Shop stewards are crucial to the vitality of unions, yet our understanding of why workers take on this important role is incomplete. This qualitative study seeks to contribute to addressing this gap by exploring the factors that influenced workers to become shop stewards in three dissimilar...

The Australian Labor government's recognition of collective bargaining under its Fair Work Act 2009, and its efficiency drive from late 2011 across the Australian Public Service (APS), presented the Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU) with an opportunity to explore means of union renewal...

Trade unions in nearly all developed countries are facing major difficulties in maintaining membership levels and political influence. The U.S. labour movement has been increasingly attracted to an organizing model of trade unionism and, in turn, this response has caught the imagination of some...

Highly formalized models of union behaviour have been developed and are widely used within neo-classical economics. This approach is justified by the argument that most goals pursued by unions can be reduced to a wage (or wage-equivalent) - employment trade-off. However, the strong assumptions...

This article considers the state of unionism today and argues that in strategizing for more workers’ power and effective worker representation, unions have – unsurprisingly – focussed upon the primary domain that workers occupy: the labour market and workplaces, applying a particular...

Across Europe, there are many differing opinions on whether workplace employee representation should be encouraged or discouraged. Yet there is very little evidence on the variations in workplace employee representation across Europe or the reasons for this. We use a workplace survey covering 27...

Management and union negotiators have the choice of adopting competitive or problem-solving strategies to find acceptable outcomes but they may also have to yield, a process which is less clearly understood. Competing, problem solving and yielding have to be conveyed to those sitting across the...

This article examines the recent changes to the federal legal regime that controls the taking of protected industrial action in Australia. It considers the impact of both the Building and Construction Industry Improvement Act 2005 (Cth) and the Workplace Relations Amendment (Work Choices) Act...