Labor Unions In Australia

According to Webb and Webb (1898) has defined unions are as the primary mechanism that represents employees for the purpose of economic function including maintaining and improving wages and the condition of employees’ working lives. Moreover, unions involve various functions, such as democratic function, integrative function and social democratic function between the industrial relations traditions and at the workplace today. In Australia, workers has begun to establish unions in the 1830s and expanded with the growth of the industrial sectors. However, for the last two decades, the proportion of trade union membership among young graduate workers has been decreasing (Benson, 2000; Benson & Brown, 2010; Pyman, Teicher, Cooper & Holland, 2015;

Oliver, 2010). There are some fundamental reasons why union density continues to decline, namely the significant increase of direct communications between individual employees and their employer (Waring, 1999), some management activities served as a collective form of employee voice (Dundon, Wikinson, Marchington & Ackers, 2004) and higher expectations of voice from union members (Peetz, 1998). On the contrary, Benson (2000) states that employees are able to gain collective representation involving the ability of unions to combine member’s concerns and preferences to management. These concerns can be classified into three commonly reason models, such as the instrumental model, the utility model, the ideological model and normative model (Mcphail, Jerrard & Southcombe, 2015). To deeply understand the role of unions in the employment relationship, this essay critically evaluates the reasons why university graduates should join a union when they get their first real job. Firstly, the essay presents three main advantages of joining a union, such as defending job security, accessing to industrial advice and representation, as well as maintaining and improving working conditions. Then, the essay continues analysing two fundamental reasons why young people should not join a union because of inflexibility in working environment and job cuts.
Firstly, unions play a crucial role in defending job security. According to Lindbeck & Snower (as cited in Davidsson, Emmenegger, 2013, p.340) state unions act as defenders of the employees’ interests and protect their members against employer demands while ignoring the interests of non-members. As a result, non-member employees are able to be fired for any discriminatory reasons, such as race, gender, religion, age and marital status while workers with union jobs have rights to say in things that affect their working life, like safety and health, overtime, wages and their rights in the job (Benson & Brown, 2010). Particularly, unionised employees are more likely to benefit from social insurance programs including unemployment insurance and workers compensation as well as other programs, like overtime pay, the treatment of immigrant workers and civil rights. To pay attention on high levels of protection for workers, unions mainly use strict job security legislation. As Emmenegger & Patrick (2015) point out that job security regulations create long-term relationship as well as investment in specific skills, establish firms’ production strategies and conduct to economic success by supporting both employees and employers. Therefore, even unions have lost their employees and strength in for last two decades (Visser, 2009), they still continue to perform its key role as a job security defenders.
Secondly, when problems sometimes arise in the workplace between employers and employees, unions can represent workers by accessing to industrial advice and representation, especially assisting workers to negotiate with the employer.

As Bryson & Freeman (2007) found that “unionised workers reported more problems with management” than non-union workers (p. 84). As the result, labour unions allow the voices of individual employee to be heard and become concerns to the union’s attention. In Australia, the Federal Government and conservative state government target public sector unions which had risen from 41.9% in 2008 to 46.3% in 2009 in the quantity of the memberships and more focus on collective bargaining (Bailey & Peetz, 2015; Brigden & Cathy, 2012). Unions has concentrated on the pattern of collective bargaining with major job in the federal public service, airlines, on the waterfront and in coal mining (Brigden & Cathy, 2012). For example, the most significant dispute in 2011 was seen in Quatas. The issue of the offshoring of engineers’ work and the loss of Australian jobs were the two main negotiation problems by the time. As a result, the problems involved three sets of organization negotiations including two of these negotiations are between Quatas and ALAEA (Australian Licensed Aircraft Engineers Association) as well as AIPA (the Australian and International Pilots Association) in August 2010 and another one is between Quatas and TWU (Transport Workers Union) in

2011. After all, the agreement between Quatas management and the unions had been reached with protection of existing job security provisions. To conclude, unions effectively confront the accessing to industrial advice and representation for their members in the workplace.
According to Crouch (as cited in Benson & Brown, 2010) states unions are able to maintain and improve working conditions of unionised members as one of the fundamental roles that they aim to achieve. This is also another advantage of unions that this essay mentions about. Unions actively deal with discrimination and promote equal opportunities at workplace. This helps to make workplace more attractive to employees by improving the relationship between staffs and the organization, productivity as well as reducing management time spent for negotiating. In addition, unions ensure your rights at work are protected in relation to health and safety. They follow the commitment of ensuring all members are protected and given right equipment resources to avoid possible injures, which in turn promote flexibility and productivity. Furthermore, Webb and Webb (1897) conclude unions have been able to provide a wage premium that are able to support workers in developing their living standard. They assist in making sure employees get paid the correct salary as well as any entitlements, such as pay leave, penalty rates and loadings. In fact, unions are positive forces that closely working with millions of members to achieve strength and energy of their members in the economy.
However, there is a reason why young people should not join in a union because of inflexibility. As Bryson & Freeman (2007) found, ‘unionised workers reported more problems with management’ than non-union workers. Therefore, if workers go on strike and work unproductively, it can lead to lost sales and output, raise the organization’s cost of maintaining the business’s operation as well as the organization may go out of their business and its profitability. Besides that, since unions specify in too much detail what each worker do and cannot do, it decreases the flexibility of the negotiation between employees and employers about wages, benefits and others. Especially with the higher living standard of today, employees often prefer more vacation time, more wages and other benefits, when unions protect workers by focusing on what their members need and want, they accidentally create more conflicts between employees and employers. They also must know all of employees have different situations, different motivations and different needs and wants, they are not able to apply a one-size-fits all employment situations. As Bryson, Gomez, Gunderson and Meltz (2005) note that union membership shares many differences in demand that lead to high switching costs to satisfy their desires. To conclude, unions lead to less flexibility in arrangements in employment relation of employees in the workplace environment.
Another reason against young employees to join in unions is unions may lead to losing job opportunities.

They make the labour markets less competitive between non-unionized members and unionized members. If labour markets are more competitive, higher wages will cause unemployment. Because organizations become harder to achieve higher production cost when wages go to above equilibrium level. Moreover, among collective bargaining agreements, employers are required to dismiss the most recent employees first and the seniority last. It is sometimes called “last hired, first hired”. Therefore, employees who have more seniority may gain more advantages for job opportunities while junior workers face temporary or permanent layoff. That issue creates unfair job motivation since decisions are determined by the seniority-based layoff system. The system may conflicts with the promotion of equality and encouraging diversity in the workplace. For example, as previous research provided by the Workplace Information Directorate of Human Resource Development Canada (HRDC), almost 70 percent of Canadian collective agreements mention seniority as a principle for the allocation of layoffs (Singh & Reid, 1998). As a result, seniority could be a potential source of discrimination in human resource

management.
In conclusion, unions represent employees by involving in different functions of the employment relation. They mainly act as defenders who protect their members’ interest, maintain and improve the condition of employee’s working lives. There are many arguments about young employees should either join in unions or not. This essay critically analyses some reasons why university graduates should join a union before they get their first real job. At first, there are three positive reasons as the main union advantages, such as defending job security, accessing to industrial advice and representation, as well as maintaining and improving working conditions. Then, the essay focuses on two negative reasons, namely inflexibility in working environment and job cuts. Therefore, deeply understand the advantages and disadvantages of joining unions helps university graduates sketch the whole picture of their future career and easily success in the employment relationship at the workplace