After decades of decline, this is how unions can rebuild their role in Australian work

As recently as the early 1990s, 40% of Australian workers were union members. While there was a slight increase in 2024 – the first in a decade – that membership is now at 13.1%.

This decline has been used to argue unions have become less important in Australians’ lives.

Although some unions have recently made headlines for the wrong reasons, including allegations of corruption, bullying and violence, others – such as the Transport Workers Union (TWU) – have scored surprisingly big wins.

This includes a A$90 million fine for Qantas’ illegal sacking of 1,800 workers, and a deal with Uber and DoorDash to improve food delivery workers’ pay and safety.

Our research examines what the TWU did over 30 years to reassert its legitimacy – and how its campaigns have impacted Australians’ lives.

New approaches amid falling membership

The story begins in the 1990s, when the shift to “enterprise bargaining” fragmented unions’ industrial strength.

Thousands of agreements struck at the enterprise level replaced a few industry-wide instruments. This spread union resources thin, making it difficult to achieve outcomes in workplaces with low membership.

In response, the TWU focused on large retailers, whose pricing decisions heavily influenced wage rates throughout their supply chains. This allowed the TWU to concentrate resources and regain influence.

At the same time, the TWU partnered with transport companies it had previously been at odds with. Their interests now aligned: large retailer’s price pressures squeezed transport companies’ revenue, wages, and undermined road safety.

Making a public safety case

The TWU “safe rates” campaign, which began in the 1990s and is ongoing, sought to show how many road accidents were caused by unrealistic delivery deadlines and retailers cutting costs.

Talking about how better conditions for transport workers would improve public safety shifted the debate from the workplace into the community.

To make this message stick, evidence was crucial. Government inquiries into interstate trucking and academic reports over the past two decades made it harder to dismiss the union’s claims.

This eventually resulted in the creation of the Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal in 2012, which – although abolished in 2016 – showed that the TWU had changed norms and assumptions about working conditions in road transport.

How a costly gamble paid off

Years of outsourcing at Qantas had eroded the TWU’s aviation membership. Attempts to adapt the successful road transport safety message had failed.

But the arrival of COVID-19 provided an unexpected opportunity.

The TWU’s concerns about aviation working conditions had not gained widespread attention until Qantas outsourced 1,800 jobs during the pandemic. The TWU took Qantas to court – costing the union millions in legal fees – alleging this was done illegally.

Last year, Qantas was ordered to pay $90 million for illegally outsourcing jobs – Australia’s biggest ever penalty for violations of industrial relations laws.

The court awarded $50 million of that total to the TWU. As Federal Court Justice Michael Lee said:

It will send a message to Qantas and other well-resourced employers that not only […] will they face potentially significant penalties for the breach of the act, but those penalties will be provided to trade unions to resource those unions in their role as enforcers of the act.

Emboldened, the TWU has called for the creation of a Safe and Secure Skies Commission, to improve standards at airports and airlines, including for workers and passengers.

Improving conditions for gig workers

The TWU initially struggled to establish a presence in the gig economy delivery sector.

But this began to change as more food delivery workers were injured or killed during the pandemic.

As home deliveries surged during and since the pandemic, Amazon’s reliance on independent contractors created challenges for other delivery companies, significantly undercutting their revenue.

Dubbed the “Amazon effect”, the TWU warned this business model threatened job quality and – eventually – the viability of the delivery industry.

This reasoning brought platform companies, traditional delivery operators, and policymakers to the negotiating table. In 2023 and 2024, the Closing the Loopholes reforms established minimum standards for workers classified as “employee-like” and for transport contractors more broadly.

Looking ahead

Last year, a TWU survey found many rideshare drivers wait hours for work, skip meals to save money, and drink less to minimise toilet breaks. More than half drove while fatigued, with some sleeping in their cars due to low wages.

In response, the TWU made an application with the Fair Work Commission to create a safety net for rideshare drivers. If successful, it would be a world-first.

While the TWU lost many members over the last 30 years, it is recovering slowly. Membership increased from 55,570 at the end of 2022 to 58,885 at the end of 2024.

Over time, it rebuilt its influence by forging alliances and creating broadly resonant messages to help shift both public expectations and the law.

The TWU’s long game offers an instructive path for other Australian unions: start where workers are feeling the sharpest impacts, craft a story that explains what needs to change, then build evidence and alliances to enact that change.