Time is running out for Kevin Rudd to reclaim the prime ministership. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen As this scene fades to the next tale of suburban frustration and family disappointment, a female voice-over is heard: "More and more, the demands of business are eating away at the basic rights unions have won for all of us." But where the earlier ACTU campaign was aimed squarely at the Howard government, this ad has no partisan target. Tony Abbott and the Liberals are not mentioned. Nor does it advocate for the Gillard government, also unmentioned. Instead, the punchline is: "Australian unions. Join. For a better life." This does not seem to be about the short-term power struggle of the federal election but the longer run of union membership. The secretary of the ACTU, Dave Oliver, confirms that we're not missing anything: "When I was elected at congress it was on a mandate of making the ACTU an independent, high-profile campaigning organisation," he says.

Illustration: Rocco Fazzari "Unfortunately, these aren't made-up scenarios. It's holding a mirror up to what's going on in workplaces. It's about the basic power imbalance in the workplace, and a very clear call to join a union." But they're obviously timed for the September 14 election, no? Yes and no, says Oliver. "These ads will run for at least two months and, budget permitting, we hope to continue running them regardless of who wins the election." In other words, the ads are not about the interests of the Labor Party in the short run so much as the interests of the labour movement in the longer run. The ACTU is looking to transcend the election. The ACTU's Your Rights at Work Campaign was central to the Labor push to win power in 2007. This time, however, the ads are deliberately aloof from the immediate fight.

Rudd was reminding the Labor caucus that he is still available. Has even the union movement given up on Julia Gillard? It certainly seems so. The ads don't explicitly endorse her - and nor does the implicit message. If these workplace injustices are already occurring, the Rudd-Gillard government must be to blame, surely? It's been in power for six years. Oliver resists this conclusion: "It hasn't happened overnight. It's over the last few decades. Our concern is what a Tony Abbott government would look like, especially around penalty rates, casualisation, loadings and rosters. Individual flexibility is used to undermine collective agreements." If that's the ACTU's concern, why not hit it directly? Oliver reserves the right to run ads that try to influence the election but says the ACTU has "not yet decided". Abbott's opposition deliberately made itself a small target for the ACTU. In fact, the Coalition's workplace policy was written to present the least threatening face possible. While it will attack the unions, it carefully leaves in place all the existing worker protections.

This is immensely frustrating to business and has drawn howls from Peter Reith - but Abbott is taking no chances. He has said he will call for a Productivity Commission inquiry and, if he intends any changes to workplace laws, to take them to the following election to give the people a say. This week two Gillard government MPs packed up their offices. Two others openly ridiculed the Prime Minister's office and its "messaging" efforts. Labor headquarters is proceeding to the election on the assumption that the party will win 32 per cent of the primary vote, implicitly conceding a loss of 6 percentage points since the 2010 election. And Labor didn't exactly win that one. Party veterans from former leader Simon Crean to former pollster Rod Cameron publicly predict electoral disaster. So why wouldn't the unions give up on the Gillard government? They have a duty to their members to husband scarce resources prudently. If the ACTU is letting go of the Gillard government, the Gillard government isn't letting go of the ACTU. This week it was busy in the Parliament delivering some of the key agenda items for the unions. Even unto its last breath. And who better to deliver for the unions than Bill Shorten, a former union boss.

On Thursday night Shorten took to the House the Fair Work Amendment Bill to allow union delegates greater rights of access to workplaces. It allows unions into the lunchrooms of businesses, even ones that have no union members. It passed the House and next goes to the Senate, where it will be enshrined into law before the election. The least ideological of the big business lobby organisations, the Australian Industry Group, said through its chief executive, Innes Willox: "With only 100 days to go until the federal election, major changes to workplace relations laws which will have negative effects on competitiveness and jobs should not be entertained." At the same time, the government moved to tighten the rules on 457 visas that cover temporary foreign workers. Although the Labor government had presided quite contentedly over the system for the past six years, it claimed to have discovered rampant scamming and rushed through an urgent review. As the government prepared its members in a confidential note this week, this measure is strongly supported by the unions and strongly opposed by business. The two MPs who have packed up their offices are Daryl Melham and Alan Griffin. They are plainly resigned to losing, though both insist they haven't given up. And while Melham is in the marginal south-western Sydney seat of Banks, which includes Hurstville and part of Bankstown, hanging on by an eminently losable 1.5 per cent, Griffin is another story.

Griffin's seat of Bruce in Victoria has a margin of 7.7 per cent. In the olden days - pre-2010 - that was considered safe. If there were a uniform swing that big, it would take 33 more marginal Labor MPs before it got to him. Not only that, Griffin is one of the most loyal of the Kevin Rudd fan club. So by signalling despair, he is not only implicitly giving up on Gillard, he's giving up on a Rudd return too. Yet Rudd was on the ABC's program 7.30 on Thursday night urging MPs not to run up the white flag. Rudd was reminding the Labor caucus that he is still available if they should want to draft him into the leadership. It's getting desperate for Rudd. There are only two more parliamentary sitting weeks before the election, only two more caucus meetings, a vanishingly small opportunity for him to return to the prime ministership. Is anything happening behind the scenes? No. "If there is anything," says a former Rudd lieutenant who, like almost all of them, have given up on him, "it would have to come from Gillard's side - Rudd doesn't have the numbers."

One of the reasons Gillard is safe is that the big right-affiliated unions have fought staunchly to keep her in place. When Crean pressed Gillard to call a leadership spill and it seemed Rudd might challenge, two of the key union bosses lobbied their affiliated MPs to stick with Gillard. She has delivered for us, and we have to be loyal to her, was the message from the Australian Workers' Union's Paul Howes and the Transport Workers Union's Tony Sheldon. She continues to deliver for the unions, even if they're giving up on her, and that's why Rudd's case is close to being terminal. Would Gillard consider stepping aside for the good of the party? In the last tableau in the new ACTU ad, a grown son asks his put-upon father to demand better treatment from the boss. ''Why don't you say something?'' he urges his dad. "Have you met my boss?" rejoins the father. Some bosses are immovable. Gillard is one of them. Peter Hartcher is the political editor.