Australian Unions - The Unknown Class Action Protagonists

Abstract

Class actions have been available in the Federal Court of Australia since March 1992. The scholarly reviews of the major players in the Australian class action landscape, that have appeared in the legal literature since 1992, have placed under scrutiny the conduct and role of major plaintiff law firms and, more recently, litigation funders and the Australian Securities and Investments Commission. But the first ever empirical study of this regime, that the authors are currently conducting, has revealed the significant role that unions have played in Federal class actions. The aim of this article is to explore how Australian unions have sought to enforce the legal rights of workers through the employment of the Federal class action regime.

Keywords: Australia, United States, empirical study, class actions, trade unions, litigation funding, settlement, opt out, class action notices, access to justice, judicial economy, industrial disputes, duration, opt in, aggrieved workers