The idea of hitting voters with a powerful message on election day is just the culmination of three trends in Australian campaign communication that have been brewing for decades.
Historically, the CFA was a voluntary organisation. But with increasing urbanisation, there are pressures to increase the number of career firefighters.
Tracey Nearmy/AAP
Malcolm Turnbull is using Victoria’s long-running enterprise bargaining dispute between the CFA and firefighters’ union to highlight the Liberals’ credentials to challenge union militancy.
It is rare for unions and the ACTU to completely get their own way in policy.
ALan Porritt/AAP
The ACTU’s main election campaign focus is to target 28 marginal Coalition seats, including 11 in NSW and six in Queensland: the key battleground states.
The bulk of Britain’s unions are campaigning to stay in the European Union – but they’ll be hard pressed to secure workers’ rights.
Gold miners appear after being trapped underground at a mine in Carltonville, west of Johannesburg. Managing their safety has been a major issue as South Africa has among the deepest and most dangerous mines.
Reuters/Siphiwe Sibeko
When sociologists, driven by their value commitments, go beyond the relative comfort of the classroom and engage with organisations outside the university, they dirty their hands.
Residents are concerned that a redevelopment of the historic Bondi Pavilion is designed to privatise public space.
AAP/Marilia Ogayar
The story of the Builders Labourers Federation campaigns that saved historic locations and green spaces in the 1970s still speaks to contemporary Australians’ concerns about urban development.
The association representing AFL players is a good example of using a union model to give workers a voice.
AAP/Dan Peled
In an increasingly individualised workplace, unions can no longer rely on organising tactics to survive. Instead, they need to undertake a major “rebranding”.
Achieving genuine co-operation in Australian workplaces is difficult.
AAP/Angela Brkic
The Fair Work Act delivers a much more peculiar system of collective bargaining than many realise. It has outcomes that contradict the hopes and fears of both sides of the IR debate.
Supporters of the Congress of South African Trade Unions and the South African Communist Party.
Reuters/Rogan Ward
South African labour unions have shown themselves to be effective in translating the prescripts of the law into benefits for their members. This is particularly true in the public sector.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Attorney-General George Brandis announce the findings of the trade union royal commission in December 2015.
AAP/Mick Tsikas
Unions may well feel justifiably aggrieved by the findings – and impact – of the trade union royal commission, but there are nonetheless lessons to be learnt from them.
The Transport Workers’ Union is one of the three most influential unions within the ALP.
AAP/Josephine Lim
Even though union membership has dropped to just 15%, unions still have an important role to play in ensuring that workers have meaningful input into how their workplaces are run.
Just after the second world war, union membership was almost 65% of the workforce. Now it is just 15%.
Wikimedia Commons
A diminishing membership base, changes to labour and industry and heightened political attention has left the once-powerful trade union movement flailing.
Employees need to have more say at work, which means tackling all forms of corruption and law-breaking.
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Workplace democracy is declining, but the idea that this is the fault solely of unions or employers is misguided. Widespread reform is needed.
The government argues its industrial relations bills are necessary to deal with widespread corruption uncovered by the trade union royal commission.
AAP/Joel Carrett