The ads target low wages and insecure work, but businesses say the campaign is misleading Australians.
The union movement has launched its largest nationwide advertising campaign since 2007.
An eight week advertising blitz is trying to overhaul Australia's workplace relations system.
The television campaign began airing on Sunday with the tagline: "It's time to change the rules."
Australian Council of Trade Unions Secretary Sally McManus described the situation as "a crisis".
"We're in a crisis, we're in a crisis of record low wage growth, that is hurting working families right across the country. They can't keep up with the cost of living and secondly because insecure work is getting worse. And when I say it's getting worse you only have to live in one of our big cities to see the growth of the so-called gig-economy. The Uber drivers, the Deliveroo drivers, all of those workers, they don't even get the minimum wage. They don't even get sick days, they don't even get health and safety protections. Their wages and their conditions have been taken back a hundred years. That's a new form of insecure work, our laws are inadequate to deal with them."
The last major union campaign in Australia was against Work Choices - the name given by the Howard government in 2005 to changes to federal industrial relations laws.
That campaign cost just over $14 million, helping Kevin Rudd's Labor government win the 2007 federal election.
But the ACTU won't say how much this campaign will cost.
"Well actually the other part of the issues is we may just keep spending more money in order to keep these ads going so at the moment we don't have a bottom line on the amount."
The ACTU is also calling for an increase in the national minimum wage, saying it's trying to protect workers like Arou Akot.
Mr Akot, from South Sudan, is a single dad to seven children.
He says he works from 3.30am to 6pm every day, just to make ends meet.
"Pay my wages to rent, struggling to pay sometimes school fees, food, shopping, it's getting hard, it's real hard. And I knew nobody when I came down here to Australia. 13 years now, I've been struggling, it's really hard."
Mr Akot says he nearly lost his job last year due to a new contract system.
He says he was worried he would become homeless if he lost his job.
But Deputy Liberal Leader Julie Bishop says the campaign is misguided.
"This campaign is so misguided they should be focusing their efforts in creating an environment for more jobs for the Australian people yet with this anti-trade, anti-investment, anti-TPP rhetoric, they clearly can't be trusted with the export jobs that so many people rely upon."
Business also say the campaign is misleading,
They say casualisation of the workforce hasn't changed in two decades.
James Pearson from the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry says it's a scare campaign.
"The new union campaign is old wine in new bottles. It's designed to scare employees, it's designed to drive a wedge between employees and the people who employ them. In Australia today, if we're going to meet the challenges of today and the future, we need co-operation, not confrontation in the workforce. The union campaign does exactly the opposite."
