Union membership in Western Australia has continued to decline, falling to a record low of 16 per cent in August last year, according to figures released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics last week.
Union membership in Western Australia has continued to decline, falling to a record low of 16 per cent in August last year, according to figures released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics last week.
The data showed trade union membership fell by 10.5 per cent in WA in the year to August 2006, bringing the total membership rate to just 16 per cent of the state’s 886,700 workers.
Despite the employment rate rising by 40,000 workers during the period, union membership fell by more than 16,000, meaning WA overtook the Northern Territory during the year to hold the lowest membership rate in the nation.
The decline in union membership was greater in WA than for any other state, exceeding the national decrease of 6.6 per cent during the year to August.
Nationally, union membership dropped from 22 per cent to 20 per cent of the workforce, or 1.8 million employees.
The Chamber of Commerce and Industry WA said the figures indicated Western Australians were not as concerned about workplace reforms and the advent of individual employment agreements as trade unions had claimed.
“Individuals have not been successfully recruited to unions in any meaningful numbers, and indeed many would appear to have let their membership lapse,” CCIWA said in a press release.
“[The] data is further evidence that many unions in Australia have failed to adjust to changing economic times and to the need for their country to meet international benchmarks for efficiency and productivity.”
CCIWA said many unions had lost relevance for Australian workers and would continue to struggle while membership remained a matter of individual choice.
According to the ABS statistics, full-time and public sector workers were more likely to be union members than their counterparts working part-time or in the private sector.
A high 43 per cent of public sector employees held union memberships, compared with just 15 per cent of private sector workers.
Male employees were only slightly more likely than female employees to be union members, with 22 per cent and 19 per cent of employees being members, respectively.
Machinery operators and drivers were the occupation group with the highest union membership (35 per cent), while those in the ‘electricity, gas, water and waste services’ or ‘education and training’ industries were most likely to be members (39 per cent of employees in both industries).
Nationally, the number of private-sector workers holding union memberships was 15.5 per cent, down from 16.7 per cent in mid-2005.
Prime Minister John Howard said in a radio interview that Australian workers were moving away from the union movement.
“Union membership has now become overwhelmingly something that exists in public sector employ-ment and hardly at all in private sector employment,” he said.
However, ACTU secretary Greg Combet said people were opposed to the government’s IR laws.
“It’s very difficult for people to make the choice to be a member of the union under WorkChoices,” he said.
In WA, union membership has been in decline since 1993, with the percentage of union members in the state’s workforce halving during that period, from 34.5 per cent to 16 per cent.
In 1993, there were 218,300 union members in WA, while at present there are only 142,400.