The Australian Workers' Union (AWU) is one of Australia's largest and oldest trade unions. It traces its origins to unions founded in the pastoral and mining industries in the late 1880s and it currently has approximately 80,000 members. It has exercised an outsized influence on the Australian Trade Union movement and on the Australian Labor Party throughout its history.
The AWU is a national union made up of state branches. Each AWU member belongs to one of six geographic branches. Every four years AWU members elect branch and national officials: National President, the National Secretary, and the National Assistant Secretary. They also elect the National Executive and the Branch Executives which act as the Board of Directors for the union.
The AWU later absorbed a number of other unions in the pastoral, mining and timber industries notably the Amalgamated Workers Association of Queensland in 1913, and the Federated Mining Employees Association of Australia in 1917. Since these industries were the principal sources of Australia's wealth in the 19th century, the AWU soon became Australia's largest and most powerful union.
The defeat of the great 1891 shearers' strike and the 1890 Maritime strike led the AWU to reject direct action, and it has been a force for moderation in the Australian union movement ever since. It was a firm opponent of the Industrial Workers of the World, the Communist Party of Australia, NSW Premier Jack Lang and other radical forces in the Australian labour movement. For many years Communists were banned from AWU membership. In the 1930s the Communist Party launched a rival Pastoral Workers Industrial Union, but this failed to break the AWU's grip on its membership.
The Northern Territory branch of the AWU was a central faction in the most recent worker's rebellion in Australia, the Darwin Rebellion in 1912–1918.
When the trade unions formed the Australian Labor Party following the defeat of the 1890s strikes, the AWU became a powerful influence in the party, particularly in Queensland and Western Australia, and to a lesser extent in the other states. Labor state governments were heavily influenced by AWU leaders such as Edward Grayndler, Tom Dougherty and NSW AWU Secretary Charlie Oliver. Labor was in government in Queensland from 1915 to 1929 and from 1932 to 1957, and the AWU was able to exert considerable political influence through long-serving premiers such as William Forgan Smith and Ned Hanlon.
The federation of the Australian colonies in 1901 led to the establishment of the Australian Arbitration system. The AWU strongly supported arbitration as a mechanism of resolving industrial disputes without resorting to strike action. The Pastoral Industry Award, negotiated by the AWU, was the first federal award granted by the Commonwealth Court of Conciliation and Arbitration. The AWU maintained its registration under state industrial systems and continues to participate in many state awards.
During the years since federation that the Australian industrial relations system has been dominated by the Court and its successors, the Conciliation and Arbitration Commission and the Australian Industrial Relations Commission, the AWU and its members were among that system's principal beneficiaries. The AWU remains a strong advocate of arbitration in the union movement. The AWU was not affiliated with the Australian Council of Trade Unions for many years, preferring to maintain its independent relationship with the arbitration system.
With the shift in employment from the pastoral industries to the urban manufacturing and service sectors, the AWU's political influence and power declined as the pastoral areas became less significant in terms of employee numbers. This shift led to many rural electorate areas that were influenced by the AWU and workers falling to the conservative side of politics and in particular the National Party. The split in the Queensland ALP in 1957, which resulted in Labor being in opposition for 32 years, deprived the AWU of its greatest area of influence, although it remained influential in the long-serving (1941–65 and 1976–88) New South Wales Labor governments.
In 1993 the AWU amalgamated with the Federation of Industrial Manufacturing and Engineering Employees (itself an amalgamation of the Federated Ironworkers' Association of Australia and the Australasian Society of Engineers) to form the AWU-FIMEE Amalgamated Union. In 1995 the union reverted to using the name Australian Workers' Union.
In recent years the AWU has sought to modernise and to broaden its membership beyond its declining traditional base. Today it represents workers in the metals, aviation, oil and gas, mining, construction, food processing and retail industries, as well as its traditional base in the pastoral and mining areas. Its expansion into new areas has brought the AWU into conflict with some other unions, particularly the National Union of Workers and the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union.
For many years the AWU published two newspapers, The Australian Worker in New South Wales and The Worker (founded in 1890) in Brisbane. Under the editorship of Henry Boote from 1916 to 1943 they were among the most influential union newspapers in Australia. The two papers were merged in 1974 and today The Australian Worker is published in a magazine format in association with Australian Consolidated Press.
Melbourne Trades Hall was opened in 1859 with Trades and Labour Councils and Trades Halls opening in all cities and most regional towns in the following forty years. During the 1880s Trade unions developed among shearers, miners, and stevedores (wharf workers), but soon spread to cover almost all blue-collar jobs. Shortages of labour led to high wages for a prosperous skilled working class, whose unions demanded and got an eight-hour day and other benefits unheard of in Europe.
Australia gained a reputation as "the working man's paradise." Some employers tried to undercut the unions by importing Chinese labour. This produced a reaction which led to all the colonies restricting Chinese and other Asian immigration. This was the foundation of the White Australia Policy. The "Australian compact", based around centralised industrial arbitration, a degree of government assistance particularly for primary industries, and White Australia, was to continue for many years before gradually dissolving in the second half of the 20th century.
The growth of the sugar industry in Queensland in the 1870s led to searching for labourers prepared to work in a tropical environment. During this time, thousands of "Kanakas" (Pacific Islanders) were brought into Australia as indentured workers.[9] This and related practices of bringing in non-white labour to be cheaply employed was commonly termed "blackbirding" and refers to the recruitment of people through trickery and kidnappings to work on plantations, particularly the sugar cane plantations of Queensland (Australia) and Fiji.[10] In the 1870s and 1880s, the growing trade union movement began a series of protests against foreign labour. Their arguments were that Asians and Chinese took jobs away from white men, worked for "substandard" wages, lowered working conditions and refused unionisation.[11]
Objections to these arguments came largely from wealthy land owners in rural areas.[11] It was argued that without Asiatics to work in the tropical areas of the Northern Territory and Queensland, the area would have to be abandoned.[9] Despite these objections to restricting immigration, between 1875 and 1888 all Australian colonies enacted legislation which excluded all further Chinese immigration.[9] Asian immigrants already residing in the Australian colonies were not expelled and retained the same rights as their Anglo and Southern compatriots.
Agreements were made to further increase these restrictions in 1895 following an Inter-colonial Premier's Conference where all colonies agreed to extend entry restrictions to all non-white races. However, in attempting to enact this legislation, the Governors of New South Wales, South Australia and Tasmania reserved the bills, due to a treaty with Japan, and they did not become law. Instead, the Natal Act of 1897 was introduced, restricting "undesirable persons" rather than any specific race.[11]
The British government in London was not pleased with legislation that discriminated against certain subjects of its Empire, but decided not to disallow the laws that were passed. Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain explained in 1897:
We quite sympathise with the determination...of these colonies...that there should not be an influx of people alien in civilisation, alien in religion, alien in customs, whose influx, moreover, would seriously interfere with the legitimate rights of the existing labouring population.[12]
The Barton government which came to power following the first elections to the Commonwealth parliament in 1901 was formed by the Protectionist Party with the support of the Australian Labor Party. The support of the Labor Party was contingent upon restricting non-white immigration, reflecting the attitudes of the Australian Workers Union and other labour organisations at the time, upon whose support the Labor Party was founded.
Vincent Clair Gair was an Australian politician. He served as Premier of Queensland from 1952 until 1957, when his stormy relations with the trade union movement saw him expelled from the Labor Party. He was elected to the Australian Senate and led the Democratic Labor Party from 1965 to 1973. In 1974 he was appointed Australian Ambassador to Ireland by the Whitlam government, which caused his expulsion from the DLP.
The Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU), originally the Australasian Council of Trade Unions, is the largest peak body representing workers in Australia. It is a national trade union centre of 46 affiliated unions and eight trades and labour councils. The ACTU is a member of the International Trade Union Confederation.
The Australian labour movement began in the early 19th century and since the late 19th century has included industrial and political wings. Trade unions in Australia may be organised on the basis of craft unionism, general unionism, or industrial unionism. Almost all unions in Australia are affiliated with the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU), many of which have undergone a significant process of amalgamations, especially in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The leadership and membership of unions hold and have at other times held a wide range of political views, including socialist, democratic and right-wing views.
William Guthrie Spence, was an Australian trade union leader and politician, played a leading role in the formation of both Australia's largest union, the Australian Workers' Union, and the Australian Labor Party.
The Queensland Council of Unions (QCU) is a representative, an advocacy group, or peak body, of Queensland trade union organisations, also known as a labour council, in the Queensland, Australia. As of 2020, 26 unions and 13 regional branches were affiliated with the QCU. The QCU represents unions covering around 350,000 Queensland workers. It is affiliated with the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU). Its offices are located in the suburb of South Brisbane, Queensland. As a peak body for the Queensland trade unions, the objective of the QCU is to achieve industrial, social and political justice for Queensland workers. The management structure of the QCU is made up of a committee of management and an executive of representatives comprised from affiliated unions.
The Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) was a union which covered waterside workers, seafarers, port workers, professional divers, and office workers associated with Australian ports. The MUA was formed in 1993 with merger of the Seamen's Union of Australia and the Waterside Workers' Federation of Australia.
The Australian Services Union is a trade union representing workers in a variety of industries.
The Construction, Forestry and Maritime Employees Union (CFMEU) is the largest union in construction, forestry, maritime, textile, clothing and footwear production. The CFMEU is affiliated with the Australian Council of Trade Unions and the Australian Labor Party.
The economic history of Australia traces the economic history of Australia since European settlement in 1788.
William Patrick Ludwig was an Australian trade union official, who served as National President of the Australian Workers' Union (AWU), with a brief interruption, from 1989 to 2017. He served two terms from 1989 until 1997 and from 2001 until 2017. He also served as Queensland Branch Secretary Queensland Branch Secretary of the Australian Workers' Union (AWU), from 1988 to 2013.
The 1891 shearers' strike is one of Australia's earliest and most important industrial disputes.
Edward Grayndler was an Australian trade unionist and politician. He served as general secretary of the Australian Workers' Union (AWU) from 1912 to 1941, the longest term in the union's history.
The Wide Comb dispute was a landmark Australian industrial dispute. Australian sheep shearers, represented by the Australian Workers' Union, opposed the alteration of the Federal Pastoral Industry Award to allow the use of shearing equipment that used combs wider than 2.5 inches. Business and farming groups, such as the National Farmers Federation, supported the alteration of the award as they believed that the wider combs increased productivity.
The Queensland Shearers Union was one of the first Australian unions, founded in the latter half of the nineteenth century. The union was instrumental in the development of the 1891 Australian shearers' strike, seen today as a key development in the Australian labour movement. Together with other unions the Queensland Shearers Union was the genesis of the Australian Workers' Union.
Errol Raymond Hodder, former Queensland branch secretary of the Australian Workers' Union (1982-1988), general secretary of the Australian Workers' Union (1987-1991) and retired Commissioner of the Australian Industrial Relations Commission (1991-2003) and of the Queensland Industrial Relations Commission (1997-2003).
The Federated Ironworkers' Association of Australia (FIA) was an Australian trade union which existed between 1911 and 1991. It represented labourers and semi-skilled workers employed in the steel industry and ironworking, and later also the chemical industry.
Tom Nicholson Pearce Dougherty, was an Australian trade union official and a member of the New South Wales Legislative Council. As National Secretary of the Australian Workers Union (AWU) from 1944 to 1972, he was one of the most powerful figures in the Australian labor movement and the Labor Party.
The Federated Moulders' (Metals) Union of Australia (FMMUA) was an Australian trade union which existed between 1899 and 1983. It represented moulders – skilled tradesmen who fabricated the moulds for casting metal products in foundries. In spite of only organising within a single skilled occupation, which kept total membership low, the vital position of moulders in major industries such as mining, manufacturing and the railways, ensured that the union remained industrially powerful with a reputation for being highly militant.
Fallon House is a heritage-listed trade union office at 1 Maryborough Street, Bundaberg Central, Bundaberg, Bundaberg Region, Queensland, Australia. It was designed by David Ballinger Goodsir and Harold James Carlyle and built in 1953 by Llewellyn Herbert Edwards. It was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 7 December 2012.
The Australian Coal and Shale Employees' Federation was an Australian trade union representing workers in the coal mining industry from 1913 to 1990.
↑ Speech to Colonial Conference of 1897, quoted in J. Holland Rose et al., eds. The Cambridge History of the British Empire: Volume VII: Part I: Australia (1933) p 411; full text
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
