While the Supreme Court’s Janus ruling dealt a blow to organized labor, three lessons from Nevada’s unions suggest things aren’t as bleak as they appear.
Articles on Changing face of unions
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Thwarted efforts to organize at Yale and a New York nursing home show how a changing of the guard at the National Labor Relations Board could potentially end the labor movement.
In an increasingly individualised workplace, unions can no longer rely on organising tactics to survive. Instead, they need to undertake a major “rebranding”.
The Fair Work Act delivers a much more peculiar system of collective bargaining than many realise. It has outcomes that contradict the hopes and fears of both sides of the IR debate.
Unions may well feel justifiably aggrieved by the findings – and impact – of the trade union royal commission, but there are nonetheless lessons to be learnt from them.
While trade unions still exert some influence on the ALP, it is nowhere near as much as it once was.
Female workers are now more highly unionised than their male colleagues, but unions still have a long way to go to reflect that shift.
Even though union membership has dropped to just 15%, unions still have an important role to play in ensuring that workers have meaningful input into how their workplaces are run.
A diminishing membership base, changes to labour and industry and heightened political attention has left the once-powerful trade union movement flailing.
Top contributors
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Laurie Carmichael Distinguished Research Fellow at the Centre for Future Work, Melbourne; and Professor Emeritus, Griffith Business School, Griffith University
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Professor of Management, Deakin University
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Professor, Griffith Business School, Griffith University
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Emeritus professor, University of Newcastle
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Professor of Gender, Work and Employment Relations, ARC Future Fellow, Business School, co-Director Women, Work and Leadership Research Group, University of Sydney
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Associate Professor UTS Centre for Business and Social Innovation, University of Technology Sydney
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Professor of Law, Director of UNLV Workplace Law Program, University of Nevada, Las Vegas
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Professor of People, Organisation and Work, RMIT University
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Emeritus Professor, Macquarie University
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Clinical Professor of Law, University of Chicago; Institute for Humane Studies