"That's the hardest thing, you can't plan anything because when [the big clothing retailer] stopped giving me shifts I couldn't go to my second job (as a waiter) and say 'hey can you give me some day shifts'. I needed to keep days free in case [the warehouse] calls," he says. "It's a vicious cycle."

Some weeks Prouting worked only 20 hours and other weeks as many as 60 across his two jobs. It made committing to things difficult. Since moving to Queensland from New Zealand two years ago he has lived with his aunt, unable to afford to move out.

His dilemma is a modern twist on the "Hungry Mile", where dock workers during the Great Depression would move from job to job looking for a day's work. Instead of standing around waiting to be picked out of a line, people are sent a text, but the effect is the same. Workers with little control over their lives.

The rise of jobs with far fewer workplace protections – such as casual, contract or labour hire – has been a feature of the Australian labour market since the 1990s.  More than two million workers are now engaged as casuals and more than a million are contractors or in labour hire.

The shift has transformed Australia in other ways, it has helped dramatically weaken organised labour – one of Australia's most important institutions.

The liberalisation of the labour market has come as the economy has been opened up to competition, sweeping away many old unionised industries.

Unions now represent just 12 per cent of the private-sector workforce, including a loss of 100,000 private-sector members since 2010, with far-reaching consequences on inequality, wages, job security and the Labor Party, which is being pushed into reform by the dwindling numbers.

It is part of a trend across the industrialised world of declining union density in the workforce but the falls in Australia since 2000, according to OECD data, have been sharper than in similar countries.

Despite the crisis, there are few signs of far-reaching renewal in the labour movement, with many Australian unions slow or unwilling to reform. But there are some signs of life.

One attempt at revival is coming from, of all places, the Docklands in Melbourne, among the gleaming towers of corporate Australia.

From here a bold plan is being implemented to help transform a union, and the labour movement, through a mix of reaching out to the broader society and through old-school industrial militancy, with some modern twists.

Tim Kennedy, the national secretary of the National Union of Workers, doesn't look much like a radical. He wears business shirts, has a neat conventional haircut, speaks with a soft country accent and rarely raises his voice. He could pass for the local accountant.

But as the head of the NUW, attempting a revival of the historic union mission, he might be the most interesting union leader in Australia today.

The Labor-affiliated NUW represents workers in the private sector in industries at the forefront of casualisation and insecure work. They include giant warehouses, call centres, and in Dickensian chicken factories where conditions can be poor and workers paid a pittance.

And when Kennedy talks, ever so softly, he can sometimes sound like an old Left radical; not a union associated with Labor's dominant, and typically conservative, right-wing factions.

"Capitalism doesn't listen to democracy," he says. "We have a real crisis with neo-liberal economics, it does not work for people."

Throughout his long interview with Fairfax Media he talks of "class", "inequality" and "capital" in a way that is rarely heard in public debate these days. He calls billionaire Andrew Forrest a "robber baron" and accuses powerful business interests of trying to rip up the social contract that guarantees ordinary people important social and workplace protections. "Big Capital doesn't agree with post World War II settlement," he says.

Kennedy says neo-liberalism has "quietened" debate, limiting the issues that can be spoken about.

"Sure Australia is a more wealthy place, but the gap between those who are winning and those who are losing is growing. That used to be mitigated by strong unions ... that's declining and needs to change."

The ambition isn't just strong words. In recent years there has been an attempt by the NUW to revive the idea of the labour movement as something more than a "narrow labourist organisation" that merely bargains for its members every three or four years.

It has started sponsoring literary prizes in journal Overland, introduced the idea of "community membership" to appeal to supporters not connected to the union, reached out to back-packers used as cheap labour on farms and even helped with the creation of a new national unemployment union.

Its offices in the Docklands look more like the home of a technology start-up and are full of bright young people, a far cry from the antiquated operations of some unions. In Victoria the NUW have been the most militant union in recent years – in a state known for it – with strikes and picket lines at big companies including Toll, Coles and poultry giant Baiada as part of a campaign to roll back the use of casual or contract work.

Its approach has attracted strong criticism from senior Liberals, including employment minister Eric Abetz, but little of the scrutiny has fallen on the low-key Kennedy himself. Over summer members of the NUW even occupied part of a factory.

The push seems to be working for the NUW and its members, but it is swimming against a formidable tide.

In recent weeks Fairfax Media has visited NUW worksites and meetings involving its members.

And even at its strongest unionised sites, including a warehouse for a big food company in Melbourne's west, full-time work is an ideal, not universal. Four out of 21 workers were casuals. When asked how many would like full-time work, all the casual staff said they would.

"We can't fix that at a workplace level," organiser Adam Auld tells them, saying it has got to be part of a broader battle.

Auld talks of a worker at another warehouse, which he says looks like a remand centre, being told that it could be his last day after turning up to work nine minutes late. His bus was delayed as part of a daily commute that takes four hours.

Many of these workplaces are hidden from view from most of us in industrial estates and factories, deserted of shops and away from residential areas. Driving through them, they feel austere and devoid of everyday life.

"We see employers, increasingly over the years, no longer recognise the legitimate role of unions," Kennedy says. "Employers have taken the view in Australia they can try and knock organised labour out."

What is left of unions in the private sector tends to be around old industries, often with relatively well-paid members. Unions there are servicing the "aristocracy of the working class", Kennedy says, while many vulnerable workers go unrepresented. The data supports this; union members are better paid than the average worker and are also much more likely to be in full-time work than non-union employees.

Tim Lyons, until recently the ACTU assistant secretary, is one of the sharpest thinkers in the union movement. Along with Kennedy,  he was hired to work at the NUW in 1995 by Greg Sword and started on the same day.

He says the union – its forerunner was the Storeman and Packers – has played an important role in union history, despite its small size. In the 1980s its former officials, Simon Crean and Bill Kelty, were key players at the ACTU during the Accord years with the Hawke and Keating governments.

"The union has shown tremendous capacity to reinvent itself and has always been one of the sites of experimentation in the labour movement," Lyons says.

In the 1980s, unions were in a position of strength and used that, as part of the Accord, to trade off higher wages for social programs such as Medicare.

Lyons sees the union playing a similar reforming role today, but with a much different context as unions fight for survival.

"I'd like there to be more (industrial) disputes," says Lyons. "I want working people winning and in the end that does require workplace activism and occasionally means disputes."

Lyons, who recently failed in his bid to become ACTU secretary, says unions have lost a sense of being part of a broad social movement, something he says the NUW and some other unions are tackling. "It is quite inspiring."

Yet the recovery is not easy. While private sector unionism is collapsing, the NUW model has resulted in only modest growth. Far better than others, but still not strong. "We're working flat out to stay in front," Kennedy says.

Steve Knott, the tough-talking chief executive of the Australian Mines and Metals Association, expects things to get worse for unions in an era where individualism is ascendant.

"There's been a fundamental change in the way work has been conducted. If you go back to when unions had one in every two people (as members), the late 70s and early 80s, most people entering the workforce were looking to work for one, possibly two employers."

Employers were also more willing to co-operate, often sending a new worker off to the pay office to sign up as a union member, Knott says. Now they are far less accommodating and, in an open economy, people move between jobs more regularly.

Some unions have tried to hide their problems. In 2013 the Transport Workers Union were caught out by Fairfax Media grossly overstating how many members they had in a bid to boost their influence in the ALP; as were the Australian Workers Union.

That old approach of many ALP-affiliated unions, with its focus on Labor's byzantine machinations, is surely the path to extinction: If Labor doesn't cut them adrift first. The NUW are mostly bit players in the factional system and Kennedy concedes it has helped them focus on industrial issues more.

After a devastating federal election loss in 2013, Labor was forced into a process of considering major reform including watering down the historic union relationship. While that process has stalled somewhat, due largely to the woes of the Abbott government, it is only occurring because unions are so weak.

It is unlikely, if unions still represented one in two workers, as they did in the 1980s, that the calls for ALP reform would have been as strong.

"For the union movement we've got to have a broad social view of what a good society looks like," Kennedy says."People are looking to be part of a progressive movement so we've got to stretch our reach a bit further."

Sam Prouting's experience of the once-envied Australian labour market was so dispiriting the 21-year-old is not sure if he will stay here.

While Prouting joined the NUW at the giant Australian clothing retailer, his lack of rights as a casual meant he was easily cut. The tribulations of finding out if he had warehouse work via a text message wore him down physically and emotionally.

"It put me off ever getting a casual job again. At the end of the day I'm  just a casual worker, there's not much protection for us."