Details

The Australasian Meat Industry Employees' Union can trace its origins to 1890 when organisations covering slaughtermen, retail butchers, and sausage casing workers began to meet. In 1905 these strands became part of a federal network, which registered with the Conciliation and Arbitration Commission in 1906 as the Australasian Federated Butchers Employees’ Union. In 1912 this name was changed to the Australasian Meat Industry Employees Union which exists unchanged to this day. Women came to form a large part of the boning and packing sections of the industry, and, as a consequence, the Union became one of the spearheads of the equal pay campaign. From 1958, a centralisation of the union administration took place largely as a result of extensions to federal industrial award coverage. A federal secretariat headed by a paid Federal Secretary was established in the 1960s.

See Australian Trade Union Archives.

Resources

Books

• "Joe the Bear", Job Control, Workers' International Industrial Union & The Socialist Labor Party, Adelaide, 1928. Image PDF Details

Pamphlets

• Women workers should receive equal pay, Australasian Meat Industry Employees Union, Brisbane, 1 September 1958. Image PDF Details
• What are these young people doing?, c1965. Image PDF Details