Union membership and workers’ struggle

Written by: Ned K. on 14 December 2024

The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) has just released a report on the percentage of workers in Australia who are members of a Union in August 2024.

The Report said that 13.1% of workers were members of a Union in August 2024 compared with 12.5% of workers in August 2022. The increase in membership was due to an increase in public sector union members. 

Union membership in the private (non-government workers) sector actually declined from 8% to 7.9%.

The ABS report says that from 1992 to 2024, union membership has fallen from 40% of all workers to 13.1% of all workers. 

Union membership from 1992 to 2024 fell from 43% to 12% for men and from 35% to 14% for women.

The ABS report has a lot of detail in it, including duration of union membership with 66% of union members in August 2024 having been members for longer than 5 years.

The ABS report gives the appearance that the working class has "gone to sleep" as far as collective struggle is concerned, especially workers in the private sector.

This is not the case at all. The report does not explain that 1992 was about the time that big corporate interests, especially multinational corporations succeeded in having the then Labor Government, supported by the ACTU, introduce single site enterprise agreements as being in the best interests of workers. Initially these site-specific enterprise agreements could only be negotiated between an employer and Unions. Then the Labor Government allowed non- Union enterprise agreements. 

The new laws divided workers and more conservative governments made further attacks on workers’ collective strength with the Howard Government introducing individual contracts (AWAs) in an attempt to turn all Australian workers in to Howard's vision of millions of individual "enterprising workers" negotiating their own pay and conditions "free" of interference from "third party" Unions.

The ABS latest report on Union Membership would appear to suggest that the multinationals and the likes of the Business Council of Australia had won the class war.

However, the ABS figures hide the magnificent struggles of the working class since 1992 right up to December 2024.

It was the working class, some in Unions, some not, who took to the streets and barricades in support of the Maritime Union of Australia members struggle against Patricks' stevedores and the Howard Government. The ABS figures do not tell the story of the working class organizing Your Rights At Work, Worth Fighting For and throwing the Howard Government out of office in 2007.

More recently, the ABS figures do not show the breakthrough by early childhood education workers in winning a 15% pay rise through a collective agreement covering multiple employers across the early childhood education sector. This was the very reversal of that 1992 non-Union site by site enterprise bargaining.

The ABS figures do not show the tremendous struggle by the whole aged care sector workforce from registered nurses to carers to kitchen workers and chefs to collectively win a 25% wage increase and improved working conditions and staffing levels.

Finally, the ABS figures do not show that despite the decline to 7.9% membership density in the private sector, private sector workers employed in Woolworths dared to struggle and strike for over two weeks to prevent Woolworths from using artificial intelligence devices to increase surplus value from workers every second of their shifts.

Unions are part of the capitalist system as the system is based on a class war between the owners of capital and the workers who produce the wealth of goods and services. Every collective win by workers strengthens the power of the working class as a whole and gives more workers a taste for the decisive struggles that lie ahead

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