During the 1980s the FPUA played a prominent role in opposing the Prices and Incomes Accord, an agreement between the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) and federal Labor government to restrict wage increases in order to reduce inflation.
[3] In 1983 FPUA members at the Heinz factory near Melbourne went on strike - in response, the federal government sought to exclude them from National Wage Increases mandated under the Accord.
[3] In November of the same year, however, 160 FPU members at the Rosella-Lipton factory in Melbourne went on strike, demanding the re-employment of a number of sacked workers and a five percent pay increase.
[3] The union played a prominent role in promoting the interests of female workers, and the first woman elected to the Victorian Trades Hall Council executive was Gail Cotton, a FPU organiser, in 1978.
[4] The FPU was also active in working to protect its members' jobs, threatened by the decline in Australian manufacturing from the 1970s onwards caused by globalisation and competition from cheap imports.