Labour History

Abstract

We know surprisingly little about the organising activities of Australian unions. The conventional wisdom, in line with the ‘dependency thesis’, is that unions have received rather than shaped their growth. The research presented here challenges some of the central assumptions of the dependency thesis arguing that the extension of unionism in New South Wales in the first decade of the twentieth century owed greatly to the agency of trade unionists and particularly to the work of the Organising Committee of the Labor Council of NSW. This article outlines the Committee’s methods, motivations and significant achievements in forming and recruiting into existing unions in the first decade of the twentieth century.