Australian Unions Research Articles

Market Discipline and the Australian Deposit Guarantee: Evidence from Mutual Institutions

This paper examines market discipline of Australian credit unions, and the impacts of the global financial crisis and the 2008 deposit guarantee scheme. The prior literature has focused on the market discipline of banks rather than credit unions. Using a unique sample of 204 Australian credit unions, we find market discipline of credit unions prior to 2008. During the global financial crisis, market discipline weakened, which is inconsistent with the wake-up call effect documented in the prior literature. Following the introduction of the 2008 guarantee, depositors were no longer reacting to credit union risk-taking, so no market discipline was observed after the guarantee. Even after the guarantee coverage was reduced to AUD 250,000 depositors were still not sensitive to credit union risk-taking.

Australian unions and collective bargaining in 2014

In 2014, published data suggested declines in union membership and industrial conflict, but union members still appeared to achieve small real wage gains even if their non-union counterparts could not. In a slowing economy and with a conservative Federal Government, union members and officials faced considerable difficulties. Collective bargaining was less volatile in 2014 than in 2013 (which was quieter than 2012). Union campaigning continued, including in the low-paid area, but was more defensive as the environment was less friendly towards the low-paid and vulnerable. A 20th anniversary provided an opportunity for appraisal of the Organising Works program and of the shift to a more organising-focused approach. There was continuing growth of employer unilateralism and state militancy in the public sector. To the public, the year was dominated by media headlines generated by Royal Commission proceedings. Instead of building on previous gains, unions became more defensive in the face of increasing economic and institutional hostility.

Body composition characteristics of elite Australian rugby union athletes according to playing position and ethnicity

This study describes the body composition traits of modern-day elite rugby union athletes according to playing position and ethnicity. Thirty-seven international Australian rugby athletes of Caucasian and Polynesian descent undertook body composition assessment using dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry and surface anthropometry. Forwards were significantly taller, heavier and had a greater total fat mass and lean mass than backs. Backs displayed a higher percentage lean mass and lower sum of seven skinfolds and percentage fat mass. While no whole body composition differences were seen between ethnicities, significant regional differences were observed. In the periphery (arm and leg) regions, Polynesians had a greater proportion of fat mass (53.1% vs. 51.3%, P = 0.052, d = 0.5) and lean mass (49.7% vs. 48.6%, P = 0.040, d = 0.9), while in the trunk region a lower proportion of fat mass (37.2% vs. 39.5%, P = 0.019, d = 0.7) and lean mass (45.6% vs. 46.8%, P = 0.020, d = 1.1). Significant differences were also seen between Caucasian and Polynesian forwards in leg lean mass (31.4 kg vs. 35.9 kg, P = 0.014, d = 2.4) and periphery lean mass (43.8 kg vs. 49.6 kg, P = 0.022, d = 2.4). Elite Polynesian rugby athletes have different distribution patterns of fat mass and lean mass compared to Caucasians, which may influence their suitability for particular positions.

Heritage Entropy in New Zealand: The Hobbit (2010) Protests, Film-work, and Post-colonial Cosmology

The paper examines how culturally situated worldviews survive in the technological spaces of late modernity in the context of the Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit, two cinematic enterprises that established New Zealand as an international tourist destination. It traces the narrative threads of the literary and cinematic plots in European cosmological themes (suffering, the battle between good and evil), arguing that the production process enabled an imaginative cinematic travel by the makers of the films that drew upon culturally situated memories to rectify the wrongs of New Zealand’s colonial past. A controversy over employment rights induced by an Australian union that sparked strikes and protests against the relocation of the Hobbit shootings outside New Zealand (2010) transposed this visual celebration onto the global political plane, allowing it to inform stereotypical narratives of New Zealand’s “character” and to reiterate the country’s value as a tourist destination.

TRADE UNIONS AND ECONOMIC REFORM IN AUSTRALIA, 1983–2013

Many of the key reforms of the past three decades that helped to strengthen the Australian economy were implemented during the operation of the Accord that existed between Australian Labor Party governments and the union movement. In order to address structural economic problems, unions agreed to moderate wage outcomes and to facilitate the transition to workplace bargaining in return for social welfare gains for workers, which successive governments have maintained. These reforms helped to improve labor market efficiency and allowed firms to integrate successfully into international markets, without substantially compromising the interests of workers and their families, which thereby allowed economic dislocation and social unrest to be contained. In contrast to the assertions of certain Australian employer groups, research has consistently shown that union involvement in workplace bargaining has a benign impact on business productivity. However, declining membership presents a significant challenge to the capacity of Australian unions to influence economic outcomes at the national and workplace levels in the future.

Australian unions and collective bargaining in 2013

Union membership rose slightly, and density fell slightly, in 2013. More substantial falls were recorded in strike volumes, especially in ‘illegal’ strikes. A substantial part of some unions' time was taken up by the courts. For other unions, much time was taken up by (ultimately unsuccessful) party political campaigning. Campaigns in the service sector appeared to encounter major obstacles. Conservative governments at state levels made life very difficult for unions, some passing laws that evoked extensive opposition. A new conservative federal government looked set to follow suit, albeit subject to its own political constraints. But if unions thought that 2013 was challenging, 2014 looked set to take the challenges to a new level.

The impact of privatisation on union membership and density: A Western Australian case study

AbstractFalling membership numbers and declining union density are issues of concern for many Australian unions. Australian Bureau of Statistics figures show that between 2005 and 2008, trade union membership declined from 22.4% to 18.9% of the workforce. Studies and statistics consistently show that union membership and density are lowest in Western Australia, despite trend reversals elsewhere. Using the Western Australian branches of two ‘blue-collar’ unions – the Australian Rail, Tram and Bus Industry Union, Western Australian Branch and the Australian Manufacturing Workers’ Union, covering a range of transport, metal working, printing and manufacturing trades – as examples, this article examines whether privatisation has contributed significantly to falling trade union density and membership in this state. These unions represented large public sector workforces. In order to test the hypothesis that privatisation has adversely affected union membership and density, the article examines three areas: changing policies in the Australian Labor Party, the breaking down of union culture and changes in trade training, and concludes that privatisation is a significant factor in the recent decline of these two unions.

Solidarity reconstructed: The impact of the Accord on relations within the Australian union movement

Unions’ strength and identity is determined primarily by the extent to which they can nurture effective solidarity amongst wage earners in general and between networks of unions in particular. The experience of inter-union coordination throughout the Accord years has strengthened political solidarity across the movement (demonstrated most recently in the 2007 Your Rights at Work campaign). The movement’s industrial solidarity has been in secular decline since the peak union leadership enthusiastically embraced enterprise bargaining in the final phase of the Accord in the early 1990s. The key challenge for unions today is to broaden the ambit of political solidarity and to revitalise industrial solidarity in an era of increasing workforce diversity and working life transformation.

Organising and Representing Women: the historical case of the Female Confectioners Union

How women workers’ interests should be represented and advanced by unions underpins debates about the merits of separate organising. This study of an Australian women's union, the Female Confectioners Union, shows how separate organising created union space and voice for female confectionery workers. Set against this was inter-organisational conflict that developed between the union and the existing male-dominated union, in which separate organising became a contested strategy. For the Female Confectioners Union, this conflict not only reinforced the necessity of separate organising to ensure that the interests of women workers remained a central union concern but also what form the separate organising should take.

Conceptualising CSR in the context of the shifting contours of Australian employment regulation

The changing structure of modern business poses challenges for employment regulation in Australia, which has historically relied upon an ‘implicit’ model of corporate social responsibility (CSR) (commonly associated with strong state-mandated protections). Traditionally, such regulation has privileged the direct employment relationship, but the dramatic expansion of insecure and non-standard employment arrangements, encouraged by the proliferation of complex supply chains, raises questions about the ongoing durability of this regulatory model to provide appropriate labour standards for a growing cohort of workers. In an attempt to preserve some semblance of implicit CSR, particularly the centrality of state involvement in determining and enforcing labour standards, some Australian unions have developed strategies to advance new forms of labour regulation. This article examines four such strategies based on the logic of ‘sustainable sourcing’ in the road transport, cleaning, textile clothing and footwear and aged care industries. Although these strategies can be understood as a broader form of implicit CSR transposed onto multiple firms in a supply chain, they represent a notable departure from traditional union regulatory strategies based on the logic of implicit CSR centred on the individual employer.

Authentic Leaders: Women and Leadership in Australian Unions before World War II

What literature there is on women's trade union involvement in Australia in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries emphasises the barriers to women's activism. This article considers case studies of women who did become activists and leaders and argues that they shared a number of commonalities, especially related to family and community and to political convictions. It also analyses the strategies they employed to overcome a range of obstacles to their full participation in the union movement, and the extent to which they were successful.

Varieties of collaboration: the case of an Australian retail union

Much has been written about varieties of collaboration and the interplay between conflict and collaboration in industrial relations. This paper explores the preconditions, processes and outcomes associated with the collaborative strategies of an Australian retail trade union: the Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees' Association. The data were collected from an extensive series of interviews with officials and organisers within the union across all Australian states. We find that despite taking a servicing approach, and indeed never aggressively organising members, the union has managed to achieve a range of outcomes that exceed retail employment conditions in other countries. We argue that this is partly a result of the Australian legislative framework, which is inherently pluralist and supportive of collective bargaining. This environment, whereby unions are not forced to fight to represent members, can be conducive to collaborative employment relations, particularly in industries where the parties do not adopt an adversarialist stance.

Regional Monetary Policy: An Australian Perspective

Fraser P., MacDonald G. A. and Mullineux A. W. Regional monetary policy: an Australian perspective, Regional Studies. A structural vector autoregressive (SVAR) model for Australia is utilized to identify the domestic impacts of common monetary policy shocks on national and state business cycles and to consider the role of state diversification disparities for observed differences in responses to monetary policy innovations. Western Australia and Queensland differ to other states in their response to common shocks and evidence suggests this may be due to differences in their economic geographies. Overall, the Australian monetary union has become increasingly reliant on fiscal transfers particularly from Western Australia in the past two decades. This emphasizes the importance of a political union underpinning a successful monetary union.

Dancing Alone: The Australian Union Movement Over Three Decades

We investigate the challenges faced by the Australian union movement over the two decades since the early 1990s, the renewal strategies it employed and their success or otherwise. We locate the Australian union movement historically, outline core internal and external challenges faced by Australian unions, and consider their key responses. Australian unions utilized strategies focused on the external level (in the political arena, actions aimed at framing ideas and shaping values or ideologies, or at altering the embeddedness of unions within support networks) and at the internal level (actions influencing the extent to which power is held centrally or vested in membership, and whether policy is controlled, coordinated or dispersed; the mix between industry, occupational, general or enterprise-based structures; and the development and deployment of resources). We focus on the ‘Your Rights at Work’ campaign aimed at defeating the ‘WorkChoices’ legislation, and two other core strategies: amalgamationism and organizing. We show the relations between these strategies, each aimed at increasing the strength of unions. Achieving stronger workplace organizing on the one hand, and stronger regulation on the other, are currently the key aims of the movement.

Workplace literacy and numeracy learning: An opportunity for trade union renewal in Australia?

This paper first examines the current literacy and numeracy ‘crisis’ in Australian workplaces where loss of productivity, lack of take-up in training, and skills shortages are being blamed on workers’ lack of literacy and numeracy skills. Literacy and numeracy in workplaces are more complex and require alternative understandings of literacy and numeracy as well as the perspectives of workers themselves. Secondly, this paper discusses the opportunity for unions to demonstrate their stake in the education and training of workers. We ask what possibilities are there for this to happen; and what models exist from which Australian trade unions can draw? In the UK the Trade Union Congress (TUC) successfully negotiated with the Labour Government, to establish a Union Learning Fund (ULF) and give recognition to union learning representatives (ULRs), to facilitate learning for workers. The paper considers what new directions Australian unions might explore in the emerging VET policy environment.

Unions and Collective Bargaining in 2011

In 2011, Australian unions successfully extended collective bargaining in some quarters while, in others, they engaged in lengthy industrial campaigns. At the heart of a number of these campaigns lay the issue of job security and controls over staffing. The challenge to managerial prerogative prompted some unforeseen actions, including lockouts, by employers, the most dramatic example being seen at Qantas. Unexpectedly, this also included an employer preference for arbitration not previously seen under the Fair Work Act 2009. Union activity to increase union density remained a challenge, with the Australian Council of Trade Unions shifting to a campaigning focus in an attempt to identify salient issues confronting members. Relations with the federal government were overall fairly positive, in particular, with some advances made in the area of occupational health and safety. This was in contrast to relations with a number of state governments as a result of their bargaining tactics and strategies.

THE IMPACTS AND NON-IMPACTS ON UNIONS OF ENTERPRISE BARGAINING

In analysing the impact of enterprise bargaining on unions, we need to distinguish the concepts of ‘enterprise’ and ‘bargaining’ and their separate implications for union power, and to distinguish and understand the relationship between individualisation and enterprise bargaining. Australian unions had several, interrelated motives for the shift to enterprise bargaining—their shift was the outcome of a willing but constrained choice in an environment where most other parties were pushing the logic of ‘flexibility’. Some union objectives were achieved but other consequences arose, the shift to enterprise bargaining closing off the more comfortable union techniques, such as effective advocacy and servicing, formerly used to maintain membership. Unions saw the shift as a way to revive membership; many employers saw it as the opposite, and were the more successful in that regard, because of structural union problems at the workplace. The move from awards to collective bargaining removed the long-standing dependence of unions on arbitration, and was probably inevitable one way or another. This had the potential to make unions more responsive and active at the workplace and opened the door to methods of union revitalisation based around principles of organising. However, the move from multi-employer to single-enterprise exposed weaknesses where unions did not have the infrastructure to be already active and clearly undermined the union power, even if the relative position of some improved. Employers also utilised individualisation strategies but these were not dependent on a shift to bargaining, though the legislative framework enabling ‘non-union’ agreements facilitated individualisation.

Tracing and Placing Women Trade Union Leaders: A Study of the Female Confectioners Union

Studies of union leadership commonly examine full-time officials and workplace delegates. Less attention has been given to those union activists who hold honorary elected roles, on executive or management committees and as office bearers. Women can actively access these positions as a strategy of separate organizing for increasing women’s participation, representation and voice in their union. Separate organizing in the form of a women’s union creates a broader canvas for women workers’ collective activity. Addressing a gap both in the historical literature on women’s union strategies and the contribution of honorary officials, this analysis focuses on the rank-and-file women who emerged as the core leadership group in the Australian women-only union, the Female Confectioners’ Union, in the 1920s. By drawing together analysis of archival records with genealogical sources, the women’s biographical profiles were created and, through the use of thematic analysis, insights were gained into the intersections of the individual women’s industrial and political activism and their domestic experiences. For the next 20 or more years, these women formed the backbone of the union (until an amalgamation with the men’s union in the confectionery trade in 1945) and were instrumental in shaping female collectivism.

Australian union wins battle to retain minimum staffing ratios

Australian union wins battle to retain minimum staffing ratios

Australian union wins battle to retain minimum staffing ratios

Australian union wins battle to retain minimum staffing ratios