‘Less than zero’: union recognition and bargaining rights in Australia 1996–2007

Abstract

Strictly speaking, there has never been union recognition in Australia. Instead unions have for most of their history relied upon a de facto form of recognition granted to them by the system of compulsory conciliation and arbitration. When this system was forged, Australia was widely regarded as a progressive ‘social laboratory’. Amendments to this system in 1996 and then its effective eradication in 2005 by neo-liberal national governments saw union recognition and collective bargaining massively undercut. Between 1996 and 2005, a number of anti-union employers used a newly legislated form of individual contract to exclude unions from representation and bargaining, others locked employees out, while courts sanctioned these new strategies. When unions tried to organise in this hostile environment, employers deployed a wide range of new strategies including ‘one-on-one’ dealings with employees but also measures which were seemingly more accommodative to thwart unionism. In 2005 further limits were imposed on unions and collective bargaining. The effect was to make individual contracting easier to enter into and much harder for unions to engage in collective bargaining. Union recognition was attacked by a highly interventionist neo-liberal state and by those employers more than willing to reshape employment relations in the spaces that this state had opened for them.

Acknowledgement

Many thanks to Sally Hanna Osborne for research assistance.

Notes

Notes

1. Clegg, Trade Unionism Under Collective Bargaining; and Niland, Collective Bargaining and Compulsory Arbitration.

2. Cooper, ‘Trade Unionism in 2003’.

3. Bain and Price, Profiles of Union Growth, 121–5; Peetz, Unions in a Contrary World, 24–30; ABS 6310, Employee Earnings, Benefits; and ABS 6325, Trade Union Members.

4. DWR/OEA, Agreement Making in Australia.

5. ABS 6310, Employee Earnings, Benefits.

6. DWR/OEA, Agreement Making in Australia.

7. Campbell, ‘Industrial Relations’, 19; Bray and Waring, ‘Rise of Managerial Prerogative’.

8. ABS 6321, Industrial Disputes.

9. Gorman, Weipa: Where Australian Unions; Wiseman, ‘Here to Stay?’; and Cooper, ‘Organising at Work’.

10. Howard, ‘Australian Trade Unions’.

11. For example, Sheldon, ‘Arbitration and Union Growth’; Cooper, ‘“To Organise Wherever the Necessity Exists”’; and Markey, ‘Explaining Union Mobilisation’.

12. See especially Gollan, Coalminers of New South Wales; Turner, Industrial Labour Politics; and Sheridan, Mindful Militants.

13. Hearn and Knowles, One Big Union; Knowles, ‘Comparative Labour Biography’; and Bray and Rimmer, Delivering the Goods.

14. Peetz, Unions in a Contrary World, 87.

15. Gardner and Palmer, Employment Relations, 290.

16. Buchanan and Callus, ‘Efficiency and Equity at Work’.

17. See also Ronfeldt and McCallum, Enterprise Bargaining; Dabscheck, The Struggle for Australian Industrial Relations; and Watson et al., Fragmented Futures, for analyses of this period.

18. Cooper, ‘Deregulation and Australian Unionism’.

19. McDonald and Rimmer, ‘Award Restructuring and Wages Policy’.

20. Briggs and Cooper, ‘Between Individualism and Collectivism?’

21. Briggs, ‘Australian Exceptionalism’.

22. Nolan, Australasian Labour Law Reforms.

23. Peetz, Unions in a Contrary World, 95–100.

24. Ibid., 88–89.

25. Ibid., 103–108; see also Sheldon and Thornthwaite, Employer Associations; and Hearn Mackinnon, ‘Strategic Management’.

26. Quoted in van Barneveld and Nassif, ‘Motivations for the Introduction’.

27. MacDermott, ‘Industrial Legislation in 1996’.

28. For example, Howard, Transcript.

29. For more detail, see Cooper and Ellem, ‘Collective Bargaining Under Assault’.

30. Quoted in Ellem, ‘Dialectics of Scale’.

31. For a full account, see Ellem, ‘Scaling Labour’.

32. See Ellem, Hard Ground; and Ellem, ‘Scaling Labour’.

33. Federal Court of Australia, Australian Workers’ Union v BHP Iron Ore Limited, FCA 2000, 430.

34. Quoted in Ellem, Hard Ground, 36

35. Federal Court of Australia, Australian Workers’ Union v BHP Iron Ore Limited, FCA 2001, 3; see also Dabscheck, ‘“A Felt Need for Increased Efficiency”’.

36. Ellem, Hard Ground; and Ellem, ‘Scaling Labour’.

37. Quoted in CELRL, ‘Submission to Senate Employment’, 13 (emphasis added).

38. Cooper, ‘Trade Unionism in 2002’.

39. Cooper, ‘Union Campaigns Survey’.

40. AMWU Official, Cooper's research interview with Australian Manufacturing Workers Union elected office bearer, Queensland Branch, August 2005.

41. Cooper, ‘Trade Unionism in a De-Collectivised’.

42. There are now many summaries of Work Choices; this draws mainly on Baird, Ellem and Page, Human Resource Management; see also Catanzariti, Work Choices; Australian Government, WorkChoices; and Stewart, ‘Work Choices Legislation’.

43. WRA, Sec. 326 (2).

44. WRA, Sec. 323.

45. See Murray, Parliamentary Speech.

46. WRA, Sec. 332.

47. Stewart, ‘Work Choices Legislation’.

48. Briggs, ‘Lockout Law’.

49. Elton et al., ‘WorkChoices and Women’.

50. Peetz, ‘Assessing the Impact of “WorkChoices”’, 11.

51. ACTU, unions@work.

52. Muir, Worth Fighting For; Oliver, ‘Australian Unions in 2007’; and Lewis, ‘How Unions Brought’.

53. Norington and Taylor, ‘Rudd to Expel Second Union Boss’.

54. Cooper, ‘Forward with Fairness’.

55. Cooper and Ellem, ‘Fair Work and the Re-regulation’.