Incremental labor reforms in Australia, including some that promote sectoral bargaining, are showing early promise in boosting bargaining coverage, union membership, and wage growth. The Australian reforms have only recently gone into effect, so additional time and further analysis will be required to draw definitive conclusions. Still, initial results have been good.
This suggests that policies to promote sectoral bargaining (union bargaining with multiple firms for an entire industry of the economy, rather than with just a single employer), in conjunction with other reforms to support workers and unions, can produce real benefits in a relatively short time frame. Australia’s labor reforms provide crucial lessons for the United States, where policies to increase union power and worker compensation are sorely needed.
The above excerpt was originally published in Center for American Progress.
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