The Super Unions

It is clear that the days of craft unionism in Australia are over. One of the last of the enormous round of trade union amalgamations merged the Printing and Kindred Industries Union with the conglomerate of craft unions known as the Automotive, Foods, Metals and Engineering Union. This merger is the nadir of Australia's highest craft union traditions. It is the culmination of a series of grand amalgamations on both sides which included the formation of the PKIU in 1966 and of the Amalgamated Metal Workers Union in 1972. The new union, the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union, is the successor of the compositors' lodges which formed the colonial Typographical Associations, of the Australian Branches of the Amalgamated Engineering Union, of the Boilermakers and Blacksmiths Societies, of the venerable shipwrights' associations, and of the tinsmiths, canister makers, jewellers, watchmakers, porcelain enamellers, stove makers and agricultural implement makers which had combined to form the Sheet Metal Working Union (to name but a few of its components). The discourses of Australian craft unionism, rules of exclusion, job control and demarcation, have been relegated to the Archives and a new discourse of the super not industry unionism but of a post modern mega-unionism, has developed. In response to this fundamental restructure the Noel Butlin Archives Centre has published Parties to the Award: a guide to the pedigrees and archival resources of Federally registered trade unions, employer associations and their peak councils in Australia, 1904 1994

Media studies · Political science · Sociology · Australian History and Society · Labor Movements and Unions