At last count, just over 20 percent of the Australian workforce (less in private-sector) were members of a union. Union's
declining role is due to a number of changes, especially the increasing adoption of individual enterprise agreements. But while trade unions may not dominate the headlines like they used to, they remain politically influential.
The most powerful unions operate in core industrial areas like mining, construction, manufacturing and, of course, the public sector. As a consequence, they tend to be powerful in regions where these sectors thrive, like the Hunter and Illawarra, Mt Isa and Broken Hill.
While the union movement is still basically structured with individual unions as members of state and regional labour councils, who are in turn part of the ACTU, there have been landmark amalgamations in recent years to create a group of super-unions operating on a national basis.
Politically, unions are still strongly affiliated with the Australian Labor Party, except for some professional unions like those for nurses and teachers. Aptly, they tend to be factionalised along similar lines to the ALP and unions are still commonly used a career path for Labor aspirants.
Most union officials are elected or appointed by elected officials so they are quite sensitised to members' views. This means that delivering wins for their membership and impressing the union and ALP hierarchies drives Australian unions more than ever as they strive to justify their existence.
But their gradually diminishing role means that they tend to be under-resourced and low-tech. As a consequence, they're time-poor, usually only focused on the day's issues, work long hours, and are almost always in conflict situations, preferring heated meetings to generating scries of paper.
When making public announcements about workplace issues, they want to be told before members and the media. This is best done with a phone call from the CEO or other senior person directly to the relevant union official.
Like the media, they hate embroidery with the facts or fancy arguments, so it's best to keep written communication as straight forward as possible.