New figures released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics show that unions have taken advantage of the removal of Howard's anti-union WorkChoices to reverse a long-term slide and achieve the fastest membership growth in more than two decades.
In the first survey since the government's Fair Work laws took effect - and WorkChoices was entirely abolished - the number of people joining unions rose nearly 5 per cent in a year, or by 82,200 workers. Growth was strongest in the public sector.
That lifted the union share of the workforce to nearly 20 per cent overall and 46.3 per cent in the public sector.
Griffith University professor of employment relations, David Peetz, said the end of the Howard government's WorkChoices laws was an important factor in the growth, with AWAs ''one of the means that were used to undermine trade unionism''.
He said the Fair Work laws were ''a lot less of an impediment'' to unions than WorkChoices and predicted the end of the big drops in membership seen over the past few decades.
''We are starting to see what are the early signs of what could be a union revival,'' said Professor Peetz.
Since August 2007 - three months before the Howard government was defeated - union membership has risen by 8.2 per cent or by about 138,700 workers. It is now similar to the levels of the mid 2000s but is well below the 50 per cent coverage of the early 1980s.
Membership in the public sector grew most strongly while in the private sector it grew 5 per cent over the past two years. Despite that growth, fewer than one in seven private sector employees belong to unions.
In WA membership has jumped from just over 14 per cent of the workforce to more than 17 per cent.
Secretary of Unions WA Simone McGurk says the biggest membership drive has been in the mining industry.
She says the Federal Government's decision to abolish Work Choices and introduce the Fair Work Act has contributed to the growth in membership.
"The new Federal legislation the Fair Work Act is an improvement and I think more people joining unions and wanting to be represented collectively is now showing in the statistics.".
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