Unions and union membership in New Zealand: annual review for 1995

Abstract

This note reports our most recent survey of unions and union membership in New Zealand for the year ended 31 December 1995. It builds on our earlier surveys for the 31 December years for 1991 - 1994. The pattern already firmly established of declining union membership has continued with unions losing a further 13,700 members in the most recent year. This represents a decline of 3.6 percent over the number of union members at 31 December 1994. These losses occur at a time when the workforce (as measured by the Household Labour Force Survey) continues to grow and accordingly union density has fallen more sharply than has union membership itself. The Office of the Registrar of Unions and the official source for collection of data relating to trade unions in New Zealand was abolished by the Employment Contracts Act 1991. The last data from this source relates to the period as at May 1991. Since then we have undertaken an annual survey of unions so as to maintain continuity in the union membership data series. We have modelled our survey on that undertaken by the former Registrar, but have requested additional information on the gender of members, the industries in which they were employed and the organisations to which unions are affiliated.