The Australian Union Merger Wave Revisited

By Kerrie Hose and Malcolm Rimmer

What factors explain the Australian union merger wave between 1991 and 1994?

Existing explanations largely attribute it to the pro-amalgamation policy of the ACTU and other union leaders, and to declining union membership and decentralised bargaining. This paper concludes that the current explanations of the merger wave are an oversimplification. The effects of ACTU leadership, official union policy, and members views are complex and not uniform and require more disaggregated analysis. There has been a tendency to overstate the importance of membership decline and decentralised bargaining and to overlook other factors such as changing occupational structure.

(Journal of Industrial Relations; vol. 44, no. 4, December 2002)