I’d be interested to know if Australian labor law allows what is called a “closed shop”. In the U.S. In certain states , Illinois for example, the employee may choose not to join the union as a condition of employment BUT the employee still has union dues deducted from their paycheck anyway and the union still represents the employee in negotiation which is tantamount to forced union membership. Other states, mainly in the South, have what are called “right to work” laws where the employee can choose to join the union or not and not be forced to pay union dues or be represented by the union. In those states unions have much less clout because they have to convince prospective employees to join without forcing them to. Consequently a lot of manufacturing, especially automobile assembly plants, have moved south.
I think it's still possible in certain prescribed circumstances but the concept was pretty much killed off in the early 1990s. Prime Minister John Howard led a charge against it to destroy the student unions in tertiary education, which were feeding a lot of "radicals" into the labour unions and political left - completely unlike, of course, the "Young Liberals" who were feeding a lot of "upstanding citizens" into the political right.
The thing that left a bad taste in my mouth was the intellectual dishonesty: union fees were painted as unfair because most of the money was spent on things that a given individual didn't necessarily want, ignoring that by pooling money it's possible to scale up efficiencies and obtain goods and services at a lower per-unit price. "We should have a 'user pays' system," said Mr Howard. I don't see a material difference between union fees and government taxes, but the argument was that only the former should be optional...
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The thing that left a bad taste in my mouth was the intellectual dishonesty: union fees were painted as unfair because most of the money was spent on things that a given individual didn't necessarily want, ignoring that by pooling money it's possible to scale up efficiencies and obtain goods and services at a lower per-unit price. "We should have a 'user pays' system," said Mr Howard. I don't see a material difference between union fees and government taxes, but the argument was that only the former should be optional...