Trade Unionism in Australia: A History from Flood to Ebb Tide

Thomas Bramble

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Labor Movements and Unions Employment, Labor, and Gender Studies Legal and Labor Studies

Abstract

In the late 1960s Australian unionism was on the flood tide: growing in strength, industrially confident and capable of shaping the overall political climate of the nation. Forty years on, union membership and power is ebbing away despite community support for trade unionism and the continuing need for strong unions. Even the unprecedented mobilisation against WorkChoices, which defeated a government and lost the prime minister his own seat, has done little to turn the tide. With compelling rigour, Tom Bramble explores the changing fortunes of what was once an entrenched institution. Trade Unionism in Australia charts the impact on unions of waves of economic restructuring, a succession of hostile governments and a wholesale shift in employer attitudes, as well as the failure of the unions' own efforts to boost membership and consolidate power. Indeed, Bramble demonstrates how the tactics employed by unions since the early 1980s may have paradoxically contributed to their decline.

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References

1982Australian Industrial Relations.1991The Accord and the Australian Labour Movement 1990Australian Industrial Relations in the 1980s 1945The Economic Development of Australia 2003The Organizing Model and the Management of Change 2001Australian Exceptionalism: The Role of Trade Unions in the Emergence of Enterprise Bargaining 2003New Unionism in the Old Economy: Community and Collectivism in the Pilbara’s Mining Towns 1980Unions and Unionists in Australia.

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2015Unions and the organising turn: Reflections after 20 years of Organising Works 2010Not Dead Yet: The Australian Union Movement and the Defeat of a Government 2010The Ties that Unwind? Social Democratic Parties and Unions in Australia and Britain 2020The spaces of Australian capitalism: Making “place” out of “space” in The Unknown Industrial Prisoner 2015Evaluating the organising model of trade unionism: An Australian perspective

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