Ray Gietzelt exerted major influence in the careers of Bob Hawke, Neville Wran and Lionel Murphy, and he was made a Life Member of the Australian Labor Party.

His father owned a tyre business in Newtown that collapsed during the Great Depression[1] as his clients found themselves unable to pay their bills.

[2][3] He became active in the campaign by a left-wing group known as the Protest Committee to wrest control of the FMWU from an entrenched right-wing faction that was seen as not accountable to the members.

The matter proceeded to the Conciliation and Arbitration Court, where the Protest Committee was represented by Lionel Murphy, and the union leadership by John Kerr.

[4] They also won the highly publicised Arthur Murray dispute in 1959, in which the union took up the cause of dance instructors and ran the first ever successful prosecution of a company for a lock-out in NSW.

It was said that, under Gietzelt's leadership, the FMWU union never lost a strike or broke its word with any employer, industrial tribunal or kindred organisation.

Ray Gietzelt helped Neville Wran secure caucus support for him to become party leader (and later Premier of New South Wales), and organised numbers for Lionel Murphy to become a Senator (and later Attorney-General in the Whitlam government).

[1] Together with Wran and Whitlam, in 1986 Gietzelt helped establish the Lionel Murphy Foundation which awards scholarships to postgraduate students of science or law with a commitment to social justice.