Trade unionism in Australia is at, and in some sectors already past, a tipping point from which rebuilding will be close to impossible. Much of the old ways Unions did and still do business is defunct, or at the very least under severe and mounting pressure.
Unions in much of the developed world are in a similar position. The situation in which unions find themselves as institutions and that which members and potential members find themselves in as workers is well understood.
The urgent question now, and the one this paper by Per Capita Research Fellow Tim Lyons seeks to address, is how unionism might undergo the sort of transformative change necessary not just to survive but to build the new organisations we need for workers to win.
