The Australian labour movement has its origins in the early 19th century and includes both trade unions and political activity. At its broadest, the movement can be defined as encompassing the industrial wing, the unions in Australia, and the political wing, the Australian Labor Party (ALP) and minor parties.
Almost all unions in Australia are affiliated with the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU). These unions are commonly the product of a significant process of amalgamation undertaken in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Read more about Australian Labour Movement: Early History, Growth of The Trade and Industrial Unions, Governments, The Labour Movement and World War I, The Labour Movement in The 1920s, Depression and Attacks On Unions, Second World War and After, Industrial Relations Changes in 2005
Famous quotes containing the words australian, labour and/or movement:
“Beyond the horizon, or even the knowledge, of the cities along the coast, a great, creative impulse is at work—the only thing, after all, that gives this continent meaning and a guarantee of the future. Every Australian ought to climb up here, once in a way, and glimpse the various, manifold life of which he is a part.”
—Vance Palmer (1885–1959)
“Coming to Rome, much labour and little profit! The King whom you seek here, unless you bring Him with you you will not find Him.”
—Anonymous 9th century, Irish. “Epigram,” no. 121, A Celtic Miscellany (1951, revised 1971)
“When it had long since outgrown his purely medical implications and become a world movement which penetrated into every field of science and every domain of the intellect: literature, the history of art, religion and prehistory; mythology, folklore, pedagogy, and what not.”
—Thomas Mann (1875–1955)