It is undeniable that Tasmanian unions’ bargaining power has dramatically weakened since the 1970s.
This is due to a variety of factors, including the changing nature of traditionally union-strong industries such as manufacturing, mining and forestry. As jobs disappeared, or became casualised, so too did militant unionism.
The big employers in the state are in the healthcare and social welfare sectors. These together with agriculture, forestry, fishing, construction and tourism account for more than half of the state’s total employment.
However, union coverage remains small, largely because these industries are based on casual, seasonal and contract-based jobs —which undermines collective organising.
Jessica Munday, Secretary of Unions Tasmania, the peak body representing trade unions, told Green Left that while Tasmania retains the highest union density in the country, the rate has declined markedly since its peak in the 1970s.
“We’ve seen the growth of industries without a strong culture of unionism, the privatisation of sectors like aged care and disability services, and the shift towards individualised employment arrangements,” Munday said. These changes, she argues, have gone hand-in-hand with the rise of insecure work, “which not only undermines job security but also the shared workplace cultures that once made collective action possible”.
Robbie Moore, Health and Community Services Union (HACSU) Assistant State Secretary, told GL the structural shift in the state’s economy is a major factor in diminishing union density.
“The decline in big manufacturing industries and the emergence of new industries without a culture of collective organising has been a big part of it,” he said. “The move to individual workplace bargaining has not worked. Why should workers doing the same job be paid differently just because they work for the shop next door?”
Moore highlighted the disastrous impact of privatisation, particularly in aged care and disability services which, he said, have been “almost wholly privatised since the 1970s”, leading to poorer working conditions and worse outcomes for residents and clients.
He noted that private and even not-for-profit operators often pay consultants “lots of money to stop unions”.
Despite these challenges, Moore said HACSU has grown by more than 4000 members in the past 5-6 years through targeted campaigning, winning significant pay rises for aged care workers, tackling insecure work under the National Disability Insurance Scheme and securing market allowances for allied health professionals where staffing shortages were acute.
He stressed that unions remain “as important today as they have ever been”, particularly in the face of disruptions, including artificial intelligence.
While the decline in union memberships happened gradually, it reached crunch time under the John Howard Coalition government, which weakened unions through laws, particularly Work Choices, which targeted unions for taking collective action and waging industrial campaigns. The Coalition’s goal, to shift power away from unions and toward the individual worker and individual employer was, to some extent, successful.
The key anti-worker law which codified this was the Workplace Relations Act 1996. This, and subsequent laws limiting workers’ right to strike and take other forms of collective industrial action, weakened unions’ ability to fight back.
It was coupled with a decrease in the scope of legally-binding agreements that protect workers’ rights and conditions, making it easier for employers to terminate employees.
Alongside the dismantling of entire workplace networks, the loss of union delegates and members, Work Choices normalised individual contracts, discouraged collective agreements and empowered bosses to sideline unions.
Labor, in government, only repealed part of the anti-worker laws in 2009.The ABCC was abolished by the Julia Gillard government in 2012, but WorkChoices was replaced by the Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Act 2009 which established the Fair Work Building Commission. This provided the skeleton for which the Malcolm Turnbull Coalition government extended state intervention into union affairs.
By the time of the Fair Work Act 2009, unions’ bases had already shrunk and this, along with smaller financial base and fewer workplace representatives, made collective organising more difficult.
While industries across the state expand, their workforces are increasingly isolated, fragmented, insecure and shaped by decades of union busting policies at a federal level.
The challenges for union leaderships include how to rebuild a sense of shared purpose across dispersed workplaces, offering not only protection, but also the hope and collective agency that Munday and Moore see as essential.
“It’s about giving people hope that by acting together they can make change,” Munday said. “People are often angry, but without hope, action doesn’t happen.”