Union Democracy and Collective Bargaining: Public Policy in Transition

Union democracy was a preoccupation of the federal legislature from the 1920s to the 1970s. It was quiescent as a public policy issue for two decades until revived by the Howard government in 1996. Examination of the statutory provisions for union democracy reveals deficiencies in terms of the benchmarks provided by both liberal pluralist and Marxist models. The traditional rationale for state intervention in union government is found to have been significantly weakened. At the same time, union democracy has been reinstated as a principal object of the statute. A new rationale for intervention is needed, as is a review of current regulation to assess its capacity to facilitate the achievement of tbe statutory objects. In analysing the relationship between regulation for union democracy and for participation in collective bargaining we can identify otber anomalies. These include: different standards for participation in the arbitration spbere (consent awards) from the bargaining sphere ( certified agreements); variation in the degree of regulation of different decisions—high-level regulation for elections and for merger decisions, and low-level regulation of decisions relating to the primary union function of improving wages and conditions; and extension of participa tion rights to non-unionists in the negotiation of union agreements, that is, elevation of an 'employee constituency' at the expense of a 'union-member constituency'. The industrial citizenship paradigm serves to highlight the anomalies and also resonates with the currently espoused value of employee choice. This model could provide a theoretical foundation for a more comistent and principled approach to public policy concerning participation in collective bargaining.