Trade Union Decline and Union Wage Effects in Australia

Union density in Australia fell precipitously in the 1990s. This study investigates how union wage effects may have changed as a result. The findings from 1993 data suggest that union/nonunion wage differentials were very small, especially among workers in high-density industries. By 2001 the overall union wage effect had increased significantly; however, the union/nonunion wage differential was no longer correlated with union density at the industry level.     

Union Decline in Britain

This paper considers the rapid decline in unionization that has occurred in Britain since the late 1970s. The overwhelming factor underpinning falling unionization was a failure to organize new establishments set up in the last twenty years or so, thus confirming that developments since 1990 represent a continuation of the pattern revealed in earlier work for the 1980–90 period. The sharpest falls in unionization occurred in private manufacturing establishments set up after 1980. Finally, there is some evidence that it is age of workplace, rather than age of worker, that is the critical age‐based factor behind union decline.     

Union Growth in Malaysia and Singapore

This paper examines the determinants of trade union membership growth in Malaysia and Singapore for the period 1965–1983 and finds that the standard Western-based aggregate model of trade union growth applies to these countries. However, regression results suggest that the model's key variables have differential effects in the two countries.     

Determinants of Trade Union Membership in Australia

This paper uses Australian cross-sectional data to examine the determinants of individual union membership. It analyses the separate effect of three groups of variables on the probability of unionisation: personal attributes, occupational and industry-related characteristics, and social and attitudinal factors. While the personal attributes of an employee were found to have little effect on union status, the other two groups of variables added significantly to the explained variance in union membership. An important finding of the study was that certain attitudes, ideologies and social values were clearly associated with variations in union status.     

Trade Union Mergers in British and Australian Television Broadcasting

A complex set of forces facing trade union organizations has meant that union restructuring vis-à-vis merger activity has been a prominent feature of many Western labour movements in the 1980s and 1990s. This paper is located in these structural developments, and its main contribution lies in the insights provided by an in-depth examination of recent union merger activity in commercial television in the UK and Australia. In contrast to the work of Undy et al . (1981), the results suggest that union mergers are influenced by more than changes in membership patterns, and that the delineation of merger categories may be far more complex than what has previously been identified by their model. It is argued, too, that the nature of the forces and the processes that led to the broadcasting union mergers in the UK and Australia were significantly influenced by the different institutional contexts of both countries. Finally, and related to this, it would appear that union merger outcomes (at least in the short term) are linked to the preceding processes by which merger is brought about. One policy implication of this is that anything other than a case-by-case evaluation of union mergers may be misleading.     

Strategy and Trade Union Effectiveness in a Neo-liberal Environment

In the absence of state sponsorship, unions must become more effective in the workplace or suffer the inevitable consequences. The analysis of union strategy and effectiveness, however, presents special difficulties. We adopt a strategic choice perspective, defining strategy as a framework of critical, enacted choices about the ends and means of an organization. For unions in a neo-liberal context, this means that strategy can be described in terms of the nexus between two complex dimensions: union-worker relations and union-employer relations. On this basis, we identify four broad patterns of union strategic choice in the New Zealand environment: classic, paper tiger, consultancy, and partnership unionism. Those patterns in which union-worker relations rely on 'servicing' are seen as fatally flawed at worst, and strategically vulnerable at best. On the other hand, those patterns in which union-worker relations are more securely based on servicing complemented with robust forms of organization also contain strategic tensions. These must be managed carefully if unions are to become more effective. While illustrated with New Zealand case studies, this framework provides lines of analysis for the strategic review of unions in neo-liberal contexts more generally.     

The New Generation of Trade Union Leaders and Prospects for Union Revitalization

The year 2003 was widely perceived as the year of the ‘awkward squad’— a group of recently elected union leaders more prepared than their predecessors to challenge New Labour. It was also a year in which unions were perceived to have experienced the beginnings of a recovery. In this review I argue that both of these perceptions are misplaced. The new generation of union leaders are a more disparate bunch than the ‘awkward squad’ label implies. The unions they lead remain seriously weakened by a harsh and inhospitable environment. Union recovery is unlikely unless the environment changes or the new union leaders can succeed against the odds in changing the environment through political activity.     

Trade Union Presence and Employer-Provided Training in Great Britain

Using linked employer-employee data from the British 1998 Workplace Employee Relations Survey, we find a positive correlation between workplace union recognition and private-sector employer-provided training. We explore the avenues through which union recognition might affect training by interacting recognition with the closed shop, the level at which pay bargaining takes place, and multiunionism. For non-manual-labor men and women, only union recognition matters. The various types of collective-bargaining institutions have no separate effect. However, the male manual training probability is significantly increased by union presence only through multiple unionism with joint negotiation. In contrast, for women manual workers, union recognition at the workplace has no effect on the training probability.     

British Trade Unions and Economic and Monetary Union

British labor movement attitudes toward European integration and,most recently, toward participation in economic and monetary union (EMU) have evolved from hostility to firm support. This article analyzes the contradictions in the trade union desire for a European social model (ESM) within a neoliberal EMU framework and indicates the need for a modification of the current trade union strategy.     

Influences on Trade Union Organizing Effectiveness in Britain

Do British trade unions vary in their effectiveness in maintaining organization and membership in workplaces where they have an established bargaining presence? Do highly developed national union recruitment strategies and innovation in recruitment strategy boost consolidatory organizing and recruitment effectiveness (CORE)? Results suggest that (1) there is some variation in internal organising effectiveness between unions, and (2) national union innovation in recruitment policy is positively associated with internal organizing effectiveness where unions organize blue‐collar workers, but negatively associated with internal organizing effectiveness where unions organize white‐collar workers.     

Women, Power and Trade Union Government in the UK

This paper addresses the under-explored relationship between women's structures and union democracy and argues that women's structural progress is mediated by an enduring gendered oligarchy and an associated struggle to access power resources. It provides, first, an analysis over time of women's structures in UK unions, and second, a case-study analysis of the Manufacturing, Science and Finance (MSF) trade union. The analysis over time demonstrates women's progress in achieving positional power, but conceals the complexity of the way different resources are used to constrain and enable women trade unionists.