Examine the reasons and implications of the decline of trade unions in Australia - Essay Example

The greatest decline of trade unionism however occurred in the 1990s and was attributable to a combination of government and employer policies which have resulted in a populace focused on free enterprise rather than collectivism. Trade unions by definition are an organized body established to principally negotiate pay rates and employment conditions on behalf of its members; such bodies generally comprise a collective of workers who are separately and jointly assigned as representatives of its members in dealing with management (Aktaruzzaman, 2006).

In other words their purpose is to protect their members by improving and maintaining their employment conditions and keeping non-unionists out of the labour market (Time of our lives, 102). The problem with this model of representation however, is that empowerment is taken from the people under representation; they become passive observers while trade union reps solve problems on their behalf exterior to the workplace environment. Trade unions are also part of government structure in much the same way as political parties and thus must adhere to the laws of government and democracy.

Support from trade unions towards governments however, wavers in accordance with the level of shared labour market goals and the extent to which they can increase power (Johns, 2002). They are astute at “positioning themselves in civil society” (Johns, 2002, p.3) but are weighted with their involvement with government by being placed alongside government as the primary cause of its own demise. This was never more evident than when they worked in support of the Labour government to lay the way for an economy that was more open and included enterprise bargaining (Johns, 2002).

Employment conditions within Australia were primarily decided by state and federal awards that opted in favour of union members but the situation changed after 1986 whereupon awards were changed, enterprise bargaining came into existence and agreements with non-union members were provided for collectives (Bowden, 2009). Late in the 1980s awards were restructured (Bowden, ), and starting with Keating’s Industrial regulations Reform Act 1993 that introduced enterprise bargaining, followed by Howard’s Workplace Relations Act 1996 (Cranston, 2000; Caspersz, 2007) that provided for individual workplace agreements (Bowden, 2009) as well as collective agreements between employees and companies (Johns, 2002), and then a further amendment in 2006, it seems that government support for unions has disappeared (Sappey, Burgess, Lyons & Buultjens, 2006, cited in Caspersz, 2007, p.3). Added to this, the majority of Australian states implemented laws to stop compulsory membership of unions in order to make the transition from award systems to those focused on individual enterprise and bargaining more effortless, and later the federal government under Howard brought obligatory membership to an end (Leigh, 2005).

Such legislations created a massive exodus of union members who were then given choice rather than obligation to pay their union dues. Trade unions during this time faced massive changes in terms of legislative deregulation of the labour market (Cranston, 2000) which in turn affected the financial and economical sectors of the