The single biggest challenge to McManus and O’Neil’s leadership over the years came from a powerful male-dominated union, the Construction, Forestry and Maritime Employees Union (CFMEU). In 2024, after mounting allegations of criminals infiltrating the union, the ACTU suspended the CFMEU’s membership. The ACTU leaders faced criticism from both supporters and opponents of the CFMEU over that decision – and whether they should have acted sooner. It’s hard to say from the outside whether that’s true. But that decision did come at a personal cost, with McManus revealing in 2024 she’d had to change her routine and live in different places due to security concerns.
From industrial might to political sway
The ACTU’s role now is quite different compared to previous decades, when it had a bigger membership and more industrial and political power. In 2016, before McManus or O’Neil had taken over the ACTU leadership, 15.7% of Australian workers were union members, down from 21.7% just a decade earlier. By 2024 – the last official count we have – 13.1% of workers were union members. That was a slight rise compared to 2022, when it hit a record low 12.5%. The Australian Bureau of Statistics will be doing its 2026 survey soon, with that data out later this year. In an interview about her departure, O’Neil said union membership was starting to grow again for the first time in decades and this played a part in their decision to step down now. But with fewer members, and laws that make it harder to strike than it used to be, the way the ACTU campaigns for change has had to adapt. It has made politics and legislative change more important than ever.
A lot of the ACTU’s work under McManus and O’Neil has been on bringing in legislation to establish workplace rights, then getting those rights enforced, such as by the Fair Work Commission, the Fair Work Ombudsman or the courts. In this way, the ACTU has focused not just on getting wins for union members through collective bargaining. Stronger rights through legislation have brought changes that are then available to all employees.
The Coalition’s surprise victory in the 2019 election meant that it was only after Labor’s 2022 election win that the McManus and O’Neil-led ACTU was able to start making gains. The ACTU can claim it played a role in a number of wins for workers. Some legislative changes they have advanced have focused on freeing up collective bargaining, while others emphasise new legal rights, such as:
- the ‘right to disconnect’, meaning employees can refuse employer contact outside working hours in some circumstances
- ‘same job, same pay’ laws for contractors
- minimum pay and conditions for “gig workers”
- and Labor’s announcement last week that it’s reviving the Fair Work Court, which unions have campaigned for since it was scrapped 30 years ago.
But perhaps the most obvious change over the past few years has been on gender. The ACTU has helped push for a number of changes to improve the position of women in the workplace. These changes have helped to close the gender pay gap and to bring new workplace rights to women workers, such as the right to request flexible work and dispute fixed-term contracts.
Challenges ahead
Overall, McManus and O’Neil have been effective leaders, both in keeping the unions united and influencing the Albanese government’s agenda. But while they’ve got many of the things the ACTU wanted, the 2009 Fair Work Act – which sets out some of the main national workplace rules – still has several things in it that favour employers rather than unions. Employers still retain control over many aspects of collective bargaining, such as – in rare cases – allowing them to present a draft agreement for employees to vote on that was not the same as what was negotiated.
Meanwhile, many Australians have had a tough time economically during COVID and ever since, including seeing real wages going down and living standards decline over the past five years. So McManus was right to name cost of living among the key challenges for whoever takes over the reins, along with artificial intelligence at work and wealth inequality.
McManus and O’Neil can retire knowing that they did a good job through a difficult decade – but there is still more to be done by their successors.
Mark Bray is an emeritus professor at the University of Newcastle. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.