This category contains a selection of Union books as suggested for selling on this site by other ASU members. Where possible the union books sold by the ASUshop are sold below recommend retail price to ASU members. If you have read a union book and would like to suggest it for selling on this site for other ASU members to enjoy please contact cburgess@asu.asn.au.
'Designing Better Futures: Rethinking Strategy For a Sustainable World' by Michael J.C. McAllum
From the back of the book:
This is a book about these times of turbulence, uncertainty and rapid change with a difference. it does not fill us with empty utopias nor does it give us an endless litany of bad news; rather, it challenges us to move towards designing better futures.
"This book challenges us and future generations. The message is hard...even frightening. yet it is delivered alongside messages of hope. Most importantly, it shows how we can design a pathway to avoid a catastrophe on planet Earth. Written with wit and flair. Read and act..."
- Rob Carter. Economist and former CEO Brisbane City.
'Worth Fighting For: Inside the 'Your Rights at Work' Campaign' by Kathie Muir
This book tells the story of the ACTU’s ‘Your Rights at Work’ campaign against Work Choices, the largest, most expensive and most sophisticated political campaign ever mounted in Australia, and one with a decisive impact on the 2007 federal election.
Your Rights at Work was an unprecedented campaign in Australian political history. Longer, more expensive, and implemented across a wider range of media, worksites and community venues than any previous political campaign by any other non-party group, YRaW also attracted a wide range of people as active supporters of the campaign. Many of these people had never been active in union campaigns previously, some were retired or were not union members. People from all walks of life were outraged by the meanness of the legislation and the Government's lack of a mandate for its implementation. Some older workers' were concerned for their children and grandchildren's future, horrified at the thought that rights they and their parents had struggled and sacrificed to win might be lost to future generations.
The book 'Worth Fighting For: Inside the Your Rights at Work' campaign provides a lively record of the development and implementation of the campaign. Through interviews with union leaders, along with participant observation, Kathie Muir traces the innovative nature of the television and paid media strategies, the workplace and community mobilising strategies.
This is a lively and accessible book that provides an invaluable record of the most important political campaign ever undertaken by the Australian union movement and is an essential resource for union education and training.
'Greenhouse Solutions With Sustainable Energy' by Mark Diesendorf
Global warming is the hottest political issue of the day, and it is likely to become even more pressing over the coming years.This is a positive, proactive book that proposes a set of policies and strategies for implementing the most promising cleaner energy technologies by all spheres of government, business and community organisations. The book argues that despite being a coal and oil dependent country, Australia could achieve an ecologically sustainable energy system. All we need is the political will.
The book puts forward a set of policies and strategies for implementing the most promising clean energy technologies by all spheres of government, business and community organisations. Greenhouse Solutions with Sustainable Energy suggests that a mix of efficient energy use, renewable energy sources and natural gas (as a transitional fuel) offers a clean and feasible energy future for Australia.
'Trustees On Trial: Recovering the Stolen Wages' by Rosalind Kidd
In her startling book, Rosalind Kidd uses official correspondence to reveal the extraordinary extent of government controls over Aboriginal wages, savings, endowments and pensions in twentieth century Queensland. In a disturbing indictment of the government's $4000 reparations offer, Kidd unpicks official dealings on the huge trust funds compiled from private income and community endeavours, showing how governments used these finances to their advantage, while families and communises struggled in poverty.
Casting the evidence in terms of national and international litigation, particularly cases relating to government accountability for Indigenous interests, Kidd makes a powerful case that the Queensland government should be held to the same standards of accountability and redress as any major financial institution. "Trustees on Trial" is a timely warning for all other Australian jurisdictions to consider their liability for Aboriginal money taken in trust.
'Pocket Superannuation Guide - The 50 Crucial Answers For Employers' by Anne Lampe
One of the most important decisions you will make about your super obligations will be which super fund you choose to be your default fund. As an employer, you want to do the right thing by your staff, while making things easy for yourself.
MTAA Super is committed to providing employers access to information that can assist with their superannuation obligations. To answer your most basic and most frequently asked questions about how to manage your super obligations, consider this popular pocket superannuation guide.
This product is available at this price for ASU members only, please enter your ASU membership and branch number when placing you order. A limit of 1 per person per order applies.
'Pocket Superannuation Guide - The 50 Critical Answers You Need' by Anne Lampe
This booklet provides 50 handy tips on growing your retirement income. It acts as a reference you can use to help you decide how to handle your superannuation and provides crucial answers to questions most people have about Superannuation.
This product is available at this price for ASU members only, please enter your ASU membership and branch number when placing you order. A limit of 1 per person per order applies.
'Bullying - From Backyard to Boardroom' (second edition)
edited by Paul McCarthy, Jane Rylance, Robin Bennett & Helga Zimmerman (Federation Press)
From the back cover of the book:
Bullying doesn’t stop at school. Adult life creates its own pressures, particularly in the workplace. Some people habitually, some occasionally, use inappropriate means to achieve their ends. Always there are victims—at work, in clubs, in families—and their numbers seem to be increasing.
'Bullying: From Backyard to Boardroom' is written in a clear and concise style. It is a practical book based on current research and the best theoretical frameworks. It is a useful resource for professionals who need to address bullying, for those experiencing bullying, and for those providing support to someone being bullied.
This represents a substantial revision of Philip Mendes’ successful textbook Australia’s Welfare Wars, in which the author explains – and questions – many of the values and assumptions that underpin contemporary social welfare policies. In particular, the book is critical of the Neo-liberal or Economic rationalist ideas that now dominate the welfare debates in Australia and overseas, and instead demonstrates and reaffirms the ongoing relevance of social-democratic and welfare-state ideals.
Find out why you really need to live, thrive and survive! This book is packed with tips on implementing more flexible working conditions. Being a member of the ASU means you are obviously no dummy! This is a practical 'how to' guide on grater job satisfaction.
Author Katherine Lockett works at the University of South Australia and helped establish their Centre for Life & Work research unit
This book covers topics such as:
Stand and Deliver: Your Job or Your Life
Looking After Yourself First
Size Isn't Everything - Small Changes That Work
Preparing to Work for Work/Life Balance
The Bigger Picture: Getting What you Want Long term
‘Lessons From Longford - The Esso Gas Plant Explosion' - by Andrew Hopkins
Andrew Hopkins identifies and discusses the issues that led to the explosion at Esso’s Longford gas plant in 1998, which killed two workers and left Victorians without gas for two weeks. This book is brief, highly readable and upon reading the book, it would rather sad tragedy if an event as catastrophic as this repeated itself.
Hopkins insightfully traces the disaster’s causes to cultural and systemic problems within Esso, rather than looking to shift responsibility to its operators (as Esso did). Hopkins focuses on Esso’s attitude to its safety system, compliance and the variable that led to the incident and how it could have been avoided.
This analysis and Hopkins’ practical suggestions for how to remedy problems make the book well worth its cover price.
- Edited by Mordy Bromberg SC & Mark Irving, with a Forward by Bob Hawke
This book aims to provide political debate and a blueprint for the future of industrial relations.
From the back of the book:
The Charter is a back to basics attempt to define the rights of workers and employers. It is a simply expressed contemporary document that draws upon international as well as uniquely Australian rights and values to create a set of rights and obligations which all workplaces are encouraged to adopt and observe. The Charter enables a critique of current labour laws and any proposals for change.
'The Little History of Australian Unionism' is a compact, complete and up-to-date story of the development of Australian unions over the past 200 years.
With the support of 14 Australian unions, including the ASU, the book is aimed at everyone interested in the history of Australian society and the formation of its values and institutions and particularly at students of history as well as unionised and yet-to-be-unionised workers, old and young.
Scalmer’s incisive account provides a history of trade unions that is clear, accurate and engaging. He records their achievements, explains how they were won, and provides an invaluable context for the urgent defence of the union movement.
'The Labour Market Ate My Babies - Work, Children and a Sustainable Future'
by Barbara Pocock (Federation Press)
Listed in top 50 Management Books for 2006 in the Australian Financial Review BOSS magazine, January 2007, Volume 8.
In 'The Labour Market Ate My Babies' Barbara Pocock, acclaimed author of 'The Work/Life Collision,' examines the impact of modern working life on our children. In this book, young Australians from all over the country, city and the bush, rich and poor, talk about the good and bad of parental work - the trade off between money and time, consumer riches versus time for each other.
Pocock argues that the modern labour market is having a huge impact on today’s youth and eating into our capacity to care. Children have become a ‘market’. Caring for kids and selling to kids is big business, as stressed, time-poor parents struggle to care for their children and salve their guilt with presents and pocket money.
'Excess Baggage: Leveling the Load and Changing the Workplace' by Ellen Rosskam
The ASUshop was fortunate enough to acquire advance publication copies of this book at a discounted price, however stock is limited – so get in quick!!
Excess Baggage is a book based on research by Ellen Rosskam on the working conditions of airport check-in workers in two countries. Excess Baggage takes a rare look at how economic insecurity and globalisation impinges on the health and functioning of workers under stress. Similar cases and strains are occurring in many work groups around the world – this book gives an insight to the suffering some workers are being forced to endure today.
Ellen Rosskam is Visiting Professor at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell, Work Environment Department and various other roles. She is the author of 50 scientific publications.
'Violence at Work: Causes Patterns and Prevention'
edited by Martin Gill, Bonnie Fisher, Vaughan Bowie (William Publishing, UK)
From the back cover of the book:
Workplace violence has emerged as a rapidly growing concern in today’s interdependent political economy, and increasing attention is being paid to the phenomenon by business, industry, health and welfare services and the academic world: the central tasks are to identify its causes, and to devise strategies to both prevent and counter it. In this book a distinguished international team of contributors, composed of both academics and practitioners, identify and address the key issues, presenting the results and lessons to be learned from a range of case studies in the USA, Canada, Britain and Australia.
Overall this book provides an authoritative foundation from which to develop ways of better explaining, predicting, understanding and preventing workplace violence, and will be essential reading for anybody with an interest in the subject.
'The Work / Life Collision' by Barbara Pocock (Federation Press)
From the back cover of the book:
Longer working hours, insecure jobs, child care, declining birth rates, parental leave, the ‘mummy track’, the success or failure of feminism – the levels of passion, vitriol, despair and guilt these subjects engender attest to the importance Australians place on them, and rightly so. Their effects go beyond how we feel: they affect vital economic and demographic trends.
The Work/Life Collision, grounded in thorough quantitative and qualitative research, analyses how these factors affect each other, in particular the collision of work and care and its implications for how we live.
Pocock guides us through the real experiences of Australian households ands points to a uniquely Australian solution to a fairer world.
'Indirect Discrimination in the Workplace' by Rosemary Hunter (Federation Press)
From the back cover of the book:
A host of traditional employment practices have been found to fall into this category (unlawful discrimination)—height and weight requirements, a last-on-first-off policy, job mobility conditions, even a bus ticketing system, have fallen foul of equal opportunity legislation.
This indirect discrimination legislation is complex and in places highly technical. Its impact and potential is little understood. Rosemary Hunter comprehensively analyses the legislation, State and Federal, private sector and public.
'Brave New Workplace - How Individual Contracts Are Changing Our Jobs'by David Peetz
David Peetz could have sub-titled this book "How individual contracts have been used to de-unionise Australian workplaces, " since, as he points out, this is the real purpose for which they have been used .
Another must read for the serious unionist. Recommended for full-time union officials and delegates who will recognise the experiences David describes.
'Getting Past No - Negotiating with Difficult People'
by William Ury
Sequel to the bestseller, 'Getting to Yes'
This book was requested for selling in the ASUshop by an ASU trainer. Here are her comments about the book:
Thank you for sending me a copy of “Getting past no”. I appreciate it and on initial reading it will be very useful to our delegates. As if focuses on difficult negotiations I think it is of more benefit to our circumstances that “Getting to Yes”.
'Willing Slaves - How the Overwork Culture Is Ruling Our Lives'
by Madeline Bunting
The British work the longest hours in Europe. What do they get in return? Work-related stress is soaring and Britain has one of the highest rates of job insecurity in the world. Over a third of the workforce is so exhausted at the end of a day's work that they can only slump on the sofa. Among the questions Madeleine Bunting investigates in this radical and hard hitting expose of the overwork culture are:
Why do we work so hard?
Why do we put up with it?
What is the cost to our health, relationships and children?
Willing Slaves, based on first-hand research and hundreds of interviews explores the paradox of how we allow ourselves to be exploited and how we look to work to give out lives meaning and purpose. It reveals how such an astonishing fraud has been perpetrated and analyses why millions of workers face burnout but believe 'there is no alternative' - and what we have to do to take our own lives back.
'Dirt Cheap - Life at the Wrong End of the Job Market'
by Elisabeth Wynhausen
And you thought your job sucked...
Elisabeth Wynhausen has often written about the lives of the Australian working poor. Dirt Cheap is her account of the year she joined them, going undercover to work as a factory hand, checkout chick, kitchen hand and cleaner, and attempting to live on her meager earnings.
Caustic, courageous and often funny, Dirt Cheap is a unique view of class, power and middle management seen from the other side of the serving counter, and a very personal experience of what it is like to be underpaid, under-appreciated and part of Australia's emerging underclass.
'UNITED - A History of the Municipal Employees Union in NSW'
by Peter McMahon
Special Price
United tells the story of unionism in local government and the electricity industry recording the achievements and the battles of the past 100 years. As the Federated Municipal and Shires Employees Union turns 100 this history provides vital documentation of the union and the men and women who played a role in its development and formation over the past 100 years.
Children's Book - Recommended ages 3-7 (soft back cover)
Limited stock left.
This delightful book tells the tale of farmer brown and his cows that can type. Farmer Brown's problems start when his cows go on strike. This book has been recommend by unionists all over the world.
'The End of Equality - Work, Babies and Women's Choices in 21st Century Australia'
by Anne Summers
After speaking at the ASU National Women's conference in 2004 Anne Summers arranged for a discounted price for ASU Members of her latest book, The End of Equality.
'Peak Unions In Australia – Origins Purpose, Power, Agency' edited by Bradon Ellem, Raymond Markey & John Shields (Federation Press)
This innovative and comprehensive book is the first detailed study of the making and development of Australian peak unions. For over 150 years, peak unions have been central part of the Australian industrial relations landscape. They remain by far the most significant institutional form of inter-union cooperation in the country at the national, state, local and industry scales.
Its 13 chapters explore the whole range of peak unions and labour councils, from local bodies in Rockhampton, the Illawarra, Wagga Wagga and Broken Hill, through State councils in Western Australia, Queensland, Victoria and New South Wales, to the national peak union body, the Australian Council of Trade Unions.
The book allies this empirical diversity with an essential theoretical cohesion. It opens with two conceptual chapters which develop a model for explaining the formation and changing purpose and power of peak unions, a model which resonates through all the subsequent chapters.
'The Transformation of Australian Industrial Relations' by Marl Wooden (Federation Press)
The past decade has seen the decline in importance of the tribunal-based systems of conciliation and arbitration that have shaped relationships between labour and management in this country since the turn of the century.
This book analyses these changes and provides an understanding of their impact on Australian workplaces and "makes an important contribution to the study of Australian industrial relations arrangements and can be expected to have a significant impact on both policy and research in the years ahead"
'Work Councils In Australia – Future Prospects and Possibilities' edited by Paul J Gollan, Ray Markey and Iain Ross (Federation Press)
This book presents a range of perspectives on the future prospects and possibilities of works councils in Australia. It is argued by many that lower trade union presence in recent years has led to the development of a 'representation gap' in many organisations and that recent corporate failures have reinstated the debate for greater employer accountability and more effective corporate governance at the workplace. The authors in this book argue that these developments highlight an important issue for policy makers, namely whether in this climate Australia should seek to encourage collective representation structures such as works councils reinforced by supportive laws and policies.
Drawing on current Australian and overseas research, the authors in this book address these issues be presenting a number of questions.
Why do we need works councils in Australia?
What is the current state of play regarding workplace employee representation?
Can works councils be accommodated under the current legislative framework?
What is the likelihood of success?
What are the opportunities and the threats for employers and unions in introducing works councils in Australia?
'Discrimination Law and Practice' (second edition) by Chris Ronalds and Rachel Pepper (Federation Press)
This second edition of 'Discrimination Law and Practice' is a revised edition of the seminal Australian textbook dealing exclusively with discrimination law and its practical application. Its concise account marries clarity with depth and is suitable for all whose work or interest brings them into contact with discrimination law - lawyers, business people, human resources and industrial relations staff, advocates and students.
Essential reading for those into Discrimination Law and its fundamental concepts; well researched, skilfully compiled and easy to follow. Recommended for lawyers and non lawyers alike!
'Fragmented Futures – New Challenges In Working Life' by Ian Watson, John Buchanan, Iain Campbell & Chris Briggs (Federation Press)
Fragmented Futures examines how working life has become more 'fragmented' as a result of significant social and economic change in Australia in the last quarter of the twentieth century. It asks how we should address such fragmentation in pursuit of a society in which prosperity is shared, diversity, choice and opportunity are increased, and exclusion and inequality are minimised.
Fragmented Futures provides a foundation on which to begin addressing the real social problems faced in work and life today. Its themes are at the core of everyday Australian experience; our response to its challenges will determine every Australian's future.
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