Australian Workers' Union

It traces its origins to unions founded in the pastoral and mining industries in the late 1880s and it currently has approximately 80,000 members.

The AWU's rules are registered with Fair Work Australia and its internal elections are conducted by the Australian Electoral Commission.

The AWU has broad coverage over, amongst others, the following industries:[3] The AWU grew from a number of earlier unions, notably the Australasian Shearers' Union, founded by William Spence, Alexander Poynton (OBE, an inaugural member of the Australian House of Representatives), brother Charles Poynton, and David Temple in Creswick, Victoria in 1886.

It was a firm opponent of the Industrial Workers of the World, the Communist Party of Australia, NSW Premier Jack Lang and other radical forces in the Australian labour movement.

In the 1930s the Communist Party launched a rival Pastoral Workers Industrial Union, but this failed to break the AWU's grip on its membership.

Labor was in government in Queensland from 1915 to 1929 and from 1932 to 1957, and the AWU was able to exert considerable political influence through long-serving premiers such as William Forgan Smith and Ned Hanlon.

The AWU strongly supported arbitration as a mechanism of resolving industrial disputes without resorting to strike action.

The AWU was not affiliated with the Australian Council of Trade Unions for many years, preferring to maintain its independent relationship with the arbitration system.

This shift led to many rural electorate areas that were influenced by the AWU and workers falling to the conservative side of politics and in particular the National Party.

During the 1880s Trade unions developed among shearers, miners, and stevedores (wharf workers), but soon spread to cover almost all blue-collar jobs.

Shortages of labour led to high wages for a prosperous skilled working class, whose unions demanded and got an eight-hour day and other benefits unheard of in Europe.

The growth of the sugar industry in Queensland in the 1870s led to searching for labourers prepared to work in a tropical environment.

[9] Asian immigrants already residing in the Australian colonies were not expelled and retained the same rights as their Anglo and Southern compatriots.

The British government in London was not pleased with legislation that discriminated against certain subjects of its Empire, but decided not to disallow the laws that were passed.