Unions and collective bargaining in Australia in 2016

In 2016, Australian unions faced a mix of new and enduring challenges. A re-elected Conservative federal government made life difficult for unions, maintaining its hard-line approach to public sector bargaining and passing new laws to intensify regulatory scrutiny of union governance and tactics. Unions continued to secure wage premiums through enterprise bargaining, but the longer-term decline in the level of agreement-making and the number of workers covered by enterprise agreements continued. Disputation rose, although less than half of all disputes were caused by enterprise bargaining. Concern over ongoing membership decline saw unions explore and experiment with organisational reforms and initiatives as new, ‘union-like’ actors entered the field. However, our analysis of longer-term membership developments across union types suggests the outlook is alarming for all but those unions focused on occupational identity.

Collective Bargaining in the Public Sector : Prince Edward Island

The author reports on Prince Edward Island's attempt to solve some of the key issues of public sector bargaining through Us recent collective bargaining regulations for teachers and the public service.

Public Sector Bargaining

There is general agreement that public sector bargaining has evolved through three stages: the expansionary years (mid-1960s to1982), the restraint years (1982-1990) and the retrenchment years (1990s). This paper argues that public sector collective bargaining entered a new stage of development around 1998. The post-retrenchment period or what is referred to as the consolidation stage was marked by economic expansion, the restoration of fiscal stability among the senior levels of government and increases in public employment. Under these conditions, governments and public sector employers sought to consolidate the gains they achieved during the retrenchment years through legislation and hard bargaining. Public sector unions attempted to improve their position by increasing membership and negotiating catch-up wage settlements. Based on a review of selected collective bargaining indicators, employers appear to have consolidated their gains from the retrenchment years.

Sexual Orientation Provisions in Canadian Collective Agreements

The past decade has been marked by increased awareness concerning employment discrimination against gays and lesbians. Yet, to the author’s knowledge, there has been limited research regarding the response of Canadian labour organizations to the workplace needs of gay and lesbian members. Limitations of these previous studies include small sample size, lack of theoretical framework, and the absence of empirical testing of hypotheses. The present study builds on these works through the use of Craig’s model, the inclusion of multi-disciplinary research, and the empirical testing of data collected from more than 240 Canadian collective agreements. Key findings include that larger, public sector bargaining units with equality clauses in their collective agreements were most likely also to contain clauses that prohibited discrimination based on sexual orientation. The paper concludes with suggestions for future research.