He left school at a young age and worked in the Outback, becoming an inaugural member of the Amalgamated Shearers' Union.

Outside of his union positions he represented the Australian Labor Party (ALP) in the New South Wales Legislative Council for nearly 20 years.

As a young man he worked various jobs in rural New South Wales and Queensland, including fencing, droving, shearing and mining.

[4] In addition to his role as AWU general secretary, Grayndler was mangaing director of Labor Papers Limited (the publisher of The Australian Worker) from 1918 to 1924.

After the war's end he became a "leading strategist of the conservative response to the post-war radical trend in the labour movement".

He maintained the AWU's policy of refusing admission to non-white workers, specifically excluding "Chinese, Japanese, Kanakas and Afghans" from membership.

[11] In 1929 he again attacked the ACTU and the PPTUS, stating they would "open the gates to the colored hordes of China, India and Japan".

[12][13] At the 1906 federal election, Grayndler unsuccessfully stood for the Australian Labor Party (ALP) in the Victorian seat of Grampians.

[1] He died on 12 March 1943, aged 75, while visiting Melbourne to speak at the unveiling of a memorial to his AWU colleague John Barnes.