Editing Organizing model (section)

==History in Australia==
After a wave of massive industrial unrest and unprecedented increases in wages and conditions during the 1970s, the union movement became restrained in their demands, and part of the official apparatus of government during the [[Australian Labor Party|ALP]]-led, [[Corporatist#Neo-corporatism|neo-corporatist]], [[the Accord|Accord]] period (1983–96). According to Bob Carter and [[Rae Cooper]], the ALP and the ACTU formed the "Accord"<ref name="Cooper" /> by establishing a formal "relationship" with each other<ref name="Cooper" /> While unions had [[Consolidation (business)|amalgamated]] prior to the Accord, and the [[Australian Council of Trade Unions]] had itself absorbed other lesser peak industrial councils, the accord period and the later [[enterprise bargaining agreement|enterprise bargaining]] period encouraged mergers into super unions. These super unions often obliterated previous small union identities and loyalties (on both the "left" and "right" of the trade union movement) and created unions with a relatively artificial internal culture.  Often the largest union in the merger imposed its internal culture on the other divisions of the new union.  Additionally, during the period of mergers, the traditional links between members, local organisers, industrial officers, branches and the peak leaderships of unions broke down. This presented a challenge to the union movement. According to Bob Carter and Rae Cooper, the Accord period was very harmful to labor unions, and the super unions did not do anything drastic to improve the conditions of the unions.<ref name="Cooper" />

Bob Carter and Rae Cooper state that the 1980s and 1990s were particularly bad decades for Australian unions.<ref name="Cooper" /> According to Carter and Cooper, the decline of union membership was worse, during the 1980s and the 1990s, in Australia than it was in the U.K.<ref name="Cooper" /> Carter and Cooper explain that the membership decline in Australian unions was the result of the "...pro-active anti-union approach..."<ref name="Cooper" /> by the "...conservative Coalition federal government...",<ref name="Cooper" /> along with other "...structural changes in the labor market."<ref name="Cooper" /> Peetz and Pocock state that during the 1980s and the 1990s, unions had to deal with "...outright hostility..."<ref name="Peetz" /> and "...successive pieces of legislation..."<ref name="Peetz" /> that were harmful to their membership and growth.<ref name="Peetz" />

The response to this union crisis in Australia is the ''Organising Works'' program which was established in 1994 to recruit organizers from union members and university students. The Organizing Works Program, in Australia, was established after representatives from Australian unions visited the US and observed the organizing model in practice.<ref name="Cooper" /> Organising Works is a relatively unique program in Australia, in that it combines explicit training in trade unionism with an apprenticeship system with specific trade unions. Bob Carter and Rae Cooper state that Organizing Works was successful in spreading the message of the model and recruiting new members for unions,<ref name="Cooper" /> and in general, Australian unions were more committed to the organizing model than were British unions.<ref name="Cooper" /> David Peetz and Barbara Pocock state that in the first six years of the Organizing Works Program in Australia, "...it had produced over 300 trainees..."<ref name="Peetz" /> Carter and Cooper discuss the "Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU)"<ref name="Cooper" /> as one of the main Australian unions to implement the organizing model on a large scale in response to union decline.<ref name="Cooper" /> Peetz and Pocock talk about the "''Unions@Work''"<ref name="Peetz" /> report that was published for unions in 1999,<ref name="Peetz" /> which even continued the mission of the Organizing Works program.<ref name="Peetz" /> Peetz and Pocock emphasize that the organizing model was implemented differently in different Australian unions and that the aspects of the organizing model that got implemented differed by union.<ref name="Peetz" />