Trade Union Mobilising and Organising

By Greg Patmore, Rae Cooper and others

Rae Cooper and Greg Patmore introduce a series of articles on the way union organising has been carried out since the 1880s, and a look at the way labour historians have looked at organising.

The general theme is that historians have put too much emphasis on the role of arbitration, and not enough on the work of unions and unionists in actively creating the labour movement.

Ray Markey argues that the emphasis on the introduction of arbitration systems as the explanation for union growth is a misreading of statistics. Markey feels that we can take three important lessons from this period. Firstly, state and regional labour councils played a central organising role, devoting considerable resources to this. Secondly, unions developed strong political alliances with non-union progressive groups, even in the early days of the Labor Party. It is notable that these have been key US strategies recently for revival of unions. Finally, unions by the 1880s were an accepted part of the body politic, in a way which is not the case today.

Rae Cooper also takes up the arbitration theme. She says that there has been a tendency for both unionists and labour historians to assume that unions in Australia never actively built their membership and that instead, they relied upon the state, and particularly the arbitration system, to 'deliver' for them. Her study of the organising activities of the Unions NSW from 1900 to 1910 undercut the "dependency" theme, and shows the active role unionists played in making the movement.

Barbara Webster also, in her study of union organizing strategies in Rockhamption from 1916-1957, shows that major unions employed independent organising strategies through choice or necessity. Even among those that did reap the benefits of preference in what constituted a 'cosy relationship' between certain unions and the arbitration bureaucracy, some actively exploited the system to facilitate organising rather than being passively reliant on it.

Webster's article, and the study of organising and peak union agency in Broken Hill, 1886-1930 are important reminders of regional strategies and their independence from capital cities in organising the labour force. Regional peak councils had important roles in centers such as Broken Hill, at the same time as the workforce was becoming more concentrated in the major capitals. The Barrier was influenced by international factors because of the nature of the mining industry, and has gone through various phases of decline and renewal (very much in decline at present).

Evan Roberts shows the importance of comparative labour history with a look at retail employees in Wellington, New Zealand and Saint Paul, Minnesota. The crucial point made is that there are serious dangers in basing an organizing strategy around a certain issue without linking that to a general ethic of collectivism and solidarity.

(Labour History; no. 83, November 2002)