Solidarity reconstructed: The impact of the Accord on relations within the Australian union movement

Abstract

Unions’ strength and identity is determined primarily by the extent to which they can nurture effective solidarity amongst wage earners in general and between networks of unions in particular. The experience of inter-union coordination throughout the Accord years has strengthened political solidarity across the movement (demonstrated most recently in the 2007 Your Rights at Work campaign). The movement’s industrial solidarity has been in secular decline since the peak union leadership enthusiastically embraced enterprise bargaining in the final phase of the Accord in the early 1990s. The key challenge for unions today is to broaden the ambit of political solidarity and to revitalise industrial solidarity in an era of increasing workforce diversity and working life transformation.