Unions and regional governance: the case of North West Tasmania, Australia

ABSTRACT

Unions have a distanced relationship from the practice of regional governance. Studies of regional governance tend to focus on the role of the state in combination with politically and economically dominant interest groups. In these analyses, and in practice, unions and their members are at best marginal and often absent. The argument presented in this study is that to understand the relative absence of unions, it is necessary to consider the forms and processes of regional governance and the capacities of unions to engage. These themes are addressed with reference to the North West Tasmania region in Australia.

KEYWORDS:

• regional governance
• trade unions
• union purpose
• employers
• state

JEL:

• J51
• R11
• R58

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The authors are thankful for the ongoing support and involvement of other members of the research team: Ruth Barton (RMIT University), George Cairns (Queensland University of Technology), Dora Carias Vega (University of Melbourne) and Larissa Bamberry (Charles Sturt University).

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Peter Fairbrother http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8169-4811

Matthew Walker http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1086-6222

Richard Phillips http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2904-4376

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Australian Research Council [grant number DP140102389].