Discussion Paper

The Transformation of Australian Industrial Relations

*** This series is now complete ***

The Changing Role of Trade Unions in Australian Workplace Industrial Relations - Discussion Paper Series No 3 (August 1998)

Executive Summary

The shape and structure of trade unions in Australia have changed enormously over the last decade. Trade union membership as a proportion of the employee workforce has been falling continuously since the early 1980s and, by August 1997, stood at just 30.3 per cent. Further, as a direct result of a rationalisation process promoted by the ACTU, the number of active trade unions has fallen sharply - from 299 in 1990 to 132 by June 1996.

This paper examines the factors contributing to these changes and the consequences for the role that unions play in workplace industrial relations. The research method employed centres almost exclusively around analysis of data collected as part of the Australian Workplace Industrial Relations Surveys (AWIRS) conducted in 1989/90 and 1995, and hence focuses on change during that period.

According to the AWIRS data, the decline in union density is widespread, and is not specific to certain industry sectors or workforce groups. Such findings suggest that the majority of the blame for declining union density cannot be attributed to changes in the composition of the workforce. This is confirmed by a comparison of average levels of decline in union density from workplace-based panel data with that obtained from the separate 1989/90 and 1995 cross-sections of workplaces. This simple comparison suggests that, over the period 1989/90 to 1995, close to two-thirds of the decline in union density was due to a fall in unionisation rates within workplaces, with the remaining one-third the result of factors that alter the composition of employment across workplaces.

Multivariate analysis provides results which are consistent with this conclusion. Moreover, this analysis suggests that the major compositional changes affecting union density are changes in the occupational distribution of employment, the growth in relative importance of small firms and workplaces, and the decline in the incidence of public sector employment.

While compositional change is of significance, the main source of falling union density lies in changes leading to a fall in union density within workplaces. The multivariate analysis suggests that the two factors most responsible for the within-workplace fall in union density during the early 1990s are: (i) the decline in compulsory union membership arrangements, probably accounting for something in the order of 20 to 25 per cent of the overall decline union density between 1989/90 and 1995; and (ii) a shift in managerial attitudes towards trade unions and trade union involvement in workplace labour relations.

Despite claims to the contrary, there is no evidence to suggest that the process of union amalgamations that ensued during the early 1990s has had any noticeable impact on overall union density levels.

Despite the marked decline in union membership during the 1990s, the role of union delegates appears not to have greatly changed during the period 1989 to 1995. Certainly the incidence of union delegates at unionised workplaces has changed very little. More importantly, and despite the emergence of formal structures for enterprise agreement-making, the level of interaction between union delegates and management has not increased. Indeed, the reported incidence of negotiations between union delegates and management appears to have declined, though this is clearly not true at those work-places where enterprise agreements have been negotiated.

There has, however, been a clear increase in the demands being placed on the time of union delegates. This is reflected in both increased time being spent on union activities by union delegates, and a widening in the range of tasks being undertaken by those delegates. The most obvious source of this increase in the demands on delegate time is the need to deal with the change in bargaining structures. However, other factors, such as the increased prevalence of consultative arrangements, perhaps introduced in association with enterprise bargaining structures in many workplaces, may have also been important.

What is less clear is whether these new pressures have enhanced or reduced the effectiveness of union delegates to service their members. What we can say, however, is that, apart from the presence of compulsory union membership arrangements, there is no credible evidence to suggest that workplace structures for union organisation have helped stem the decline in union density.

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