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The changing face of the union movement
They say that rock music was born in the 1950s, then grew up in the 1970s.
For myself, I have some reservations about disco being any sort of justification of musical art.
Then again, at least the 1970s brought with them Glam Rock.
Attributed mainly to the brilliance of David Bowie (and others) Glam Rock was a way of sort of dressing up music - by adding glitter and lipstick. There was no actual change to the music: just its mode of presentation.
At least in my view, the same could be said of the present Government’s most recent attempts to effect change to our employment legislation. Sure, there has been change - but is it more than glitter and lipstick?
When the Employment Relations Act was introduced in 2000, one of its principal objectives was to encourage collective bargaining. Put simply, the Government took the view that unions did not enjoy enough significance in the labour market - and wanted to promote their interests.
But did the legislation achieve that goal?
One way of assessing these achievements is by an analysis of statistics. In this context, we are greatly assisted by the fact that a group of academics from Victoria University conduct an annual survey of union membership in New Zealand.
The Industrial Relations Centre publishes an annual review of unions in New Zealand - and has just released its survey results for 2003. The survey, which has been conducted for 14 years, discloses some interesting facts.
First, the number of unions in New Zealand has more than doubled since the introduction of the Employment Relations Act. There are now 181 registered unions in New Zealand.
At the same time, however, there has only been a comparatively modest increase in the total number of unionised employees - an increase from approximately 300,000 in 1999 to approximately 340,000 in 2003.
So what does this mean? It means that the number of small unions has grown significantly under the new legislation. We are now witnessing a trend whereby small groups of workers (of as little as 15 members) establish unions - often particularly for a specific workplace (as opposed to an industry wide organisation).
Having said that, however, the large unions (with more than 10,000 members) still account for 70% of all union membership.
And of those unions, the majority of the significant ones are affiliated to the CTU. In fact, CTU affiliates comprise 87% of total union membership in New Zealand.
So the really big unions are still really significant.
They may, however, be significant in different industries than in the past. For example, there is a noticeable decline in union membership in the manufacturing industry - traditionally a mainstay for unions. At the same time, there are discernable increases in membership in the education, retail, transport and construction sectors.
Overall, union members are still most significant in the public sector - with 22% of all unionised workers being employed in the education sector.
So what does this all mean?
Well, it could be said that if the Government had a stated aim of increasing union membership - and the significance of collective agreements - its success is mild. There has only been a moderate increase in union membership over the course of the last four years - and we have nothing like the 500,000 unionised employees that we did in 1991.
There may be a variety of different reasons for this outcome. Amongst them, for example, it may be that the inability for unions to demand exclusive deals for workplaces or industries (such as the award system in Australia) has led to an increased problem of free-riding. The amending legislation which will be introduced in December of this year may go some length to put pay to that.
Another explanation may simply be that the age of traditional unionism is over - and in this Glam-Rock era, the union movement is entering a different phase. Unions may still be significant - but not on the large, industry-wide scale that they were in the past. Small unions - representing constrained collective environments - may be the sign of things to come.
Even the most ardent detractors of David Bowie would have to admit that, 35 years on, it is pretty hard to deny his significance. For goodness sakes, he's still around making music (albeit perhaps of a lesser quality of that in his earlier years).
Perhaps history will view unionism in the same way. A phenomenon that does not go away, but simply ch-ch-changes over time.
