Despite a relentless communications strategy to amplify all negative union stories – including the selective leaking of damaging evidence to newspapers – Essential has found its key brand benchmark has moved only slightly.
Essential has been asking the question ‘how important are unions for Australian working people today’ since 2012.
The latest finding had 56 per cent of respondents agreeing that unions were very important (22 per cent) or quite important (34 per cent). In contrast just 32 per cent believed they were not very important (20 per cent) or not important at all (12 per cent).
While Labor (77 per cent) and Green (76 per cent) voters were more likely to agree unions were important, more than one third (36 per cent) of Liberal voters also agreed that unions were important.
These figures are only slightly down from February 2014 and tracking at the same level when the question was first asked in March 2012.
Public know a political exercise when they see it
ACTU President Ged Kearney says the findings show that the public has recognised the Royal Commission for the political exercise that it is.
“The federal government has spent $60 million in taxpayer money on a process designed to damage the reputation of the union movement.
“The ACTU has always held a strong view there is no room for corruption in the union movement, but there are bodies in place with the power to investigate.
“Instead the government has set up a process to raise untested individual grievances in a quasi-judicial forum with the aim of generating mountains of negative media coverage.”
Ged says the recent debate over perceived bias by the Commissioner was important but missed the bigger point.
“In many ways I think it is the Commission, not the Commissioner, that has been compromised politically.
“The good news is the partisan process does not appear to have succeeded in destroying public confidence in the union movement.”
No comments:
Post a Comment