Chapter 2 argued that men (mis)used sexuality to skew the gender playing field and serve their own— not women’s— interests. Their scheme deprived women of sovereignty over their sexuality/childbearing and thereby played a big role in men's overall subjugation of women. Hence, it follows that alongside public policies re women's economic independence, there is an urgent need to advance public policies and programs that, at all social class levels, explicitly promote women's control over their sexualities/reproduction. The two rights are inseparable and mutually reinforcing— the autonomous woman possesses both, and both lie at the core of the New Normal ways of doing relationships/families. An economically independent woman gets hold of the material resources she requires. A sexually independent woman gets hold of the intangible resources she desires.

As challenging as it is for women to gain their economic independence, the struggle to achieve their sexual/reproductive independence is even more daunting. It is not mere happenstance that Old Lights resist progressive changes within the sexual/reproductive sphere with even greater ferocity than changes within the economic sphere. Complicating matters is the mutual interplay between the two spheres: Making it harder for women to be sexually/reproductively independent impinges on their economic independence. But promoting their economic freedom furthers their sexual/reproductive independence. In effect, freedom in one sphere facilitates freedom in the other; limiting freedom in one hinders it in the other— the two freedoms are bound together in a single package.

Curiously enough, women's subjugation was the theme of the post-coital pillow talk between England's King Henry VII and his wife Elizabeth. He surprised her by remarking that the humdrum sex they just had is “not like love, is it?” Henry contrasted their mundane, ho-hum experience with the wild and inflamed encounters he’d enjoyed nightly with a farm “girl when I was a young man.” They’d sneak off in secret and “when I touched her she would shiver, and when I kissed her she would melt […] and cried out in her pleasure. […] I felt her sobs shake her whole body with joy.”

Trade unions are central to organised social life. They are among the largest voluntary organisations in society. They represent hundreds of millions of workers and, as workplace organisations, they are often the only effective vehicle to give voice to working people. They are often too a significant presence in politics. For instance, the peak international trade union body the International Trade Union Confederation represents 200 million workers in 163 countries and regularly participates in key policy-making forums such as G20, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the International Labour Organization (ILO).

There is equally no doubt that the role of trade unions globally and in Australia is under serious challenge. The ILO Global Commission on the Future of Work observed that ‘changes in legal frameworks, together with changes in the organization of work and the persistence of informal employment, make it harder for workers to organize and represent their collective interests’. A publication arising from an ILO symposium on the future of trade unions similarly commented that ‘it has become harder for trade unions in both developed and emerging countries to protect the rights of workers and working conditions, as shown not only in the reduction of unionization, but also the fall in the labour share of income in most countries’. Among the key challenges it nominated were ‘technology, climate change and the increasing complexity of globalization’, sentiments that clearly correspond with the recognition in the ILO Centenary Declaration for the Future of Work that the present is ‘a time of transformative change in the world of work, driven by technological innovations, demographic shifts, environmental and climate change, and globalization, as well as a time of persistent inequalities, which have profound impacts on the nature and future of work, and on the place and dignity of people in it’.

These global tendencies are evident in Australia. Union membership is declining as a proportion of the labour force. Low and declining union density (around 15 per cent) and shrinking coverage of collective bargaining mean that many workplaces, especially in the private sector, are union-free and/ or union-hostile zones. Controversies surrounding a number of union officials have called into the question the legitimacy of trade unions. And for some governments, trade unions are not social partners but rather targets of restrictive legislation.

Of the many challenges for trade unions around the world noted in Chapter 1 of this collection by Joo-Cheong Tham and Caroline Kelly, one of the greatest is presented by the gig economy. This form of delivering services and organising work through technology raises important questions about the nature of freedom of association – a foundational concept of the International Labour Organization – in the modern era. In Australia, the gig economy has shamelessly inverted traditional assumptions about employment regulation: that someone who performs labour is deserving of the law’s protection, unless carrying on a genuine independent business of their own. Instead, workers for platforms such as Uber, Lyft, Foodora, Deliveroo, Uber Eats, Freelancer and Airtasker are designated as independent contractors, unless they prove otherwise through legal challenges.

This contracting model is usually buttressed by arcane contracts and service agreements which use Orwellian language to obscure the reality of gig work and who is performing it. ‘Flexibility’ is held up by the platforms as a kind of holy grail, to explain gig workers being prepared to sacrifice minimum wages, unfair dismissal rights and other protections that flow from employee status. For example, Deliveroo maintains ‘that the basis of its engagement with self-employed riders is inconsistent with employment, whether full-time, part-time or casual. None of these employment relationships provide the flexibility inherent to the way in which self-employed riders work with Deliveroo.’ The contracting model has been adopted not only to absolve platforms from responsibility for minimum labour standards, but also to keep unions at bay. Most gig operators flatly refuse to engage with unions. Instead they offer insipid forms of worker voice, which they control.

This chapter examines the ways in which platforms counter unionisation, despite the clear desire for collective representation manifested by many gig workers around the world. The next section provides an overview of these issues along with the difficulties faced by trade unions in seeking to organise workers in the platform economy. This is followed by an exploration of a couple of significant recent aspects of gig work regulation.

Both globally and within Australia, there has been an acute transformation of labour markets characterised by the fragmentation of work and organisations and the growth in non-standard employment arrangements. This is evidenced in the segmentation of labour markets, the casualisation of workforces and the triangulation of work arrangements. Temporary labour migration is now an embedded feature of many labour markets, and Australia is no exception, with visa holders constituting at least one-tenth of the Australian labour force. This chapter highlights these changes and challenges, through examining the complex relationship between trade unionism and temporary labour migration in Australia. It shows how trade unions that have been traditionally most active in the regulation of standard employment now have to adapt to representing the interests of a more flexible and less homogeneous group of workers, and they have to do so without straining relationships with their traditional rankand-file membership in traditional jobs and industries. In this context, there is an urgent need for unions to engage with temporary migrant workers. This group of workers has been shown to be particularly vulnerable to precarious work and the wages and conditions received by this group of workers has farreaching effects on all workers in the labour market.

This chapter begins by examining the complex relationship between trade unionism and temporary labour migration in Australia. It exposes a concerning paradox: although temporary migrant workers need unions more than most other cohorts of workers and face far greater barriers in joining them and accessing their help, Australian unions, with a few notable exceptions, have been largely unsuccessful in recruiting temporary migrants as members and representing their interests. This chapter then turns to a case study of the role of unions in the Australian horticulture industry and focuses on unions’ new approaches under changed conditions in this industry. Temporary migrant workers on a range of visas are the mainstay of the horticulture industry’s workforce, and unions have adopted new approaches to organising these workers and advocating for changes to government policy and regulation to better suit their interests.

Labour laws and policies, through recognising and supporting the work of trade unions, are vital for remedying the unequal footing of workers when negotiating with employers.

Any discussion of trade agreements, labour rights and democracy must begin with an account of current trade policy. The dominant version of trade policy, part of a suite of economic policies known as neoliberalism or the Washington consensus practised by successive Australian governments, has been brought into question from critics on both the right and left of the political spectrum, and most recently by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Neoliberal trade policy argues that a one-size-fits-all elimination of tariffs and other trade barriers by all countries will increase trade and investment and reduce prices for consumers in a globalised competitive market that will eventually raise living standards for all. Each country should specialise in exporting its lowest cost products or services, import everything else at the lowest possible prices as well as have zero tariffs, no active industry policies and minimal government regulation. This results in global production chains in which national economies are narrowly specialised and governments compete for global investment, leading to what some have called a race-tothe-bottom on labour and environmental standards. This model has been increasingly criticised by economists dealing with real-world outcomes, and by unions concerned with both workers’ rights and social and environmental justice.

Critics of neoliberal trade policies point to the limitations of the basic assumptions of early-nineteenth-century neoclassical comparative advantage theory (e.g. that all resources are used in production, that capital is immobile) most of which do not apply to real-world twenty-first century economies. Historical studies question whether the application of neoliberal trade policies have delivered promised economic development in many low-income countries, or whether they have instead contributed to global inequality. They argue that the established industrialised countries, and most successful developing economies, achieved their own industrial development through selective tariffs and active industry policies, before negotiating lower tariffs and other barriers. The imposition of strict neoliberal policies on low-income countries amounts to ‘kicking away the ladder’ to economic development. Studies of more recent regional and bilateral trade agreements criticise their expansion into non-tariff areas of law and policy normally decided through national democratic processes.

This chapter compares democratic and shareholder decision-making models and looks at the role of unions in those. It discusses three ways of enhancing economic democracy at the point of production: to leave the formal decisionmaking power with those who hold it, but through countervailing force, require owners to take account of other interests in decision making; to change the formal decision-making process – that is, who makes the decisions; and to change the owners themselves – that is, by mobilising greater ownership by employees, or ownership by employees’ collectively owned funds. Unions are relevant, in varying ways, to all of these. The first corresponds to increasing workers’ associational power; the second to increasing their institutional power. Both of these are well-established concepts in the power resources literature regarding trade unions. The third concept is about increasing workers’ financial power. This is not so heavily discussed in the power resources literature, as it focuses on trade unions and so the concept of finance is typically tied to either the financial strength of a union or the effects of financialisation on unions. Here we are talking about a form of financial power that might be of the members rather than the unions themselves. However, unions are in reality closely linked to whether and how employees can have financial power. The chapter concludes with discussion of economic democracy, the future of the planet and the role of unions in that, including through active use of workers’ pension funds.

Types of Decision-Making Models

We can speak of two types of decision-making models: (1) the democratic model, in which everybody has a say of equal value, and (2) the shareholder model, in which people have influence in proportion to the resources they hold (and at times, those with low resources have zero say, while those with the most resources have all the say). Corporations are run on the shareholder model. A union meeting is closer to the democratic model. Elections are formally based on the democratic model. They are important, but most other aspects of politics reflect the shareholder model – that is, those with the most resources have the most say.

When we refer to economic democracy, we mean that the control of the resources that determine the form and effects of economic activity is distributed along democratic lines.

Two overarching goals are central to the role of trade unions in society: social justice and democracy (see Chapter 1 of this volume). Both imply a range of functions and strategies that invariably stamp trade unions as political organisations (should politics be understood as activity aimed at influencing the exercise of power). Trade unions seek to influence the exercise of power at the workplace by providing a countervailing force to employer power. This typically occurs through the institution of collective bargaining and the regulatory function it performs in laying down labour standards – standards critical for workers to receiving a ‘just share of the fruits of progress’. Through the same processes, and more generally, the representative function of trade unions, organisations of working people seek to give workers a voice in the workplace and society at large.

It is not only industrial-political activities that characterise trade unions as political organisations but also their political-political activities (those aimed at influencing the exercise of governmental power). While the nature and extent of trade union involvement in such activities depends on a range of factors, there is no doubt that all trade unions will be involved in some kind of politicalpolitical activity. As Hyman has noted:

That is to say that political-political activity will be significant, whatever the model of trade unionism. It is clearly so with social movement unionism (aimed at socialising the capitalist economy) or radical unionism (directed at an anti-capitalist agenda) but also the case with business unionism (focused on collective bargaining). The importance of political-political activity is similarly recognised by the International Labour Organization (ILO) jurisprudence on the right to strike which does not sharply distinguish such activity from industrial-political activity.

A climate transition needs to make deep cuts to our emissions in a very short amount of time. Though the timeframe to achieve cuts sufficient to avoid harmful impacts is contracting rapidly, a transition must nevertheless aim to ensure that whatever policies are adopted achieve a just outcome, especially for the disadvantaged. Tax increases, lifestyle restrictions or the closing of whole fossil fuel industries must be managed in a way that does not place unfair burdens on those who are least able to bear them. The need to combine mitigation with justice is captured in just transition discussions that typically position a climate transition as part of a broader social renewal, such as the Green New Deal.

The role of the union movement in this process will be vital. Unions can play a key role in arguing for and achieving a just transition given their representative position for the many workers who stand to be affected by a climate transition and in virtue of their substantial public advocacy capacity. Moreover, as Joo-Cheong Tham and Caroline Kelly argue in Chapter 1 to this volume, social justice is central to trade unions. This is reflected in their direct advocacy on behalf of their members and in their ability to achieve broader social change. Yet, the role of unions will not always be straightforward. While their potential for increasing the likelihood of a just transition is great, their choices will involve short-term disadvantage for some union members and significant readjustments for some unions as a whole, especially mining unions. Bringing about a just transition will involve job losses for workers employed in the fossil fuel industry – a small but significant subset of union members in countries such as Australia. Identifying what positive role the union movement can play as well as identifying potential ‘flashpoints’ deserves attention. This will be particularly true in Australia where the fossil fuel industry exerts such a huge influence on responses to climate change.

There will be many kinds of issues facing the union movement as a whole in relation to climate change, from protecting workers in industries that are acutely affected by climate change (aged care workers, firefighters and so on) to articulating the larger framework that a just transition needs to follow.

Reviving the Impulse to Economic Democracy

The subject of this chapter is economic democracy. It is an old topic, and one that has generated a rich history of fertile thought and mostly frustrated action.

The impetus to economic democracy stems, in part, from a simple intuition: under capitalism, economic life tends to be autocratic, and, yet, we condemn autocracy and praise democracy; therefore, for the sake of consistency, we ought to demand the transformation of the economy along more democratic lines; this is the basic impulse that animates economic democracy. As the nineteenth century writer Henry Demarest Lloyd put it, ‘there is to be a people in industry, as in government’. That demand has always represented an important moral challenge to orthodox beliefs about our society. Defenders of the orthodoxy have never convincingly seen off the challenge, at least not at the level of principle. As a matter of political practice, however, economic democracy has been a marginal phenomenon.

In this chapter, I want to suggest that the impulse to economic democracy is in urgent need of revival and that trade unionists ought to contribute to its resurgence: see also, Chapter 2 by David Peetz in this volume. I refer to the ‘impulse’ to economic democracy because I want to focus on its underlying moral impetus and its general implications. So, I will not consider any particular institutional forms or structures that have been, or might be, imagined for it. Developing an institutional blueprint for economic democracy is not the most urgent thing.

What is needed right now, I will argue, is something more basic – namely, a concerted effort to challenge concentrated, private economic power, and to do so in a way that gives voice to the democratic spirit. We need to begin to encroach upon plutocracy – economic autocracy – in the name of democracy. The initial aim would be simple, yet nonetheless fairly ambitious: to persuade people that democratic principles are relevant to the basic organisation and running of economic life, and not only at the level of the particular firm or industry – which is the traditional terrain of ‘industrial democracy’ – but in relation to the economy as a whole.

Trade unions in Australia, as in many other industrialised societies, are facing a major challenge as a result of the expansion of precarious work. How unions respond will be crucial both for precarious workers and for the future of unions.

Precarious work, also called ‘insecure work’ or ‘bad jobs’, is best understood as work that exhibits precariousness or insecurity across all or most characteristics of a job. One useful definition refers to (1) lack of regulatory protection; (2) low wages; (3) high employment insecurity; and (4) low levels of employee control over wages, hours and working conditions. Scholars rightly caution that precarious work should not be identified just with non-standard employment, since precariousness can also emerge within standard full-time permanent employment. Nevertheless, it is true that precariousness tends to be concentrated in certain non-standard forms of employment. In Australia, this would include forms of self-employment such as freelancing, but it mainly concerns forms of wage labour such as casual work, fixed-term employment, temporary agency work (‘labour-hire’), bogus self-employment (including much ‘platform work’) and even part-time permanent employment. The list includes several highly commodified forms of work, new and old, and their recent proliferation highlights the continuing relevance of the principle announced in the opening passage of the ILO Declaration of Philadelphia: ‘labour is not a commodity’.

One pitfall in discussing this topic should be flagged at the start. From a union point of view, it is vital to keep in mind a distinction between precarious work and precarious workers. The distinction is not always hard and fast, but it is an essential heuristic device. It is the key to avoiding dangerous errors of conflation, whereby (1) hostility to the work is taken to imply hostility to the worker currently in that form of work; or (2) a positive approach to the worker is taken to imply a positive approach to the work. Instead, effective union strategy may require different approaches for the work and for the worker. For example, zero-hours work arrangements may need to be proscribed, but action to achieve a prohibition can be compatible with, and may indeed demand, organisation of zero-hours workers and representation of their interests.

The United Kingdom is a country where the Queen reigns but chaos governs. Chaos caused initially in recent years by the decisions of the Treasury to impose a 10-year programme of austerity with disproportionate burdens on the British population; followed by the distraction and self-immolation of Brexit on the back of a populist referendum in 2016; followed in turn by the domestic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, which represents one of the greatest public administration failures in modern British history. It will be for consideration at some stage whether these failures were due in part to the programme of austerity and the distraction of Brexit by which they were preceded. Preliminary evidence suggests, however, that there was a state of neglect and unpreparedness before the crisis, as well as a lack of capacity to respond appropriately during it.

The United Kingdom has been a testing ground for neoliberalism and austerity, and their implications for workers’ rights. The real test of any model, however, is how well it copes in a crisis. This would be true of labour law, as of any other area of law or any other institutional arrangements beyond the law. But in determining how well a system of labour law operates in a crisis, it is necessary to have a sense of the discipline's purpose, which is itself contentious. Every type of economy has a system of labour law, though the objectives are clearly very different. The neoliberal vision of labour law will be very different from a social democratic vision – the former emphasising the virtues of flexible employment models and free labour markets, and the latter emphasising high labour standards, job security and different forms of worker involvement in decision making.

The COVID-19 crisis has revealed the abject failure of the neoliberal vision. Correction. The COVID-19 crisis has revealed the spectacular success of the neoliberal vision through the lens of its authors. It has enabled employers to shed labour quickly and to cut pay with a minimum of formality and expense. But with the shifting of responsibility in employment exclusively to the worker, COVID-19 also has serious implications for workers’ communities, on a scale which is completely unsustainable even in the short term.

The internal affairs of Australian trade unions have long been the subject of detailed statutory regulation. The early federal conciliation and arbitration system, which was premised upon the recognition and facilitation of trade unions, laid the groundwork for the introduction of a range of legislative provisions concerned with internal union governance. By the late 1970s, there was an extensive legislative regime in place to ensure that the collective institutions supported by the industrial relations framework were themselves regulated and, in particular, controlled democratically by the rank-and-file membership. To this end there were, for example, provisions that imposed upon trade unions electoral controls, controls on the content of union rules and a mechanism to require the performance of those rules. Those provisions were frequently litigated and, by the 1980s, were the subject of an increasingly large body of case law.

At this time, the legislation and its application by the courts was underpinned by three key democratic principles: representative democracy in union leadership; the fullest possible participation by union members in the affairs of the union; and prevention of the arbitrary exercise of discretionary power. With respect to the third principle in particular, one can see the influence of techniques that we might usually associate with the field of administrative law at play. The case law reveals that decisions made by trade union decision makers were subjected to ultra vires type testing and administrative law standards of procedural propriety through the application of the principles of natural justice.

At the same time, however, a secondary regulatory goal was emerging: the accountability of trade unions and their officials, particularly with respect to financial matters. To this end, the legislature and the courts began to draw on regulatory techniques and principles typically associated with corporations and fiduciary law. The legislation contained detailed provisions requiring the keeping of accounting records and financial auditing. The courts likened union officials to company directors and found that they were the donees of fiduciary power.

In recent decades, the regulatory orientation has shifted. Since the late 1980s, numerous cycles of legislative change have fundamentally altered the position and role of trade unions in the industrial relations system and society more generally.

It has always been true that working people have had to fight to improve their lot in life. Fighting for what is right is in our DNA.

In 2020, though, workers were fighting a very different battle – saving Australia from the ravages of a devastating pandemic that threatened to plunge millions of people into economic distress and a cataclysmic health crisis.

Australian Unions met that crisis in the only way it knows how. Through collective action, a commitment to community and the well-being of others, and a conviction that science and solidarity would be the equal of any challenge we had to face.

And so, while the pandemic is exacting a terrible toll on countless countries, Australia has so far been saved from the very worst that COVID-19 can exact. The resolve to commit to each other and prioritise the needs of the community from this country's essential workers helped us to hold the line.

2020 in Australia was the year of the worker.

These are the everyday heroes working in our shops, our early education and health systems, cleaning our workspaces and keeping them COVID free, running public transport, teaching our children and in countless other sectors.

They are what saw Australia through its worst crisis in living memory.

The values that have underpinned this enduring Australian social contract are union values. They also reside in the long and proud history of international trade union movement and institutions like the International Labour Organization.

This book is testament to the vital role the labour movement plays as a powerful civic force for good – underpinning democracy and winning social justice.

Despite years of vilification by its political opponents, misrepresentation by self-interested media oligarchs and attempts to pass hostile legislation to weaken the union movement, here we stand, resilient, focused and determined to continue to do what is right for working people.

There is still plenty to be done.

The pandemic exposed the Australian economy's dependence on insecure work. A virus will exploit a willing host, and COVID-19 found the perfect partner in insecure work: workers on those arrangements faced the invidious choice of working on regardless of their health or not working at all and not getting paid.