy finally got some reasonable service and much money was saved. If the unions who ruled there, who competed with each other for control, had been reasonable, they might still be there.

So what can be done, will we continue to live in this dinosaurs world? There has to be some way to seperate politics from these practices, but the Labor party being the political wing of the unions can hardly be excised from the game.

Hello again RPG.
An interesting article and your valid comments bring memories back for me.
Starting in 1969 at age 14 (yes, fourteen) I was taken on contract between myself, a sugar mill, and the Qld Gov.
I was, by modern parlance, an 'Technical Trainee, Engineering'.
What I was actually called at work back then cannot be printed here.

What I was subject to at my first 'employment experience' was called 'apprentice initiation'.
Hey! On other threads this Henson fellow is being ridiculed just for checking out schoolkids - let me describe what unions and authority condoned when I started work at 14.

These days it'd be called variously, aggravated assault, sexual assault, deprivation of liberty, actual duress amounting to physical violence through being picked up and thrown into the mill condensate dam (These days they call them toxic sites) - and a few more obnoxious games just to make life interesting.

Unions. Oh yes.
As an apprentice I was not required to be a member. Yet as an aspirant to future membership I was allegedly 'under union protection'. I also officially had the protection of the 'Qld Apprenticeship Board' whose office was in the Courthouse.
I was mug enough to complain to the union and the apprenticeship board.
That is when I first learned that complaint against the 'old boy's network' is futile and gained the first inkling that 'that network' transcends and utterly degrades empowering or emplacing initiatives to make things right.

This is indulgent reminiscing, A Non Farmer's comments drive this - I was trying to be neutral and have covered up the appalling violence that was the union movement in the late 70s and early eighties - a friend of mine was held upside down in a toilet while it was flushed, they didn't hold him well enough and knocked out both his front teeth. A typical initiation in a panel beaters shop, and acceptable behaviour in the automotive industry.

I watched a union meeting of reps from the mines in Wollongong when they came up to Garden Island Dockyard to ask for donations for the strike fund, a person in the crowd asked "how do we know how our money will reach the miners, the union rep responded, in a loud voice "brothers, theres a man here who doesn't trust me, do you trust him" - he resigned within days unable to put up with the overt bullying on the site.

I saw an engineer try to carry a 15Kg piece of equipment to a Navy warship that needed a critical repair to their navigation radar before they could sail, a union rep met the engineer at the door of the workshop and told him "if you leave this workshop with that, we'll declare this workshop black and that ship black - the black ban", (black meaning no union person would work on that site - a familiar term to people in the eighties) they forced him to submit a requesition for work assistance, it took 3 days to move the 15Kg piece of equipment to the ship, at $50,000 a day, we were holding up men of war from their duty.

I have seen the unions in action, and I was converted from a believer to a critic. I could go on, but will not - so when our youth complain about climate change and renewable technologies, its because many of us have paved the way so that they can indulge in such luxuries - you all insist on listening to Aboriginal Elders, what about your own?

Dear RPG,It appears you have these memories too.

Sounds like your friends in early 'occupational training' copped even worse treatment than I did.
Garden Island was it?

A closed union shop. Yes. I've heard those stories too.

So you tell me, RPG. What was it about?
For quite frankly, in hindsight, I've become absolutely convinced that there is an underground set running through governance. Firstly in schooling, then driving 'occupation', the priesthood, then through 'good works', then through 'advocacy', statury bodies, and then everything else a vulnerable person might resort to in their desperation upon being treated outrageously, within enforced circumstance, in life.

None of this in my view is too different from the stolen children, the Kids from Liverpool, Children overboard - that sort of stuff.

Graeme's article is built on a fallacy - that only five or six percent of the workforce actually want to be in unions. Where's the evidence?

An alternative explanation. Over fifty percent of workers want to be in unions if unions fight for real wage increases, better conditions and in defence of jobs. Since for the last 25 years they haven't done that, workers don't join.

And to rpg et al, how many workplace deaths have unions prevented? It's no accident that since the restrictions on union entry and the establishment of the ABCC in the building industry to destroy or hamstring building unions, deaths and injuries have gone up.

Graeme, you assert: "The most violent and vehement opposition to WorkChoices in general, and AWAs in particular, came from the groups to whom they would never apply. The half million or so workers on AWAs before it was all stopped by Minister Hockey had very few genuine complaints."

I was on an AWA along with hundreds of others in the ATO. These AWAs were crap. Many of us hated them. We were essentially told to take it or go on to the 1994 award (not updated.)

In fact workers could see what was coming - AWAs for all, stripping away hard won conditions (that unions hadn't yet disgracefully traded off) and wages. And in my humble opinion, award rationalisation is actually about cutting conditions.

Employers should be singing hymns of praise to Rudd for keeping most of WorkChoices.

500,000 people didn't demonstrate against WorkChoices because they were bullied into going. they knew what it was about - cutting wages and conditions. A majority didn't vote Howard out becuase they were bullied, they knew what was coming - attacks on wages and conditions.

Your view seems to be that an individual employee can sit down and negotiate a better outcome with their employer than a group of employees. I think the power of the many counterbalances the power of the boss. Without unions the power imbalance is just too great and individual workers in the main get screwed.

Passy's argument, on the other hand, is also built on a fallacy. AWAs are a red herring for two reasons:

1) AWAs were introduced in 2000 whereas union membership has been declining since the 1960s. Ergo, AWAs have nothing to do with it
2) Even at their height, AWAs covered less than 20% of the working population, so there is a big gap between the number of people on AWAs and the number of people who CHOSE not to be in a union.

Passy, you say: "I was on an AWA along with hundreds of others in the ATO." So? I've had 4 AWAs and while the first one put me a long way ahead of the average worker, each one after that was better. AWAs were great for me. And as Graham mentions, lots of people who were on them got a good deal. Of course there were those who didn't like them, but that's the same in collective agreement situations too.

So, what's your point? Or are you just having a whinge?

You also ask: "Where's the evidence?" And then make the statement "Over fifty percent of workers want to be in unions if unions fight for real wage increases, better conditions and in defence of jobs."

Where's your evidence?

Also, where's your evidence for this statement: "And in my humble opinion, award rationalisation is actually about cutting conditions."

I've administered hundreds of AWAs in my time and most have been templates in workplaces (typically only varying remuneration levels). Companies like Spotlight broke the law (both in spirit and in letter) so they can't be used as examples in your evidence.

So, where's your evidence?

The evidence for the authors claim is all around us - it's been demonstrated over the last 40 years with union membership being where it is.

Try again Passy. You were dead wrong on this one.

BN

I wasn't suggesting AWAs were the reason membership has declined.

They are a symptom, not the disease. And my discussion about AWAs in my former workplace was to show that they do not evidence the idea or reality of equal bargaining power so commonly claimed.

I suggested an alternative proposition to the one Graeme asserted without evidence (although he says studies show ...)

Let's empirically begin to test my proposition that maybe 50 per cent of the workforce would join unions if they defended jobs and conditions.

Andrew Leigh's article from 2005 in the AFR, reprinted today in OLO as Decline of an Institution, has two graphs at the end of it, and I think reading those graphs one can argue there is a correlation between declining strike days and declining membership numbers. When unions for example in the late 60s and early 70s not only defended wages and conditions but went on the offensive, membership rose to over 50 per cent.

So you are wrong about the decline of membership beginning in the 60s. In fact in his book Trade Unionism in Australia: A History from flood to ebb tide, Tom Bramble makes the point that during the flood (1968 to 1974) when major sections of the union movement went on the offensive for better wages and conditions (and to smash the penal powers, stop racist tours, end the Vietnam war, impose green bans etc) membership and union influence and power increased, and helped turn society to the left and win Whitlam power.

Those graphs seem to me to indicate that there is an underlying class identification among workers, an identification that comes to the fore when unions actually act in class way - ie fight against the bosses, rather than worship at the altar of profit with them.

Passy,

"...and I think reading those graphs one can argue there is a correlation between declining strike days and declining membership number..."

Except that at their peak of representation (approx 1955 from that graph) the number of strike days was at a low point and decreasing. And then over the next 15 or so years till 1971, as strike days increased, membership decreased.

Wrong again Passy. No long term correlation there.

"So you are wrong about the decline of membership beginning in the 60s"

Have a look at Andrews graph Passy. You'll see that the highest levels were in around 1955 and dropped considerably until approx 1971.

Try again Passy.

"Those graphs seem to me to indicate that there is an underlying class identification among workers, an identification that comes to the fore when unions actually act in class way - ie fight against the bosses, rather than worship at the altar of profit with them."

Perhaps in the 1950's, but not now Passy. You seem to be incapable of coming to terms with the notion that collectivism is old hat, not just here but in almost all developed countries in the world. As Andrew mentioned:

"In this, Australia is not alone. Declining unionisation is a common pattern across the developed world. With the exception of Denmark, Norway and Sweden, union membership has fallen in most rich countries over the last two decades"

Time to come into the present Passy.

Passy,

To the ordinary working person who is not particularly au fait with or proficient at politics, the union dogma - like management dogma - is a complete sideshow.

At the end of the day, what matters is that union values (of human dignity, fairness, wage justice etc) are preserved and management's values (of being rewarded for performance, effort, initiative etc) are also preserved. Who cares about the narrative and how it is spun?

The narrative is just floss IMO.

Dear Passy,
As you say, at the end of the day, you have my vote.
Well said and -
Hear Hear !!