INTRODUCTION

Greg Combet*

The critical role of active workplace organising in building the success of the Australian labour movement has become a neglected part of our history. These papers begin to address that neglect and provide some insight for the lively contemporary debate about the place of unions in the twenty-first century.	1
It is almost impossible to overstate the changes that Australia has undergone since the first big wave of union membership growth in the 1880s. However, there are relevant lessons to draw from our history since then including, I think, from the dedication, adaptiveness and vision of some of the early organisers themselves.	2
Consider the experience of William Spence, a pioneer of mass organisation on an industry basis. Arriving from Scotland with his father in the Ballarat goldfields in 1853, Spence went on to do well enough in the mines to become a manager, but instead he chose to work on creating and building unions.	3
Having founded the Amalgamated Miners Association at Clunes in Victoria, Spence built the union into a national organisation of which he became secretary. Then, in 1886, at the age of 40 (not young for a miner of the times), Spence chose to go back on the road again as an organiser, this time for shearers.	4
Spence travelled thousands of miles – often on pushbike or horseback – to build a united organisation that made possible the great pastoral strikes of the 1890s. Spence coordinated a series of amalgamations of bush pastoral associations culminating in the establishment of the Australian Workers’ Union in 1894.	5
The vision of organisers like Spence that industry-wide recruitment and workplace activism provide the fundamental basis for improving the living standards of working people is still relevant today. The multiple and complex other factors underlying the success and failure of unions since Spence’s time are placed in perspective by this publication.	6
The papers take a fresh look at the simplistic notion that Australian union successes have depended upon the regulatory support provided by the arbitration system and Labor governments. Economic growth, labour market changes, and broader social and geographic circumstances are of course significant. This publication also recognises the crucial importance of strategic organising in making unions the agents of change for a fairer society which makes up so much of our rich history.	7
* Greg Combet is the current Secretary of the Australian Council of Trade Unions.

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