The Australian Council of Trade Unions †MyAssignmenthelp.com

Question: Discuss about the Australian Council of Trade Unions. Answer: The Australian Council of Trade Unions, also known as ACTU is one of the largest bodies that represents the different kinds of workers working in different business organizations all over Australia. This kind of national trade union constitutes of 46 affiliated unions and 9 trade and labor councils that are responsible for managing the roles and responsibilities of workers all across Australia. The ACTU is also considered as one of the major members of the International Trade Union Confederation. The ACU currently holds a biennial congress that has been involving over 800 delegates from all over Australia (Aleinikoff Klusmeyer, 2013). A group of 60 members including the two vice presidents, secretary, assistant secretaries, Trade and Labor council representatives and other delegates appointed from the various affiliated trade unions has governed the ACTU. According to the constitution, the goals and objectives of the Australian Council of Trade Unions or ACTU are to socialize the industry, manage the wages and salaries of the employees working within the different Australian organizations, utilization of the resources for managing the full time employment opportunities, establishing the living standards and even deriving the best possible outcomes. The SACTU also aims to manage the workforce properly by creating better employment scopes and opportunities, furthermore develop a skilled and knowledgeable workforce to bring out the best from theirs and enhance the production level of the organizations too (Bach Bordogna, 2013). The focus of the ACTU is also to restore the rights and responsibilities of the workers according to the rules and regulations of the Your Rights at Work Campaign and maintain the health and safety of the workers too. This would also involve working with other trade unions and preserving the rights of humans; fur thermore launch effective services through which the workers could join the unions directly or indirectly. The ACTU also introduced new campaigns for maintaining the employment standards through proper maintenance of values and ethics and furthermore allowed various benefits to the employees working within the Australian organizations (Bamber et al., 2015). The campaigns launched by ACTU also helped in providing information about any casualties at work, insecurities at work and casual approaches undertaken by the employees within the workplace (Hodder et al., 2017). During the year of 1980 and 1990, the ACTU was influenced to combine the various smaller unions and create a super union, furthermore manage the organizations on an industrial basis. This not only created a combination of multiple unions, but also facilitated the development of relationships and created a better union coverage with ease and effectiveness. Trade Union membership also hit record low, which resulted in making just one of the nine private sector employees to choose where to belong within an union (Boxall, 2014). The huge dip resulted in the decline of union membership and it reached a level of 40 percent of the workforce. Data and information recorded from the Australian Bureau of Statistics provided information about the ranking of Unions that had dipped to more than 140,000 employees from over 1.7 million in the last 12 months at a rapid rate (Berg et al., 2013). The union membership among the public sector employees is 39 percent and it is much above 11 percent in the private sectors. The former assistant secretary of the ACTU Tim Lyons criticized the crisis condition and even said that there is immediate need to change the union movement otherwise it might soon be destroyed (Campos, Coricelli Moretti, 2014). The fall in trade union membership also created major challenges regarding the movement in Australia that not only resulted in union corruption, but also lead to the degradation of productivity of the business organizations along with various campaigns formation that reduced the penalty rates. The Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, on the other hand, stated that the trade unions created a huge impact on the Labor Party by creating dominance in certain areas and even created huge numbers of issues related to the labor conditions and labor market in within the Australian employment sector (Cregan, 2013). The number of people working as a group within the Trade Unions is part of the private sector and often their opinions and responses were left unconsidered, which even created issues related to the consideration of labor policies and procedures (Wilson et al., 2013). According to the ABS data, it was found that most of the employees within the organizations of Australia did n ot consider the union membership, because of which, the future of work was not understood properly and their development needs were not considered as well, which was a major problem too. Most of the members of the union members were from the sectors of health, education, public safety, manufacturing, transportation and warehousing, construction and retail sectors (Donaghey et al., 2014). According to me, I believe that trade unions had created some major positive impacts by remaining less aggressive during the process of bargaining of wages and salaries of the employees. The trade unions also created micro outcomes by influencing the voice of workers and allowed them to make their own opinions and responses. The trade unions could also facilitate the contracting where the long-term relationships should be formed and there would be mutual trust and loyalty between the employer and the staffs working within the business organizations in Australia (Ellem, 2013). The trade unions have also reduced the discrimination and inequality in terms of wages distribution for the male and female workers. Though there were several benefits, there had been few major drawbacks as well including the bad monopoly power, which resulted in lack of allocating the resources properly. The pro-productive union effects were totally fake and there were not much alternatives to overcome certain issues, due to which it was considered as a major con (Cheng, Wang Chen, 2014). The Governance procedures were not including the Union regimes and procedures, which further deteriorated the designing and reduced the potential performances of the employees, thereby leading to lesser organizational production and profit level (Kersley et al., 2013). Due to the trade union membership hitting a record low, it created no such impact at present on reducing the wages inequality and even did not support the redistributive policies and procedures. The union density fell in most of the countries during the last 20 years and thus the convergence level was low, which resulted in huge decline in the unionism. The sustained decline in union membership further resulted in lack of union power. While evaluating the macro economic effects of the union membership, it was found that the union membership, union coverage and structure of bargaining differ in terms of various aspects (Lakhani, Kuruvilla Avgar, 2013). Based on certain data and information obtained, it was found that the union density and union coverage were related to the adverse effects created based on the results of bargaining structure and coordination. The countries possessing coordinated bargaining structure also faced issues like lower equilibrium unemployment rate and the fitted relation as also too linear. The reduction in union membership density also created severe effects by creating a decline in the equalizing effects of unions for the male staffs all over the world, though it created very little effects on the female staffs (Preston, 2018). According to Sally McManus, the Government that focused on the rise in inequality should support the union movement and utilize the scopes and opportunities to work on the opposite side of the organizations that already possessed maximum power. The Government had managed the approaches to replace the unionized jobs and even the off shoring activities including the decline in Australian car industry and the replacement of jobs with the workers possessing visas who have been earning $2 on a per hour basis (Cross Gauja, 2014). Due to the huge dip in union membership, the union members fought against them to ensure that the penalty rates were reduced largely for the employees within the different industries. Based on the responses provided by Club Australia, they clearly showed their discontent regarding the higher penalty rates within the club industry than the hospitality industry (Pries Seeliger, 2013). There could be different effects of managing a higher penalty rate for the club industry including the possibility of higher costs and the contracting out of services provided to the employers under low cost structures. Under the New protection act, the unions could not survive and even failed to retain the registration regarding the campaign for membership. Due to this, some of the employers were opposed to increase the wages of the employees and improve the working conditions. With the growth in union density, , the workers did not have any reasons to not join the union membership (Price, Bailey Pyman, 2014). After the amendments of the Industrial relations Act followed by the Workplace Relations Act, the state support for unions were withdrawn, which resulted in making many of the union members termed as irrelevant and unnecessary actors in Australian Employment Relations (Schnabel, 2013). However, there is enough potential to regain the previous condition and increase the Union Solidarity for contributing to the development of the active society, still it had been hindered due to the market related politics. I personally think that the union movement itself could create challenges to create Uni on Solidarity and cerate failure in understanding the actual potential. Working outside the main stream of the union organizations in Australia could also allow this movement to handle the ways by which the unions are organized, furthermore identify who to organize and when to do so in the future (Van Wanrooy et al., 2013). Recommendation: It is recommended to ensure that the labor market experiences are the priority focus. The redesigning of the internal structures should be done for allowing the trade unions to address the present status and structures of the representation. It is also recommended to undertake a decisive union action for promoting the principles of solidarity. The roles and responsibilities of the unions must be clearly presented to the young individuals for discussing the problems and support unionization. The trade union strategies should be implemented for recruiting the new groups of workers who could overcome the problems faced. Based on the changes that had been brought through neo-liberalism for the workers, the unions must change the entire structure of the organization and even the operational strategies to facilitate the growth and development in the future. The essay included the various essential aspects of how the community unionism approach could meet the challenges faced within the employment industry. The challenges though were not overcome fully, still could be integrated with the community unionism based on the structure and culture of the organizations. After analyzing the various aspects presented in the essay, it could be understood that the Unions had become an irrelevant actor in Australian Employment Relations. References Aleinikoff, T. A., Klusmeyer, D. (Eds.). (2013).From migrants to citizens: Membership in a changing world. Brookings Institution Press. 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