The Origins of Unions: Some Miscellaneous Sydney Workers in 1910

Abstract

In considering the causes and possible corrections for the current decline in Australian trade union membership, it may help to reflect on the origins of the movement. This article presents evidence and an argument about one aspect of the origins of the Federated Miscellaneous Workers Union (FMWU). The evidence concerns the social history of watchmen, caretakers and cleaners, who formed the original core of the union's membership. The argument is that these workers amounted to such an improbable basis for a union that the simple fact of their organization represents a substantial challenge to the common assumption in labour history that it is the cohesion of an occupational group that empowers it. To the extent that the origins of the union are typical, it can be suggested that the period of tremendous Australian trade union formation and growth between 1907 and 1913 owed much more to general political and, by extertsion, social conditions than it did to the specific circumstances of any particular section of workers.