Australia’s union movement, representing around 1.6 million workers, will have two new leaders by the end of this year, in a surprise move. Announcing their departures, Australian Council of Trade Union (ACTU) Secretary Sally McManus said she will step down first, at the end of August. President Michele O’Neil will stay on for a few months longer to help with the transition to a ‘new generation’.
Starting in 2017 and 2018 respectively, McManus and O’Neil were the longest serving ACTU leaders in more than half a century, and the first all-female leadership team. They worked closely with the Albanese government since its election in 2022 to bring in a suite of workplace law changes, from the right to disconnect from work to criminalising wage theft. In an interview on Monday, McManus said almost a decade was a long time to be ACTU secretary: “You’ve got to factor into that the COVID years – they’re worth double”.
From workplace rights to wages, what legacy will the pair leave?
The changing face of unions
For most of the ACTU’s 99-year history, Australian men were more likely to be union members. But in 2012 – just a few years before McManus and O’Neil took over – that changed. As of 2024, there were more women union members (around 853,000) than men (around 726,000). The Australian Nursing and Midwifery federation is the country’s biggest union today, representing around 356,000 nurses, midwives and care workers.
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:
