While holding a national character and loose federation, this organisation devolved to a regional level with three main local branches becoming the key decision making bodies for their membership.

This was seen on the NZ left as an all-out assault on the lives and conditions of working class New Zealanders.

Shortly afterwards, when the true financial position of the NZ Workers' Union became evident, the decision was taken to adopt three branch structure and to become three autonomous unions (Northern, Central, and Southern) operating nationally under the AWUNZ Federation in order to cut costs.

This structure remained until the process began to pull the three cooperating bodies together into a cohesive National Union under Maurice Davis in 2022.

Women received the vote in NZ in 1893 and in 1894 Mrs Aileen Garmson as secretary of the Christchurch branch of the Workers' Union.