Trade Union Census

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    NAME OF ORGANISATION
    Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS)

    OVERVIEW
    To provide statistics on:

    • the number of trade unions and employee associations, their size and States of operation;
    • the number of financial and total members classified by State, territory and sex;
    • the number of unions and number of members classified according to the size of the union (based on employee membership); and
    • the proportion of employed wage and salary earners who are members of trade unions and employee associations.

    PURPOSE
    refer to Overview above

    SCOPE
    Organisations, consisting predominantly of employees, the principal activities of which include the negotiation of rates of pay and conditions of employment for its members. Non-operating unions or branches, ie those with no members at the date of collection, are not included.

    To reduce the possibility of duplication of the number of unions and members in these statistics, where a trade union is a branch of a larger trade union, only the larger organisation is counted.

    DATA DETAIL

    Conceptual framework
    The statistics are compiled from questionnaires completed by individual trade unions and employee associations in respect of their membership and State of operation as at 30 June.

    Main outputs
    Number of trade unions, their size; financial and total members classified by State, territory and sex; proportion of employed wage and salary earners who are members of unions. The number of unions and number of members are also classified according to the size of the union. Number of unions registered under the Federal Industrial Relations Act 1988.

    Classifications
    States and Territories; sex; financial and total members; unions registered under Federal Industrial Relations Act 1988.

    Other concepts (summary)
    Trade union: An organisation, consisting predominantly of employees, the principal activities of which include the negotiation of rates of pay and conditions of employment for its members.
    Financial members: Dues-paying members no more than 6 months in arrears.
    Total members: All persons regarded by unions as members - financial, unfinancial, honorary, suspended, junior etc.

    GEOGRAPHIC DETAIL
    Australia
    New South Wales
    Victoria
    Queensland
    South Australia
    Western Australia
    Tasmania
    Northern Territory
    ACT

    Comments and/or Other Regions


    COLLECTION FREQUENCY
    Annually

    Frequency comments


    COLLECTION HISTORY
    It is not clear when the collection commenced but Australia level data is available from 1891. Some State data is available from 1912. The collection was changed to a 30 June basis in 1985. Figures for previous years were collected as at 31 December. The collection was ceased after June 1996.

    DATA AVAILABILITY
    Yes

    Data availability comments



    DATE OF LAST UPDATE FOR THIS DOCUMENT
    03/01/2006 12:32 PM