So I've been working for a coles supermarket (victoria). never considered joining it before because I thought I wasn't going to be there that long…… 20 yrs later I'm still there!! I'm only thinking about it now because I'm getting old and tax reimbursements. Is it worth it?. Do u get it all back with tax?. Who is better sda or raffwu? I work 27hrs a week. Thanks!
Is It Worth Joining a Union?
Go Cat on 22/11/2023 - 12:31
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Not to be confused with the WAIFU
That's a membership you pay for RAIFU
or snafu.
Second this, was once a member of the SDA and they're pretty useless.
OP has answered their own question…..20 years later???
Besides the relevant union is rather useless.
It is probably not worth it, you don’t get it all back on tax, it is deductible but that only means you save your nominal tax rate, which given 27hrs a week probably is not a lot.
I think you misinterpret the point of a union
The point of a Union and what they actually deliver for members are two wildly different realities.
@elektron: Union factions in the Labor party literally green-lit the dismantling and sale of the industry overseas, to globalize the sector and it's work force.
@Jakka do you understand how tax deductions work ?
If you claim union fees of $50 a year you dont get $50 back from the government, what happens is you taxable income comes down $50… so your actual saving is the tax component of that last $50, lets say you pay 30% tax, that means you actually "saved" $15 not $50.
Ha ha! try =Sda $546 year. raffwu $514 yr. Im really dumb with tax & dont really understand how tax works. I do basic individual tax with not much deductions. so do u know how much would you get back from these amounts ??
Enter your details in to this and see what a $514 tax deduction does for you
It is really simple. Look at your last year’s tax assessment. If, for example, you paid 20% of your taxable income to the government, then you got 20% back from any tax deductible expense.
Tax deductible does not mean it is free.. just think of it as 15% to 20% discount (could be more or less depending on individual tax bracket).. will you still buy it?@Ridiculous Panda: The tax saving from any deduction is based on your marginal tax rate, i.e. the highest bracket. An average tax rate of 20% is irrelevant to the calculation.
@go cat If earn above $45,001 your top tax bracket would be 34.5% (including medicare levy). Then on $514 union fees you would get back $177.33 when you lodge your tax return.
Full fees will need to be paid whatever arrangement with the union. For example I pay fortnightly direct debit on my credit card.
At the end of the financial year, your union will issue a tax statement to you, which will be the evidence that you paid the union fees. You don't need to send it to the ATO, but keep it and supply if you ever get asked.
It is never too late to join. What I usually find is that in the name of efficiency older workers or long term staff are either made redundant or performance managed out. This is because they are on higher salaries and higher accrued entitlements. This is where union can be helpful in supporting an employee in individual industrial matters. When one is targeting at workplace, it is very lonely place to be. Especially for long term workers, they have not worked at any other workplace in a long time. They may have mortgages/rents to meet.
Although, union workers are over worked too. So, sometimes the support members receive is pretty hit or miss game.
Hope this helps.
$500 a year for a coles employee? What a rort.
aren't yours and @Jakka's comments saying the same thing? he says "you don't get it all back on tax", you say "you dont get $50 back from the government"
I think it is. You benefit from decades of union action so it's probably fair to contribute today. Without people before you paying their union dues or otherwise being involved in their unions what do you think your pay and conditions would be like today?
Lol.
Actually to be fair, if it wasn't for the SDA spending decades undermining the conditions of those in retail and fast food, conditions in these sectors would be vastly superior than they are today.
The latest agreement that they've got their hands on, at BIGW, will see employees being paid just 11c more per hour than the the General Retail Industry Award otherwise would.
Union is useless these days with Fairwork being what it is. Now they just make ridiculous demands to try and seem relevant and end out getting their workers jobs automated since it's easier to roll out and pay for R&D than to bargain with potato brained delegates.
You don't think business would still automate with or without unions all the same?
Patrick Terminals is a pretty good example of this. MUA was always striking or staging go slows for pay, benefits and anti-automation agreements. Eventually they got sick of them and commissioned the Autostrads to replace the already overpaid drivers. Previously they were happy to disperse the workers into other roles as they slowly rolled out the automation. But because the union didn't know it's actual worth and how easy they were to replace they got locked out and sacked. These uneducated potatoes were on 6 figures, 30hr/week contracts plus whatever they got in overtime but yet still weren't happy. (source: public info, but I was also an engineer at one of the container terminals)
Retrofitting automation requires a high upfront cost, so the more workers cause operational losses the better the business case for the company. Pretty simple reasoning, yet people wonder why the unions are dying out. Even the government productivity commission and fair work have had a go at the union, politically unaffiliated organisations.
@Juice-Wa: "Its" is already possessive, whereas "it's" is a contraction of "it is" or "it has".
So your argument against unions is that they will cause workers to be paid too much which will cause employers to replace them with robots? Unions are too effective so you are better off not joining one to help keep your pay low and keep your robot replacement at bay?
Worth
Worth joining, but choose the one with the most appealing member benefits to claw back the membership fee.
Unions are responsible for the vast majority of progress in workers rights and conditions so I think there is value in supporting them
That being said SDA have a checkered history
https://amp.smh.com.au/opinion/how-a-union-ripped-off-the-wo…
Always the problem, unions are fantastic, specific unions are often… eh.
I worked on the audit for a Teamsters pension fund, there were specific checks in there about looking for inappropriate access to funds (which my boss called 'Jimmy Hoffa rules') because the mafia basically ran it in the 70s. But these days it's just easier for union heads to work with the business than against it.
This is true, I dont think people look at the big picture of what unions in general have done over the past century for workplace rights and for workers in general compared to what worklife would be like if unions had never been around. sure there are now some bad unions or more likely badly managed unions but that doesnt detract from what everyone has now in law is most likely at somepoint a extra that a union fought for back in the day.
Spot on. Even if you aren’t working in an industry that has unions (like me), the benefits we enjoy today are largely due to the hard work unions have done for decades.
A lot of my colleagues and I are hoping our employer moves to a 4 day working week and this is only possible due to unions in other industries making it possible and putting it on the radar of other employers
Only some of them. Unions often suffer from bureaucracy rot, the entrenched leadership end up using the union for the own pet projects instead of focusing on maximising benefits for members. Its one of the reasons union membership in Australia continues to slip. If you choose a union be picky & keep an eye on what they are actually doing for you.
Yep.
Union leaders are mostly politically extreme leftists and that showed it's ugly head for the workers they were supposed to lead and protect during the Covid years, where they actively partnered with government and government agencies to both suppress their members working rights and limit or all together stop them from being able to earn an income at all.
People had to quit their unions to be able to secure their financial safety, while the rest were left to rot.
Must be why John Howard and the Liberals absolutely object to Union empowerment, they obviously did so from the kindness of their hearts to ensure no one needed to strike for better pay like the utopia we live today
/S
But why they do approve of the SDA for the opposite reason.
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/gold-standard-porter…
That's why they call the SDA a model union. SDA fights the workers for the employers, so the employers don't have to!
UnionsThe LNP,and their corporate lobbyists, along with their downstream business beneficiaries in Australia are cartels who pocketmountains in fees andkickbacks and keep wages artificially low.Wowzer, we agree on something, who would've thought!
Worth joining when you don't have individual bargaining power.
If you are like CEO and you can name your price it is a different matter.
Funny how nobody ever says CEOs are a useless tax on the Australian public.
they deserve being 50 times the salary of the average worker, cos they do 50 times the work. they're australias ozzie battlers / sarcasm tag
For example
Kelly Bayer Rosmarin
Alan Joyce
and other diversity hires ,
Stop talking bullshit, most people are not in a bargaining position. The only action they can take is leave.
Nobody in Coles or WOllies for example is personally negotiating a year bonus based on C or W profits…They all get the same as everyone else .
If only we could bring Work Choices back.
/s
I found 0 value in the union. Just be a valuable employee and you won't need it.
Have you heard what the Unions in Sweden are doing to Tesla ?
OP isn't in Sweden
So what if they arent, im making the point that Unions do help the little person.
Some people really are so insular.
@CowFrogHorse: My experience with a union was that they took a lot of fees, and when push came to shove they threw me under the bus. (profanity) them. Maybe 100 years ago it was different when they won 8 hour work days, but today they are little more than a corrupt bureaucracy. They are essentially beholden to the institutions they are meant to fight against, similar to how our regulatory bodies "in theory" should protect us, but actually serve corporate interests.
@ssfps: Same. SDA efused to provide the industrial lawyer representative that they tell you that you can get if needed. I had to fight for myself with my previous employer and mediation with fair work. I won because it was obvious they forced me out of the building and didn't allow me to work the notice period of forced redundancy. If I'd been allowed to work it, I would've clicked over to an additional year and they would've had to pay me more.
I'd never pay sda again but unions can still be valuable, mostly to scare workplace or if the union has a lot of representation in your workplace.
depends on the industry
I was in teh TWU as it was compulsory where i was working… soon realised for me it meant Totally Worthless Union.
If you are immediately going to be a ranked 'politburo' member of the Union it is worth, otherwise not. FYI, the Communist Party is banned, and not legal in this free country!
Wheres your proof the Communist party is banned.
When did the Communist party get banned in Australia?
One of the current leaders of the Australian Communist Party was also a leader for the miserably failed "Yes" campaign, Thomas Mayo.
if its a career, join the union
By all means join a union. After that I'd urge that you participate actively in YOUR union. Learn to keep an eye on the Union Officials and Organisers. Call out anything that you observe that displeases you. The union that you join will be the better for it.
What have they done for you in the last 20 years? Ask them
SDA are a rare exception. They are not a real union. They are firmly on the supermarkets payroll and getting kickbacks. They (profanity) over workers.
https://www.afr.com/work-and-careers/workplace/coles-activis…You work for a large corp so would highly recommend join a union like RAFFWU. Coles will eventually try and screw you over. Just look at Qantas, Telstra……. most of the largest employers in Oz.
They help keep the Coalition out of power at least yeah?
Hardly.
Yay they donate the Labor on one hand. On the other they are paid commission from Colesworth, doesn't pass the pub test yet they've gotten away with it forever - and it's not secret why.
They are all the same. Almost every last Union in Australia partnered with Government agencies and police authorities during the Covid years to stop their members from being able to work, or earn a living at all. They actively snitched on their own members who couldn't afford to be financially ruined by decisions made by politicized public servants still earning their full income while watching Netflix and drinking wine all day.
No.
Most are run by a##holes.
I wouldn't recommend SDA. RAFFWU appears alot better.
join the union and you could become a state or federal politician.
1/3 of federal labor politicians have union roots.
1/3 of federal Liberal politicians have IPA roots.
If you're not up to speed on your rights you may get a specific benefit in the future. A big part of joining the union is paying towards a group that will in theory push for your rights and interests. Whether you are a member or not, what a Union does or doesn't do will affect you.
I'm not particularly pro union though after changing work places I've noticed the biggest difference in working somewhere with little union involvement is that employees are less likely to be at the table when decisions are made.
It is as long as it is a union of a man and a woman.
'Pfft. Those unions'. - George Costanza
George Collumbaris$$
The union fees just go to a credit card which the union can spend on whatever they like. I would be taking a deep look into how each dollar is spent before giving any hard earned dollars over to them
This guy managed to get escort services and $100k cash from his union credit card
https://www.smh.com.au/national/labor-mp-accused-of-credit-c…
You obviously think that somehow justifies your previous comment, which is still wrong.
Yep, he went to jail, was bankrupted, and is about to go to jail again for other frauds. There's far, far more shonky employers than shonky union members. He's just one bad apple.
It is always worth joining a union if you can, one because you never know when you will need their asistance and also because they usually provide some protection / fight for your rights / benefits. But also because they are the ones who have most likely gotten you the current work conditions you have in regards to leave, pay increases, flexibility and other rights. If we had never had unions , we would still be under draconic working conditions from a 100 years ago. We definitely wouldnt have a lot of the rights and benefits that everyone takes for granted now.
I get some people are against unions and i know some unions can have a level of corruption as well etc but saying that, they are still better than not having a union because you can bet your bottom dollar, your workplace isnt going to freely give you all the benefits you have today if unions hadnt fought for them decades ago. However bad they are, i think they are still better than a lot of employers who dont give a crap about how they treat their employees.
we would still be under draconic working conditions from a 100 years ago. We definitely wouldnt have a lot of the rights and benefits that everyone takes for granted now.
Is there some evidence that work conditions in the 1920s were generally worse than today? Is there evidence that unions in Aus won us a bunch of rights?
Seems to me that collective bargaining only makes sense when
1) people are willing to literally die on that hill
2) there isn't a constant influx of new workers willing to undercut existing workers and suppress wages and worsen conditionsUnion Achievements
Annual Leave
Paid Annual Leave was first won after a campaign by printing workers in 1936. The Arbitration Commission granted the workers paid leave, which was then gained by other workers through their unions in different industries. Annual leave loading of 17.5 per cent was first won by workers in the Metal Industry in 1973.Awards
Awards are legally binding documents that set out the minimum entitlements for workers in every industry. The first industrial award, the Pastoral Workers Award was established by the Australian Workers Union in 1908, mainly covering shearers. The shearers had experienced a terrible deterioration of their wages and conditions during the 1897 Depression and decided to take action to protect working people. Since 1904, awards have underpinned the pay and terms and conditions of employment for millions of workers. Awards are unique to Australia and integral in ensuring workers get ‘fair pay for a fair day’s work’.Penalty Rates
Penalty rates were established in 1947, when unions argued in the Arbitration Commission that people needed extra money for working outside normal hours.Maternity leave
Australian unions’ intensive campaigning for paid parental leave ended in victory with the introduction of the Paid Parental leave scheme by the Gillard Labor government. Under the scheme, working parents of children born or adopted after 1 January 2011 are entitled to a maximum of 18 weeks’ pay on the National Minimum Wage.Superannuation
Prior to 1986, only a select group of workers were entitled to Superannuation. It became a universal entitlement after the ACTU’s National Wage Case. Employers had to pay 3% of workers’ earnings into Superannuation. This later increased to 9% and on November 2, 2011 the ACTU and its unions’ “Stand Up for Super” campaign celebrated another win for working Australians, when the Labor Government moved to increase the compulsory Superannuation Guarantee to 12% over 6 years from 1 July 2013 to 1 July 2019.Equal Pay for Women
Although there were attempts to introduce equal pay going back as far as 1949, the principle of equal pay for women was finally adopted by Australian Conciliation and Arbitration Commission in 1969.Health and Safety and Workers’ Compensation
Workers compensation laws first came into existence in West Australia in 1902. For many years unions agitated and campaigned for health and safety laws which compelled employers to provide a safe working environment. In Victoria, legislation was introduced in 1985 which saw the active role of workers in maintaining safety on the job. Building unions agitated for many years to ban the use of asbestos, finally succeeding in the 1980’s.Sick leave
Before sick leave, you turned up to work if you were sick, or you went without pay. Sick leave provisions began to appear in awards in the 1920’s and unions have campaigned hard for better sick leave conditions over the years, across all industries.Long service leave
Coal workers went on strike in 1949 over a 35 hour week and Long service leave. Long service leave was finally introduced in New South Wales in 1951. Unions in other states followed.Redundancy pay
The Arbitration Commission introduced the first Termination, Change and Redundancy Clause into awards due to work by metalworkers and their union. This entitled workers to redundancy pay.Allowances: shift allowance, uniform allowance
Unions in different industries have campaigned for allowances that pertain to their members. Many workers who are required to wear uniforms in their jobs, get an allowance for this rather than having to pay for uniforms themselves.Shift allowances are money that’s paid for working at night or in the afternoon. Different industries have different allowances that were won by workers and their unions over the years.
Meal Breaks, rest breaks
Before unions agitated for meal breaks and rest breaks to be introduced, workers were required to work the whole day without a break. In 1973, workers at Ford in Melbourne engaged in industrial action over many issues, one of their demands being a proper break from the production line.Collective Bargaining
Enterprise Bargaining was introduced in 1996 which allowed workers and their unions to negotiate directly with their employer over pay and conditions. Evidence from the Australian Bureau of Statistics shows that collective bargaining delivers better wages than individual agreements for ordinary workers.Unfair Dismissal Protection
Unfair Dismissal Protection came from the concept of a “fair go all round”, after the Australian Workers Union took a case to the Conciliation and Arbitration Commission on behalf of a worker who had been unfairly sacked in 1971. Since then, unions have campaigned for laws that reflect that ‘fair go’ principle, which is about having a valid reason to sack someone and that the dismissal cannot be harsh, unjust or unreasonable.What have the
RomansUnions ever done for us?
So nothing any time recently? I mean they are claiming an increase in the super guarantee as a win this century, but I think most would agree Parliament legislated a gradual increase of the percentage to 12% by 2025 because of a concern that the current rate will still leave many retirees too reliant on the age pension.
Great list. The BLF in Sydney was also responsible for the Green Bans which saved a lot of heritage properties from demolition, as well as preserving green spaces in the city. Some interesting reading here - https://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/green_bans_movement .
There are a few achievements there, but some of them are bullshit:
Penalty rates were established in 1947, when unions argued in the Arbitration Commission that people needed extra money for working outside normal hours.
Penalty rates have gone backwards for at least a couple decades now. Why didn't the unions protect us from that if they are half-way functional?
Superannuation
I'm shocked people are gullible enough to believe this is to workers benefits. We are now forced to give up ~10% of our salary to an inherently risky or lossy retirement fund, even when it would make more sense to be paid this and put it into our PPORs.
Enterprise Bargaining was introduced in 1996 which allowed workers and their unions to negotiate directly with their employer over pay and conditions. Evidence from the Australian Bureau of Statistics shows that collective bargaining delivers better wages than individual agreements for ordinary workers.
Horse-shit. I was part of an EBA and all it did was validate a below market pay across the company. Maybe some EBAs benefit workers, maybe not. In this very thread there is discussion on the big-w EBA being 11c above award, wow, so great.
Parental leave
For sure a win, but it's not like maternity leave is universal, plenty of people miss out due to tenure, or employers that put workers on successive fixed-term contracts. OTOH IT workers who have no union are often given parental leave beyond the statutory minimum, so where is the evidence unions were needed to win this?
Ultimately, remuneration vs inflation has been steadily decreasing for decades, which is more important than any "benefit". Unless you can quantify what workers earned in real terms of wealth then vs now, listing random benefits is pretty meaningless, even if they are good on the surface. I don't care about getting 10 statutory sick days if my salary is halved.
Not sure why ozb has such a hard-on for these leeches.
I'm shocked people are gullible enough to believe this is to workers benefits. We are now forced to give up ~10% of our salary to an inherently risky or lossy retirement fund, even when it would make more sense to be paid this and put it into our PPORs.
Do you actually think businesses would be paying you that 10% if they weren't forced to pay it into your super?
You're not giving up 10% of your salary, you're getting 10% on top of your salary.
If there weren't laws to enforce base salary + super, you'll be getting just base salary.
You're not giving up 10% of your salary, you're getting 10% on top of your salary.
I disagree with this opinion.
If all that's true then, that's pretty awesome, I like most of these things.
So what happened after 1996, just everything's all good now?@idonotknowwhy: Unions dont have anywhere near the same amount of power due to a lot of people who dont like unions (brainwashed at times) or join unions. The less people that are members, the less collective power that unions will have in that sector or in general. Just like with anything, the more you want to be able to stand up against something that inherently has power over you, the more you will need to stand in unison.
I know in a lot of sectors, their rights and powers have gone backwards over the past decade or 2 due to less involvement and more employers pushing for individual agreements with people and separating people into smaller groups and giving each of those groups a different level of rights and benefits. As well as the whole work choices push that howard brought in changed EBAs a lot in some industries. If you look at the EBA before and after that, it was a massive difference as well as where there would be 1 eba for the whole company, it got split into multiple separate EBAs and people were put into smaller groups. To this day, more than a decade later, i still see unions trying to get the EBAs back to what they used to be before WorkChoices but have not been able to especially with the splitting of labourers into smaller groups.
While i think there is some corruption in unions as well as especially in some management areas, fact of the matter is time and time again i have seen unions do more for employees than companies or employers ever do. And to think otherwise is basically nonsensical. If you truly think that most companies (there will be some exceptions) and employers / higher management will prefer to give more rights and benefits to staff than less and care more about staff benefits than profit margins and bonuses, then… lol.
@lonewolf: Unions won penalty wage rights for casual supermarket workers in 2018 for one. Unions triggered Qantas' prosecution just this year in 2023. Not surprising the media doesn't mention anything not groundbreaking.
@Typical16-bitEnjoyer: People are more than happy to use all the benefits unions and union members have fought for, but turn around and ask whats the point of unions or i dont want to join a union. I have a couple of work colleagues who join the union when they have an issue with their manager and then immediately quit the union (union fees) once they have got what they wanted from the union fighting for them. Its pretty disappointing.
Beautiful list. Really nailed the importance of unions and their achievements.
Yep, there was a time when unions achieved stuff. No way would they have allowed full time workers to be considered casual. No way would you be expected to carry a company phone 24x7 without being compensated.
Modern unions are allowing everything that was worked for to be eroded.
Would we be better off without them? No.
Do they earn their fees? No.
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https://raffwu.org.au/coles
RAFFWU is 100% better than the SDA. As the SDA is notorious for working with employers, who facilitate recruitment for them in turn.
https://www.smh.com.au/interactive/2016/shopped-out/