Australian unions and collective bargaining in 2014

Abstract

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.

Keywords

Collective bargaining Fair Work Act industrial disputes trade unions union membership

Introduction

Following the 2013 change of Federal Government, unions in 2014 confronted a very different landscape. Already, some modest improvements from the previous few years were under threat, and an ongoing Royal Commission into unions cast its shadow. Bargaining, organising and campaigning continued, however. A first-term government was wary of taking political risks with an over-fervent approach to industrial relations, given its errors in the WorkChoices years. Union density and industrial action both fell once more, although there are some caveats on interpreting those figures. In this review, we examine developments in union membership and industrial disputation, major collective bargaining disputes in the private and public sectors, unions in the courts and tribunals, union campaigning, 20 years of organising, and the Royal Commission.

Union membership

In June 2014, the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS, 2014a) released its estimates of union membership for August 2013 – its final publication in the 6310.0 series. These estimates are based on a survey that, until now, has been undertaken annually. As a survey, its estimates are subject to random fluctuation from one year to the next, so they have to be treated with some caution.

These data were most notable for the marked shift they represented from the previous few years. Union membership in 2012 was the same as it had been in 2002, bouncing around since then with an average absolute annual movement of around 50,000 (aside from 2006, when it fell by 126,000 with the introduction of WorkChoices). It had grown slightly in four of the five years after 2007. However, in 2013, recorded membership fell by 93,000. Union density, having been in the range of 18.2% to 18.4% between 2010 and 2012, suddenly fell to 17.0% in 2013. However, caution should be exercised in taking these results at face value.

Because of such variability, we usually apply a trend formula to interpret membership data (Bailey and Peetz, 2014). Using that method, trend union membership was 1.79 million in 2013, down 20,000 from 2012 but the same as in 2009 and higher than 2007 or 2008. Trend density was 17.6% in 2013, down from 17.8% in 2012 and lower than every other year in the last 100 years. Trend membership had grown each year since 2008, and trend density had stabilised from 2010. These recent data suggest a reversal of those patterns. When sudden variations in the raw figures occur, however, it is hard to make proper sense of the data until later data are published (as trend estimates can be revised up to three observations later).

Interpretation of the ABS data will become much harder in light of its unexpected decision to start publishing union membership data every two years. This will put Australia out of step with other countries like the USA and UK which publish data annually. Making sense of data will be more difficult with a biennial collection.

One of the most notable features of the raw statistics was the apparent drop in union membership in manufacturing: from 170,000 members in 2012 (it had been around that level for about three years) to an estimated 129,000 in 2013. This fall is likely to be greatly overstated: our trend estimate is of a drop in manufacturing employment of just over 8000, which in turn is much closer to what discussions with union insiders would suggest. That said, there is clearly a long-term problem for unionism in that sector. Since 2006, trend membership there has dropped each year, by an average of 8000 members. Each year since 2009, trend manufacturing employment has fallen, and each year since 2006 trend density has fallen there. By contrast, trend membership has risen (by a small amount) each year since 2006 in public administration, and (by a much larger amount – around 14,000 per year) in health care and social assistance, except for a small trend drop in 2013. In seven years, manufacturing has fallen from almost 12% of unionists to little more than 8% in trend terms; health care and social assistance has gone from 15% to 20% of unionists. Notwithstanding, the majority of unionists (59%) were in the private sector in 2013, the same as in 2007 and indeed 1996.

Industrial disputation

Recorded industrial conflict fell further in 2014 (ABS, 2014b). The number of disputes was 14% lower, and the volume of working days lost (WDL) 45% lower, in 2014, than in 2013. All the fall was accounted for by Victoria and New South Wales. The volume of working days lost was relatively stable in Queensland, whose share of national WDL was well above its long-term average.

Slightly under a third of WDL in 2014 were in construction, with a similar portion in education, health and social assistance. Compared to the preceding year this was a rise for the former and a fall for the latter. Just as the professional unions were dominating membership patterns, they were also prominent in industrial action, though industries in which the majority of workers were in ‘blue collar’ occupations still appeared to account for a disproportionate number of WDL. Construction recorded an 21% fall in WDL to the lowest level in six years.

In the year to September 2014, amongst disputes with published causes, 66% of WDL were in enterprise bargaining disputes, a fall from the 81% in the previous 12-month period but above seven of the ten such periods before that. Perhaps reflecting the decline in enterprise bargaining disputes, the proportion of WDL that were lost in disputes of very short duration (one day or less) rose by nearly a third to 50%, but this was also well above the year to June 2012.

Collective bargaining and wages

Real wages growth almost halted. Over 2014, the best indicator of nominal wages, the wage price index (WPI), rose by 2.5% nationally (ABS, 2014c). This was the lowest annual growth in the 17 years of this ABS series.

Wages growth through enterprise bargaining was above this, however. Federal enterprise bargaining showed 3.4% average annual wage increases (AAWI) in agreements approved in the March through to September 2014 quarters (and was about almost 0.4 of a percentage point higher in the public than in the private sector). This is similar to the 3.4% AAWI recorded across agreements approved in 2013 (Department of Employment (DoE), 2014a, 2014b). Overall, the AAWI has remained in a fairly stable range from 3.2% to 3.6% over the ten quarters from June 2012. Over that period, a gap has opened up between WPI growth and AAWI. These were quite similar through the last three quarters of 2012, but are now nearly a percentage point apart. Amongst new enterprise agreements, the gap between agreements with and without union coverage widened to 0.6 percentage points in the first three quarters of 2014, about twice the average gap through 2013.

Taken together, these data indicate real wage falls for many non-members of unions. The burden of slowing wages growth in a stagnating economy has been disproportionately felt in the non-union sector. The number of workers covered by agreements remains stable, however. Around 2.3 million employees were subject to federal enterprise agreements in September 2014, comparable to the same quarter two years earlier. Over three quarters were in the private sector. (These numbers exclude employees covered by expired agreements being renegotiated.)

During the first three quarters of 2014, industries where agreements exerted downward AAWI pressure were financial services, information media and telecommunications, wholesale trade and manufacturing (DoE, 2014a, 2014b). Low wages growth in many ‘core’ public sector areas was offset by larger-than-average growth in universities and local government (DoE, 2014a). In the September quarter AAWI in mining agreements dropped to 2.5%, but it was too early to tell if this drop would be sustained. Construction enjoyed the highest wages growth.

One of the most volatile sectors for bargaining was offshore oil and gas. With agreements having expired mid-2013, the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) took on a number of companies in the Pilbara, including Teekay, Mermaid, Farstad and Tidewater. Industrial action, negotiation and tribunal appearances punctuated the year at regular intervals. These disputes had implications for supply to Chevron’s Gorgon LNG project on Barrow Island, and to iron ore operators BHP Billiton and Fortescue Metals. Key issues were use of overseas workers (found by the Fair Work Commission (FWC) to be incompatible with the Fair Work Act¹) and four weeks on/four week off (4&4) rosters (to replace existing 5&5 rosters) for the fly-in, fly-out workforce. Port Hedland operator Teekay Shipping reached agreement in November with the MUA, the Australian Maritime Officers Union and the Australian Institute of Marine and Power Engineers (Workplace Express, 2014a). The agreement included a month’s extra leave, and no wage increases in the first year, but 2% rises in each of the subsequent three years (Christian, 2014). A resolution was also reached in December between Mermaid Marine and the MUA after 12 months of volatile negotiations, including a five-day strike in October. Settlement points included more use of direct employment, greater permanency and improved maternity leave provisions. Pay rises were just above the level of inflation (ABC, 2014a). At year’s end, marine vessel operator Farstad – serving Chevron’s LNG Wheatstone project near Onslow – was refusing to move to 4&4 arrangements, although agreement had been reached on wages (Jones, 2014). The Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU) lost a battle to introduce shorter rosters at construction company Bechtel on the Curtis Island LNG projects in Queensland – the company maintaining 4&1 rosters in the face of union demands for 3&1 arrangements. The workforce, after a third vote in August, accepted by a small margin the company’s offer (which included a substantial pay increase) (McCarthy, 2014). A Western Australia (WA) parliamentary committee in November released a discussion paper on fly-in, fly-out arrangements, emphasising their effect on mental health (WA Legislative Assembly, 2014). The full report is due in 2015. With agreements covering the construction of liquid gas trains expiring in January 2015, and with gas production starting mid-year, the battle over shorter work rosters may spread (Workplace Express, 2014b).

A report commissioned by the MUA and the International Transport Federation (Ellem, 2014) found that logistical and management matters were the principal reasons for cost overruns on Chevron's Gorgon Project, now a year behind schedule and the subject of much controversy.

Controversy over the treatment of overseas workers on offshore oil and gas projects spilled into the legislative arena. The previous Australian Labor Party (ALP) Federal Government had in 2013 passed legislation bringing those workers within the migration zone and requiring them to have visas and, in effect, to work to Australian labour standards. In June 2014, the Senate passed a resolution disallowing the new Abbott government’s regulations that would have thwarted that legislation’s intent. The next day the Assistant Minister for Migration made a determination under the Migration Act subverting the Senate’s disallowance motion and the 2013 legislation (Hannan, 2014). A Federal Court case initiated by the MUA was lost, with the court in September deciding that the Federal Government had the power to use the legislative instrument.² The issue of foreign workers erupted again in November, when MUA members held a three-week sit-in aboard Teekay-owned oil tanker Tandara Spirit in Melbourne’s Port Phillip Bay, protesting at being told to sail to Singapore, where they would be made redundant and the ship replaced by a Vietnamese-crewed tanker. The protest ended after the strikers were threatened with legal action (Squires, 2014).

Coal unions were perturbed by BHP Mitsubishi Alliance’s September announcement of 700 job cuts in the Bowen Basin (Saunders, 2014). Glencore stood down 8000 New South Wales (NSW) and Queensland workers for three weeks in December (Chambers, 2014). In a controversial decision with major implications for the local community, Glencore Xstrata won approval for a non-union agreement (initially for 21 employees) for the reopened Collinsville coal mine near Bowen. Unions had disputed it was a new site, given it was operated until recently by Thiess (indeed coal had been mined there for nearly a century), and criticised the ‘substandard’ conditions.³ A FWC Full Bench subsequently ruled that the agreement covered the union, even though the union had no standing to oppose its approval.⁴

Hunter Valley (NSW) coal haulage train drivers, members of the Rail, Tram and Bus Union (RTBU), were locked out by their employer, Australia’s biggest rail freight operator Aurizon, in February, following a 72-hour overtime ban. A resolution was reached in April, involving a 12% wage increase over three years and a reduction of hours in the fourth year (ABC Upper Hunter, 2014). The same employer and more unions were involved in a bargaining deadlock in Queensland, with a strike and lockout in February involving the major rail link servicing more than 50 Bowen Basin coal mines, followed by the employees’ rejection in October 2013 of Aurizon’s offer. The company then applied to the FWC to terminate its Queensland agreements (RTBU, 2014), a move opposed by most employees. The case was ongoing at year’s end.

In air transport, Qantas in February posted a significant loss and announced 5000 redundancies by June 2015 (O’Sullivan and Massola, 2014). Staff then came under pressure to accept 18-month pay freezes. In October, licensed aircraft mechanical engineers represented by the Australian Licensed Aircraft Engineers Association accepted a freeze, although the union secured the reversal of forced redundancies (O’Sullivan, 2014a). However, in November, contrary to management and union expectations, Qantas pilots voted down a pay freeze deal between the airline and the Australian and International Pilots Association (O’Sullivan, 2014b), as did Jetstar pilots the following month. The 2011 grounding and lockout of the Qantas fleet (Bailey and Peetz, 2013, 2014; Brigden, 2012) thus continued to reverberate. The Australian Federation of Air Pilots (AFAP) and Tigerair reached agreement on a new enterprise agreement in February, delivering an 8% increase in wages over three years (AFAP, 2014).

In retail, the Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees Association (SDA) failed to conclude negotiations for a new agreement with retail haberdasher Spotlight.⁵ The SDA had successfully bargained with Spotlight post-WorkChoices after Spotlight had controversially introduced cut-to-the-bone Australian Workplace Agreements (Bailey et al., 2012). At the request of the SDA, the FWC cancelled the agreement, returning Spotlight employees to Modern Award coverage. The SDA commenced bargaining with Coles for annual pay rises of 5%, with other unions critical of proposals to introduce a single Coles agreement they said would undercut wages and conditions (Dunckley, 2014). The SDA lambasted a non-union agreement with Apple approved by the FWC in June, giving a 2% increase, resulting in rates slightly below those of Coles.⁶ It said the ‘benchmark’ was 2.6%. In wholesale, where the SDA shares coverage with the National Union of Workers (NUW), a new agreement for Woolworths warehouses cut new hires’ pay. The move was supported by the SDA, which claimed most new hires were casuals receiving casual loadings (Workplace Express, 2014c). A new agreement with Coca-Cola Amatil for a Mentone (Victoria) warehouse froze pay for employees in 2015, to be followed by an increase of around 2% in 2016 (Workplace Express, 2014c).

In banking, the Finance Sector Union (FSU) had a tumultuous year. Bank of Queensland staff rejected the employer’s 1.25% per annum wage offer, and FSU members working for ANZ campaigned strongly against their employer’s proposals (FSU, 2014a, 2014b). The union reached a two-year agreement with the National Australia Bank, a one-year agreement with the Commonwealth Bank, and gained a one-year extension of the Westpac Group’s 2013 agreement (which also covered St George, Bank SA and Bank of Melbourne) (Workplace Express, 2014d). Dispute about the terms and operation of performance pay – a long-standing problem in the sector – was the main theme running through negotiations.

In automotive, in the wake of announced closures of the remaining three Australian car manufacturers (Bailey and Peetz, 2014: 419), Toyota workers in May (Dowling, 2014a) and Holden workers in October (ABC, 2014b) accepted new redundancy arrangements. In June, 200 Ford workers were forced to take redundancies ahead of their plant’s closure (ABC, 2014c). And in December, Toyota announced that further white collar and service jobs would be axed, in addition to those earlier announced, and that interstate relocations – or further redundancies – would occur (Dowling, 2014b).

The university enterprise bargaining round drew to a close, with all but a few agreements settled by year’s end. Increases of between 3.15% and 3.25% per annum were accepted by National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) members during 2014 (NTEU, 2014a) – lower than 2013 settlements – with progress on most key claims at most institutions. Industrial action occurred in 2014 at four universities (Workplace Express, 2014e). Over 1500 jobs in the sector were cut nationwide in 2014, particularly in Victoria (NTEU, 2014b). A legislative package including fee deregulation and Federal funding reductions was blocked by the Senate in December (ABC, 2014d), although the Minister for Education immediately tabled a revised bill incorporating previously rejected concessions.

In manufacturing, food processing company SPC, owned by Coca-Cola Amatil, was criticised by Prime Minister Tony Abbott and Industry Minister Ian McFarlane for the conditions and allowances in its enterprise agreement. This occurred after a company request for financial assistance, though it was pointed out the government was subsidising Cadbury in Hobart (Kenny, 2014). An independent won the seat representing this area from the then State government at the subsequent Victorian election. Building industry supplier Ausreo, at Wetherill Park in Sydney’s western suburbs, locked out 25 Australian Manufacturing Workers Union (AMWU) members for 10 weeks. They eventually obtained pay parity with other states (AMWU, 2014). Nearby CSR-Gyprock locked out 50 United Voice members for a fortnight (United Voice, 2014), with allegations from the union movement that lockouts were becoming a first tier response in bargaining (Phillips, 2014).

Agreements were reached with little fanfare in some private health organisations, such as Bupa Care Services’ agreements with the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation and the Health Services Union (4.0% AAWI in Victoria, 3.7% in New South Wales) (DoE, 2014b).

In sum, despite some moments, collective bargaining was less volatile in 2014 than in 2013 (which was quieter than 2012) and, despite employer militancy including lockouts, still delivered better wage outcomes for union members than were apparently experienced by non-members.

State governments and the public sector

The Federal Government and conservative state governments, particularly in Queensland, continued to target public sector unions, playing hardball in bargaining. State governments introduced more legislation that adversely affected all unions, not only those with public sector members.

Federal public sector wages became a major issue. Unions smarted under the Federal Government’s restrictive public sector industrial relations (IR) framework, which pegged wage increases at between zero and 2.5% per annum depending on ‘productivity improvements’ (Australian Public Service Commission, 2014), a policy subject to considerable critique (see e.g. Gourley, 2014). Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU) members voted to ratchet up their campaign against the policy, arguing the government sought to strip employees’ rights (CPSU, 2014a). Agreements covering 165,000 employees in 114 agencies expired on 30 June. In October, CPSU members in the Department of Human Services – the largest Federal agency – overwhelmingly voted ‘yes’ in a protected action ballot (Easton, 2014). Job cuts in other agencies were announced in November as a result of a Federal Government mid-year budget update, particularly in national broadcasters the ABC and SBS, where 500 jobs were expected to go (Massola, 2014). In December, CPSU members in the Department of Veterans Affairs staff voted in favour of industrial action (CPSU, 2014b), and staff in the Department of Employment – Minister Eric Abetz’s own department – voted down (by a margin of 1419: 77) a proposed agreement that the union said ‘cuts a raft of … conditions and rights in return for a pay rise of less than 0.5% a year’ (CPSU, 2014c). Immediately afterwards, Australian Financial Security Authority staff rejected a below-inflation agreement with an 82% ‘no’ vote (Donaldson 2014). Thus Federal Government cost-cutting attacked sections of its own workforce, despite overwhelming opposition, arguably in an attempt to condition bargaining responses. Its most visible conditioning exercise – a 1.5% annualised pay increase for the armed forces – appeared in trouble when it prompted Senator Jacqui Lambie to announce she would vote against all government bills until that decision was repealed (Wroe, 2014a).

When Victorian electors in November voted in an Australian Labor Party (ALP) State government after a single term of conservative rule, a long-running dispute involving ambulance officers was settled, with a 6% pay increase from 1 January 2015, followed by two 3% pay increases and a $3000 sign-on bonus, with the FWC to hold a full hearing in 2015 to assess the union's ‘work value case’ (ABC, 2014e). The country and metropolitan fire services continued negotiations – begun in 2013 – with the United Firefighters Union. The FWC, after a 17-day hearing, refused the Metropolitan Fire and Emergency Services Board’s application to terminate the two agreements covering Melbourne’s firefighters, suggesting that would lead to a ‘fundamental imbalance’ in favour of the Board.⁷ Outcomes for both fire services were still in abeyance at the end of the year.

In other states, wage imbroglios continued. In Tasmania, the government unsuccessfully sought to impose a one-year pay freeze across the whole public sector, then announced it would sack 500 workers (Smith, 2014). In Western Australia, following an April strike and city march by public servants, over 47,000 police, firefighters and public servants approved the Barnett government’s offer of pay rises pegged at CPI increases (ABC, 2014f, 2014g), in the context of the waning WA resources boom and the fact that conditions such as job security had been retained. In the wake of the 2013 decision of Queensland’s Newman government to grant pay rises administratively in the state public sector (Bailey and Peetz, 2014: 422) while playing hardball on a negotiated settlement, the Queensland Supreme Court in June ordered that unions’ applications for interim wages rises be re-considered by the Queensland Industrial Relations Commission (QIRC). The hearing was pending at year’s end with the relevant union, Together (Queensland) initiating a ‘Fair Pay Campaign’. That government’s much drawn-out ‘award modernisation’ efforts⁸ introduced rigid allowable and non-allowable matters in public sector awards, and removed or reduced collective bargaining rights. QIRC decisions implementing this legislation were made with respect to the main local government award and others in September and October,⁹ with the remaining decisions pending at year’s end. In areas like local government, unions started campaigning for councils to sign memoranda of understanding to maintain conditions (The Services Union, 2014).

New state legislation drew the ire of unions. In NSW in October, the conservative Baird government introduced a new Election Funding, Expenditure and Disclosures Amendment Bill 2014 – replacing earlier legislation rejected in 2013 by the High Court (Bailey and Peetz, 2014: 422). This new Bill again aimed to curb election spending by third parties including unions (Nicholls, 2014). At year’s end, a challenge to this Bill by the nurses’ union was under active consideration (NSW Nurses and Midwives’ Association, 2014). The High Court decision re the Baird proposal forced the Queensland government in June to repeal similar legislation requiring unions to ballot members before spending more than $10,000 on political campaigning. Unions, in the wake of this back-down, demanded the government pay the court costs of their aborted challenge to the new law (Vogler, 2014). In March, the Victorian parliament amended the Summary Offences Act to give police more power to end union pickets and protester blockades (Lucas and Cook, 2014), but that was likely to be repealed under the new ALP government. Similar Tasmanian legislation, passed in June although modified by the state’s upper house in November, made it a criminal offence to protest in a manner that disrupts or invades workplaces, with a maximum penalty of four years’ imprisonment for repeat offenders (Richards, 2014). In April, the Queensland government successfully introduced legislation requiring unions to give 24 hours' notice of workplace health and safety (WHS) inspections, and removing the power of WHS representatives to stop unsafe work (Queensland Government, 2014), citing 2012 events in the state’s construction industry (see Bailey and Peetz, 2013).

These events reinforced the continuing growth of employer unilateralism in the public sector, and employee resistance, highlighted in last year’s review (Bailey and Peetz, 2014: 423).

Unions in the courts and the tribunals

Unions covering low-paid service industries had mixed success with FWC Full Bench decisions regarding Modern Awards and low-paid authorisations. In retail, the SDA in March won an FWC case to pay adult rates to 20-year-old workers covered by the General Retail Award after six months with the employer.¹⁰ In September, the union defended a challenge to the decision by the National Retail Association.¹¹ In May, however, United Voice had a partial defeat on penalty rates in the Restaurant Industry Award, with Sunday penalties cut from 50% to 25% for casual workers at or below classification level 2,¹² a decision unsuccessfully appealed by the union.¹³ Penalty rates come under general scrutiny in 2015 as part of the Modern Award Review.¹⁴ In cleaning, the Federal Government rescinded IR guidelines for government cleaning contracts on the basis that ‘they give favourable treatment’ to the union, United Voice (Abetz, 2014). In security, United Voice in September failed to gain a low-paid authorisation to cover five private sector security companies in the ACT.¹⁵ This followed a successful application in 2011 for aged care employees, and an unsuccessful one in 2013 for nurses in private sector medical practices.

As in 2013, key developments in construction industrial relations were in courts and tribunals – and the Royal Commission (see later) – rather than on the job. There was extensive litigation over the CFMEU’s entry rights to building sites. Long-running events involving the Victorian Branch of the CFMEU culminated in the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission in November filing a claim against the union over its campaign regarding concrete giant Boral in Melbourne two years ago (McGrath, 2014). The alleged secondary boycott was part of a dispute between the CFMEU and the construction company Grocon that paralysed parts of the city (Bailey and Peetz, 2014: 423). In related action, the Victorian Criminal Court of Appeal upheld the union’s criminal contempt convictions in respect of 2012 events,¹⁶ with the CFMEU’s bid for special leave from the High Court to appeal the convictions – and related matters – to be heard in 2015.¹⁷ However, the Federal Court found that CFMEU organisers did not breach the former Howard Government’s repealed building industry legislation in 2011 by blocking a Grocon truck driver from delivering a crane to a Melbourne site, finding the blockade was not a ban or limitation on the driver's work, as required by the legislation to make a finding of unlawful conduct.¹⁸ The Fair Work Building and Construction Inspectorate continued to pursue penalties imposed in 2013 on CFMEU members for actions in 2008 at Woodside’s Burrup Peninsula project (Workplace Express, 2014f). A 2012 four-hour stoppage by Port Hedland tugboat crew employed by Teekay Shipping culminated in a December Federal Court decision reflecting an agreement between the MUA and BHP Billiton that the union would pay the company $1m if unlawful industrial action affects the resource company’s Port Hedland operations over the next six years.¹⁹

The year concluded with the Victorian County Court in December fining former Health Services Union (HSU) national secretary Craig Thompson $25,000 for 13 counts of theft (with many of his March convictions overturned on appeal, due to poor drafting by Crown prosecutors). A civil case related to the same events was expected to proceed early in 2015 (ABC, 2014h).

Unions’ ongoing but largely unheralded work – formal and informal – in enforcing minimum employment standards was highlighted by a Melbourne Law School report released in January (Landau et al., 2014). Main findings were that ‘non-compliance is persistent and widespread’ (Landau et al., 2014: 5) and that unions play a significant role in enforcing minimum standards – a role likely to be weakened with tougher right of entry laws.

Union campaigns

Campaigns in the low-paid area received a setback with removal of the former Federal ALP Government’s promised $1.2bn Aged Care Workforce Supplement which was to provide funding for equal pay measures (Mason, 2014). Hearings for the child care equal pay case (pushed by United Voice and the Australian Education Union) were held by the FWC in April (Fair Work Commission, 2014). However the Abbott government had withdrawn a promised subsidy that would have helped fund the increases (Bailey and Peetz, 2014). The FWC decision was still pending at year’s end. (For more on both matters, see Charlesworth and Macdonald, this issue.) Also in the community sector, unions were gearing up for discussions regarding the implementation of National Disability Insurance Scheme funding (Morton, 2014), as similar schemes in other countries – where people with disabilities are responsible for directly hiring their own staff – had led both to poorly regulated markets for labour, and disappointing outcomes for service users (Purcal and Fisher, 2014). Finally, unions gained cross-bench senators’ support to block the Abbott Government's moves to cap (at 16 weeks) payouts from the Fair Entitlements Guarantee to textile, clothing and footwear contract workers, in line with its proposals for all other workers (Hall 2014) – preventing a step backwards in the long history of obtaining industrial justice for such workers (see Burchielli et al., 2014).

Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) initiatives included applications to the FWC – as part of the four-yearly review of modern awards – to introduce casual conversion rights, and 10 days per annum of paid family and domestic violence leave (Patty, 2014). The latter was the latest move in a long-running campaign on the issue (see Baird et al., 2014). In the wake of the FWC decision to reduce some penalty rates in hospitality (mentioned earlier), the ACTU in June released a report on the misuse of individual flexibility arrangements (IFAs) – which in part highlighted the need to retain penalty rates, which the ACTU claimed employers were reducing or eliminating in some IFAs (ACTU, 2014a). The ACTU – in July – also introduced a ‘bargaining toolkit’ to help unions offset highly unpopular Federal budget measures (ACTU, 2014b), including delayed increases to superannuation. Work–life balance remained a key industrial issue, with a November speech by ACTU President Ged Kearney (Kearney, 2014) coinciding with the release of an Australia Institute report on the subject (Baker et al., 2014).

Union campaigning thus continued, but with much of it of a defensive nature in a new political economy particularly unsympathetic to the needs of the low-paid and vulnerable.

Twenty years of organising

The year 2014 marked the 20th anniversary of the establishment of the Organising Works program, aimed at up-and-coming organisers and the dissemination of organising techniques within the union movement. A symposium on Organising Works was held in Sydney in November 2014, attracting 140 attendees and providing an opportunity for appraisal of it and of the shift to a more organising-focused approach. If one message came from that event it was the difficulty of implementing change within unions – especially for Organising Works graduates placed within unions, but even for union leaders (some of whom are graduates of the program). The departure of national leaders from United Voice, a union at the forefront of the push to organising and political campaigning outside the confines of the union–ALP relationship, showed the difficulty faced by national leaders in driving change when most unions are still state-based, even when there is broad agreement on the merits of organising. The ACTU itself restructured its Organising Centre for the second time in a little over two years. To some, the emphasis within the ACTU on organising has waned since the success of the 2007 Your Rights at Work campaign, as the union movement returned to more traditional forms of politics in its dealings with the 2007–2013 ALP Federal Government. The trend data suggest this was eventually followed by a return to gradual decline in union membership, though this has yet to be fully confirmed. Whether the election of a conservative government brings about a return to prioritising union organising is yet to be determined.

The Royal Commission

The foreshadowed royal commission (Bailey and Peetz, 2014: 425) became a reality in January, with the establishment of the Royal Commission into Trade Union Governance and Corruption under former High Court Judge Hon. John Dyson Heydon. While five unions were specifically named in the terms of reference (the Health Services Union, the Transport Workers Union, the CFMEU, the Australian Workers Union and the Communication, Electrical and Plumbing Union), the Commission was able to enquire into the activities of any union. During 2014, the Commission conducted 57 public hearings involving more than 200 witnesses in Sydney, Melbourne, Perth and Brisbane. It released three ‘issues papers’ – on whistle-blower protection, the governance and financial management of unions, and funding of trade union elections (Royal Commission into Trade Union Governance and Corruption, 2014). In October, the Government announced – despite the explicit absence of such a request from the Commission itself – that the enquiry would be extended by 12 months, finishing in December 2015 (Wroe, 2014b). In one episode of many, a senior Victorian police witness withdrew claims that union officials were bikies, but the media, having focused sensationally on the claim, virtually ignored its withdrawal (Workplace Express, 2014g). An 1800-page interim report issued in December recommended several charges be laid against officials but, controversially, ignored allegations that a ‘star witness … may have stolen’ hundreds of thousands of dollars (Schneiders, 2014). Generating endless tabloid and broadsheet journalism, which in much of the public mind became fact rather than allegation, the instigation of the Commission could be seen as a ‘blame game’, creating a false sense of crisis and panic (see Wodak, 2006). ACTU assistant secretary Tim Lyons characterised the role of the Commission as ‘getting new ammunition to fight old battles’, pointing out that all conservative prime ministers since William McMahon had set up at least one Royal Commission into unions (Lyons, 2014).

Conclusion

Whatever the difficulties facing unions and members, in terms of wage increases it appeared that non-members were bearing the brunt of real wage stagnation, especially non-members not covered by union collective agreements. However, in a slowing economy and with a conservative Federal Government, life was also hard for union members and officials.

The year was dominated by media headlines generated by Royal Commission proceedings. The possibility of building on previous institutional developments became a lost opportunity with the new conservative Federal Government, although the election of an ALP government in Victoria in November shifted the political landscape a little. Unions continued to face issues of increasing non-standard work, wage inequality and other attacks on the social fabric which have significant implications for workers. As noted by Buchanan et al. (2014), ‘[t]he key challenge remains to identify the new contours of solidarity in the labour market and working life’ (p. 304). A central issue for the future is the extent of the Federal Government’s assault on trade union freedoms. Starting with their own workforce, they appear to be demonstrating a new militancy, perhaps seeking to model the kinds of actions they would like to see more widespread in workplaces.

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest.

Funding

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.

Notes

Author Biographies

Janis Bailey works in the Department of Employment Relations and Human Resources, Griffith University, Gold Coast, Australia and is a member of the university's Centre for Work, Organisation and Wellbeing. Her research interests include union strategy and campaigning, vulnerable workers including youth and women, and teaching and learning in business. She is currently working on projects on gender equity in universities, care unions, comparative strategies in retail unions, and workplace relations in hotels.

David Peetz is professor of employment relations at the Centre for Work, Organisation and Wellbeing at Griffith University. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia as well as the author of Unions in a Contrary World (1998) and Brave New Workplace (2006) and co-author of Women of the Coal Rushes (2010), in addition to numerous academic articles, papers and reports. Current research projects include gender equity, productivity, union networks, working arrangements in the resources sector, and finance and climate change.

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