Tom Nicholson Pearce Dougherty (2 March 1902 – 14 October 1972), was an Australian trade union official and a member of the New South Wales Legislative Council.

He left school at 13 and worked in a variety of manual jobs in Queensland, New South Wales and the Australian territory of Papua New Guinea.

Dougherty was on the right wing of Labor, being a strong anti-communist at a time when the Communist Party of Australia was very powerful in the unions, particularly in north Queensland.

In January 1944 Dougherty was appointed general secretary of the AWU, a position he retained until his death, and he moved to Sydney to work at the union's head office.

"[6] In 1950, at the height of the Cold War, Dougherty visited the United States at the invitation of the American Federation of Labor and addressed its convention in Houston, calling for the end of all trade with the Soviet Union.

[8] He had long believed that the council should be abolished, and had criticised the NSW Labor Party for failing to carry out this policy.