Union membership hits record low

Union membership across the workforce has fallen to a record low.

Employment Minister Michaelia Cash (centre): “the union movement has moved away from its core business”. Photo: AAP

Union membership across the workforce has fallen to a record low, with fewer than one in 10 private-sector workers now belonging to a union. Private-sector union membership fell from 11.1 per cent to 9.3 per cent across two years, while public-sector membership declined slightly to 38 per cent, the latest Australian Bureau of Statistics data revealed.

Just 4 per cent of employees aged 15 to 19, and 7 per cent of workers aged 20 to 24 were union members in their main job in August last year. A slim majority — 51 per cent — of 1.5 million union members were female, while 20 per cent of professionals were members, the highest proportion of any grouping.

Employment Minister Michaelia Cash said the figures showed “more Australians than ever” had chosen not to be union members.

“This has coincided with the union movement moving away from its core business of representing workers and instead acting as a political movement that is more concerned with partisan campaigning,’’ Senator Cash said.

“Most Australian workers are unlikely to feel attracted to a movement whose leadership thinks it is acceptable to break the law and which engages in constant political games on behalf of the Labor Party.”

But ACTU secretary Sally McManus attacked the Turnbull government for constantly seeking to undermine the union movement.

ACTU Secretary Sally McManus. Photo: AAP

“A government that cared about growing inequality would be supporting their union movement,’’ she said. “Instead the Turnbull government uses every opportunity to do the opposite and to side with corporations who already have too much power.

“This has gone too far. We will be leading a movement to swing the pendulum back and an essential part of this will be a growing union movement.”

Ms McManus said the government had “overseen the offshoring and replacing of unionised jobs, such as the demise of the whole Australian car industry and the replacing of jobs with workers on visas earning $2 an hour in seafaring”.

The membership fall came as unions vowed to fight attempts by employers to extend recent cuts in penalty rates to almost 100,000 employees of licensed clubs.

Clubs Australia previously failed to convince the Fair Work Commission to cut the weekend and public holiday penalty rates of industry employees.

However, the commission left open the option of revoking the clubs award and transferring coverage of the employees to the hospitality award.

In a submission to the commission this week, Clubs Australia said it favoured the option as it did not believe employers in the club industry should pay higher penalty rates than those in the hospitality industry. It said there were two possible consequences of maintaining higher penalty rates in the club industry: more casuals to offset possible higher costs and the contracting out of services to employers operating under lower cost structures.

United Voice’s Joanne Schofield said it was “inconceivable” Clubs Australia, having failed in its original case, should be given another opportunity to pursue penalty rate cuts.