Decline Of Unions In Australia Swot Analysis

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There are three main reasons unions are on a decline. The first is the global competition and deregulation in traditionally unionized industries (Hunter, 1999). In recent years, the federal government has deregulated heavily unionized industries including the trucking, railroad, and airline industries. Deregulation has brought greater competition in this industries not only domestically but also from abroad. This decline in our country’s manufacturing jobs which has historically been the largest percentage of the union workers numbers has led to the decrease in our unionized jobs. The second reason is that the government has corrected and become responsible for many of the issues that unions were fighting for. “From overtime pay to hours of work, to guaranteed days off and employees’ rights and standards, laws have been passed by the state and federal governments to address such issues” (Hunter, 1999). …show more content…
At one point, only union workers could get such things as premium pay or penalty pay, now these are state and federal statutes that are available to all workers. The last reason that unions are on the decline is the change in demographics and the culture of our workforce. The rapidly expanding contingent workforce composed of mostly women, temporary workers, and part-time employees has proven to be difficult for unions to organize. Additionally, shifts in the American job market from the stagnant manufacturing sector to an expanding service sector and the creation of many new largely white collar and technical occupations have also presented organizing challenges to unions (Sherk, 2013). Also, the current generation of workers come from households where there are no union workers to serve as models. Hence, these younger workers have little knowledge of, and do not particularly care about,