Tracing and Placing Women Trade Union Leaders: A Study of the Female Confectioners Union
Studies of union leadership commonly examine full-time officials and workplace delegates. Less attention has been given to those union activists who hold honorary elected roles, on executive or management committees and as office bearers. Women can actively access these positions as a strategy of separate organizing for increasing women’s participation, representation and voice in their union. Separate organizing in the form of a women’s union creates a broader canvas for women workers’ collective activity. Addressing a gap both in the historical literature on women’s union strategies and the contribution of honorary officials, this analysis focuses on the rank-and-file women who emerged as the core leadership group in the Australian women-only union, the Female Confectioners’ Union, in the 1920s. By drawing together analysis of archival records with genealogical sources, the women’s biographical profiles were created and, through the use of thematic analysis, insights were gained into the intersections of the individual women’s industrial and political activism and their domestic experiences. For the next 20 or more years, these women formed the backbone of the union (until an amalgamation with the men’s union in the confectionery trade in 1945) and were instrumental in shaping female collectivism.
The Legacy of Separate Organizing: Women in the Victorian Trades Hall Council in the Interwar Years
Debates about women’s participation, representation, and leadership in trade unions frequently focus on the role of separate organizing. This article examines the historical use of separate organizing by women and its effect in an Australian state peak union, the Victorian Trades Hall Council (THC). Adoption of different forms of separate organizing in the 1910s, in particular autonomous organizing through women-only unions, transformed the gender profile of the THC. A subsequent shift in union strategy to support for industrial unionism led to union amalgamations, which saw the absorption of most of the women’s unions by the 1920s. The key issue is the degree to which this separate organizing campaign had an ongoing influence through the interwar years. In particular, the article looks at the experiences of the 1910s generation of women activists, the impact of amalgamation for the women’s THC profile, the community they formed, and some of the issues they debated in the THC. The 1920s and 1930s saw a steady decline in women’s representation and fading influence in the THC, as a result of a lack of sustained support for separate organizing by the THC and contradictory attitudes among its affiliates.
In Whose Interest? Women Organizing on the Waterfront – St. John's, Newfoundland, 1948
In 1948, female fish and blueberry processors formed the Ladies' Cold Storage Workers Union in Job Brothers fish plant, St. John's, Newfoundland. This was accomplished in the context of structural and social change in the Newfoundland fishery that altered the social relations of paid work for the women. Literature on unionization generally assumes it to be a positive event for women workers, but closer examination of specific instances raises questions about economic, social and ideological conditions shaping experiences of unionization. Whose interests were served by the formation of the Ladies' Cold Storage Workers Union and how did women engage with “their union” in this moment?