The Puzzle of Australian union decline

In the last 15 years, unionization rates in Australia dropped from more than 50 % of the employed labor force to less than 40%-the lowest level of union organization since the 1930s. In contrast to western European trends, Australian unions declined while collective bargaining became more centralized and the Labor Party enjoyed unprecedented electoral success. Changes in the industrial or occupational structure account for little of the union decline. Analysis of social survey data suggests that narrowing differences in union-ization across occupations and sectors accompany shrinking membership. Results also show that the gap in union organizing is growing between the young and middle-aged and workers in small and large firms. These develop-ments are interpreted in the light of shifting institutional, work, and market conditions in the Australian economy. In the last 15 years, unionization in Australia dropped by over ten percent-age points. Labor force surveys show that in 1976 more than half of all Australian employees were union members. By 1992, just less than 40 % of Australian workers were in unions, the lowest level since the 1930s (see Bain and Price 1980: 123). Even the more optimistic figures reported by the unions themselves-which include retired, unemployed, and nonfinancial members-show a decline from the mid 1970s (Visser 1991: 101). This trend is consistent with a widespread tendency to union decline throughout the advanced capitalist countries. Only two countries in the OECD-Sweden and Finland-did not record union membership losses in the 1980s (Western 1995). Despite the ubiquity of labor decline, the Australian pattern poses a puzzle. In other countries, falling unionization is strongly associated with changes in labor market and state institutions. Unions typically shrunk where social democratic governments were kept out of office and where collective bargaining became more decentralized. Thus the precipitous decline of British union density is rooted in Conservative Party electoral success and the emergence of single-tiered enterprise bargaining (Freema