LIES and Statistics

Following the Statistician's release of the 2001 trade union membership, ACTU President Sharan Burrow declared, "The long term trend of declining union membership appears to have stabilised with two years of net growth".

In fact, unionisation as a share of employees continued to fall.  Based on total employees of 7,800,000 union membership at 1,900,000 was 24.5 per cent in August of last year, down from 24.7 per cent on the previous year.  Twenty years ago union membership stood at 50 per cent.  Unfortunately for trade unions, they are losing market share faster than the Christian churches are losing Sunday worshippers!

Part of this is due to structural change.  People are always likely to be less inclined to join unions if their work is part-time.  And part-time workers have been generally increasing as a result both of individuals' preferences and the needs of businesses in meeting consumer demands.  Over the past five years, part-time employment increased by over a fifth, while full-time jobs increased by only one twentieth.

It may also be that the union's recruitment scope is declining because an increasing number of workers, currently over 20 per cent, are self-employed or employers.

This latter figure is not included within the "employee" category and also means the unionisation share tends to be inflated.  Instead of the workforce being 7,800,000, because around 20 per cent of those in work are not classed as employees, it is really 9,200,000.  Hence, unionisation is not 24.5 per cent but 20.7 per cent of workers.

The figures are even more interesting if unionisation is divided between the public and private sectors.  There are 690,000 trade union members working in the public sector, where 48 per cent of employees are unionised.  There are 1,200,000 union members out of 6,300,000 "employees" in the private sector, giving unionisation of 19.2 per cent.  However, those workers not counted as "employees" cannot be working within the public sector, where they would automatically have an employer.  They must, therefore, must be private sector workers.

This means that the number of private sector workers is actually 7,700,000.  And, since we know private sector union membership is 1,200,000, it also means that private sector unionisation is down below 16 per cent of the people actually in jobs and working.

With this perspective, the trade union movement is more accurately seen as representing nearly half of the people working for government with only a minor role in representing workers against private employers.  This is a strange twist in the movement's originally conceived role.

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