Learning on the job

TUCAR (Trade Union Committee on Aboriginal Rights)

Unions against racism

TUCAR meetings were held regularly, on the second Monday of every month, in Room 9 (Aboriginal Co-ops room) at the Trades Hall in Sydney until January 1988. After this, TUCAR met in a room at the NSW Teachers Federation building in Surry Hills from which Kevin Tory worked as Coordinator. Unions were invited to affiliate but all unionists were always welcome.

Tranby students were aware of union involvement with the Co-operative. Not only was Kevin Cook well known to be a union activist, but many unionists taught at Tranby, like Joe Owens and Viri Pires. So students supported unionists in solidarity with the unions long support for Aboriginal initiatives in education and independence. In July 1978, the students at Tranby levied themselves $2 each to support striking miners who were battling the giant coal mining company Utah in the Bowen Basin, inland from Mackay in Queensland. Kevin Cook spoke as an organiser for Tranby as well as a student and said: ‘A win for the miners is a win for all oppressed people’. Only some months previously, Tranby Co-op Board had rejected a donation from the Utah company. Alf Clint supported the students’ decision, explaining to them that the first donation Tranby Co-operative had received had come from the Miners’ Union.

Why TUCAR?

Many unions had been strong supporters of Tranby Co-operative for Aborigines in the past and were committed to Tranby’s co-operative approach to community sustainability and economic independence. But not all unions were up-to-date on Land Rights and the emerging Indigenous community-controlled organisations. One of Kevin Cook’s colleagues at Tranby, Brian Doolan, said later that: 

“There were a lot of people in trade unions who, out of a sense of good will, a sense of justice, a sense of fairness, wanted to support Aboriginal people and the Aboriginal struggles in their different forms. But they found it really difficult to hook into the Koorie community. They found a bridge in TUCAR and Cookie, who was somebody who would say, ‘Yeah, you’re not the enemy. In fact, you’re an ally’”

So TUCAR was a means to strengthen the links with the Unions who had always supported Tranby and to extend information to a wider range of unions, bringing them up to date on the rapidly emerging political issues around Aboriginal Affairs in the 1970s. 

By the 1980s, the employment areas for Aboriginal people were changing rapidly. Many white-collar jobs were opening up as Government departments and public sector institutions like Education, as well as some businesses like banks, began to see the need to incorporate Aboriginal people into their workforce. Public Service jobs were increasingly available for Aboriginal people in the 1980s. This was reflected in the interests and aspirations of many of the Aboriginal adult learners who enrolled at Tranby after 1980. Some still hoped to move into apprenticeships, but others wanted to pass matriculation equivalents at Tranby so they could apply for promotion in their public sector jobs.

So TUCAR saw new unions rapidly joining the longer-term, blue-collar union supporters. Along with the Maritime unions and the Building unions, TUCAR gained rapid support from the Administrative and Clerical Officers Association (ACOA) which covered the new Indigenous officers in the rapidly expanding Commonwealth Public Service, the Missos (the Miscellaneous Workers Union) and the unions in Education, Banking and Health. These and other unions affiliated with TUCAR to back Aboriginal campaigns and to get better conditions for their increasing numbers of Aboriginal workers.

Objectives

Two-way politics: National and International

TUCAR was established to inform and mobilise unions in support of Aboriginal issues. In doing so, TUCAR was able to inform and strengthen the policies of the political parties with which the unions were involved, notably the Australian Labor Party and the Communist Party of Australia.

But, as well, it became an important resource for Aboriginal people to make contact with unions. The Minutes of the meeting on 14 October 1985 record, after a meeting between TUCAR and the National Federation of Land Councils (formed Nov 1981) and Combined Unions Against Racism:

‘The meeting was further confirmation that TUCAR is now recognised as a resource centre and contact point, especially for contact with Trade unionists by Aboriginal organisations interstate’.
(FEDFA papers, N129, Item 14, TUCAR, Noel Butlin Archive).

While TUCAR focussed on increasing union awareness of Indigenous rights, it saw this goal as part of the broader aim of challenging racism. It was racism that had justified colonialism in Australia and the Pacific and led to discrimination against Indigenous workers and others. For this reason, TUCAR also reached out to Trade Unions like those in Fiji and elsewhere and supported the goals of an end to uranium mining and nuclear weapons testing on Indigenous people’s land, whether in Australia or in the Pacific.

In 1985, TUCAR was represented by Kevin Cook and the Victorian Teachers Federation as well as representatives from the NSW Aboriginal Land Council at the International Labour Organisation [ILO] discussion of its future changes to Convention 169 on Indigenous and Tribal Peoples.

TUCAR built links too with progressive and culturally-diverse organisations within Australia, like FILEF, the organisation representing the Australian-Italian community. Workers of Italian, Greek, Arabic, Chinese and other non-Anglo backgrounds had been discriminated against in the workplace and many had reached out to learn about and support Indigenous demands in Australia. Solidarity between workers from all cultures and Indigenous people was what TUCAR was aiming for.

Union solidarity

The unionists involved in Tranby – both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal – were often active in political parties. Some were in the Australian Labor Party (ALP), others were in the Communist Party of Australia (CPA) and there were other parties represented too. The TUCAR activists all used their contacts and networks to build awareness. 

But as Hannah Middleton (TUCAR secretary 1979-82) has said: 

We never made it very explicitly political, although all that stuff was really political. What we said to unions was: ‘The enemies of Aborigines who want their land, and their health, and their jobs are exactly the same people who keep putting shit on you every time you go on strike for better wages. So it’s about solidarity, it’s not just helping out!’

It was one of the things we said in TUCAR - not support but solidarity! And for us there was a big difference. We didn’t want union paternalism we wanted union solidarity.

How did TUCAR work?

This is how TUCAR did its work: 

1. TUCAR Meetings

The unionists who came to TUCAR meetings in the Trades Hall or NSW Teachers Federation were kept up to date with developments and could take them back to their own unions. Calls by TUCAR for union support would be taken to union management committees or leadership groups and may then have been debated through the wider union membership to inform members and seek views. 

2. Workplace and Union meetings

TUCAR would send speakers to worksites to talk with workers on the job. TUCAR organised speakers at peak Union bodies, in particular the NSW Labor Council. Mervyn Penrith from the South Coast Land Council addressed the NSW Labour Council on 30 August 1982 (Burgmann papers)

3. Newsletters

Each monthly meeting would decide on the issues to be covered in the coming newsletter and allocated members to write the articles. The printing of the newsletter was funded by ACOA (Administrative and Clerical Officers Association), enabling it to be sent to all affiliated unions and circulated further through other unions and the many civil society groups with whom TUCAR was in touch, including the Prisoners’ Action Group, Peace movement groups (like that at Alice Springs campaigning against the Pine Gap US base, including the Women’s Peace Camp in November 1983 and the ‘Close the Gap’ protest in October 1987) and the Movement Against Uranium Mining opposing mining on Aboriginal land in the Northern Territory and South Australia.

→ Read the TUCAR newsletters here

4. Workers Education

TUTA (the Trade Union Training Authority) was an organisation for training unionists. It was independently controlled by unions with legislated funding support, passed in 1975 but with a long history of Workers’ Education behind it. Its early courses featured learner-centred approaches and supported filmmaking to showcase various approaches to making claims and defending workers’ rights. A residential college was opened in 1977 at Wodonga in northern Victoria on the Murray River (operating till 1996), where enrolled students could focus on short, tailored training. TUCAR sent Indigenous and non-Indigenous unionists to talk at many TUTA courses for unionists in all types of workplaces. As well, it worked with TUTA to set up training courses for Aboriginal people in unions from 1981.

5. Resource Centre

TUCAR became not only a way to inform unionists about Aboriginal issues but a resource and communication hub that allowed Aboriginal and Torres Straits people from all over Australia to get in touch with unions and build connections. When the peak national union body, the ACTU, wanted to strengthen its Aboriginal policy in 1985 it reached out to the National Federation of Land Councils drawing on TUCAR as the model for this work. 

6. Unionists as teachers at Tranby

TUCAR brought union issues into the Indigenous adult education environment by encouraging union activists to speak and teach at Tranby. Listed further down the page.

Which unions?

Unions involved included:

• AMWSU (the Metal Workers’) – National and State Branches

• FED&FA (Federated Engine Drivers and Firemens’) – Federal and State Branches

• NSW Fire Brigade Employees Union

• Federated Ships Painters and Dockers Union

• Seamen’s Union of Australia – later MUA

• NSW Nurses Association

• BWIU (Building Workers’ Industrial Union) – State Branch

• Australian Workers Union

• Miners’ Federation – General President and Secretary

• Federated Miscellaneous Workers Union (the Missos)

• NSW Teachers Federation (NSWTF)

• Australian Education Union (AEU)

• Public Service Association PSA (NSW)

• Australian Clerical Officers Association (ACOA)

• University Academic Staff Association (UASA – later NTEU

What issues did TUCAR raise?

TUCAR raised issues about the wages and conditions of Aboriginal workers in all states of the nation. Through the 1980s many businesses recognised that they should have a program for increasing and training Indigenous staff. This occurred sometimes because Unions demanded better conditions and training, like the Teachers unions did in Education. But at other times it was because businesses saw they could gain an advantage from appearing to be ‘socially responsible’.  It was believed that this could build support from government, shareholders and customers. Some banks took this view, developing training programs and locating Aboriginal staff graduate from these programs in rural branches, but then only paying these Aboriginal staff as ‘trainees’ even after they completed their training.

Supported by the network of unions in TUCAR, the unions involved took up the cases of Aboriginal ‘Aides’ or ‘trainees’, in both schools and in banks, demanding and often winning decent wages. See Tranby Newsletters NSW Teachers Federation History on Indigenous issues

TUCAR was committed to the international network of unions across the world. TUCAR representatives appeared at the International Labour Organisation in 1985 to take part in the ILO discussion on changes to Convention 169 on Indigenous and Tribal Peoples. In 1987, the TUCAR Newsletter carried a strong condemnation of the attacks on Fiji unions by the military in the two coups in that year in Fiji. TUCAR supported unions which opposed workplace racism and colonialism as shown in the Newsletter carrying news about the Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific campaign, including a visit by TUCAR coordinator, Kevin Tory, to the Philippines in 1989. TUCAR also kept Unions in Australia informed about Aboriginal campaigns being brought to the floor of the United Nations, such as Helen Corbett’s speech to the General Assembly of the United Nations in 1989. (See TUCAR Newsletters #5 October 1985 p 1; #20 October 1987 pp 4-5; #25 April 1989 p 3; #27 November 1989 p 3)

In 1977, many of TUCAR goals related to the Federal Legislation which affected the Northern Territory and ACT but also those at Jervis Bay, on the south coast of NSW, which was commonwealth land. A further Federal issue was the National Satellite Network which was being built over that time, with satellite towers increasingly impacting on Indigenous land, whether owned, reserved or under claim. TUCAR called on the then Australian Post and Telegraph Workers Union (now the Communication union, CEPU) to defend Aboriginal land from failed negotiations with the Federal authorities in relation to the Satellite network. 

TUCAR campaigned consistently to change Indigenous workers’ conditions under the notoriously racist ‘Queensland Act’ which, among other things, denied trade union rights to Aboriginal workers. Over the next few years, the goals broadened to include issues in all states. During 1978, there were speakers from the Far North Queensland Land Council, particularly Mick Miller, to talk about issues over land in Queensland. Tranby had a long history working with Indigenous co-operatives in Far North Queensland. Important influences on TUCAR were frequent visitors to Tranby, the activists and unionists Joe McGuinness and Terry O’Shane, who both spoke to the media and to TUCAR members about the dreadful conditions of Indigenous workers under the Queensland Act.

By January 1979, the emphasis had shifted to NSW. Pressure had been building on Aboriginal land in NSW, particularly at Wreck Bay and Wallaga Lake, where developers were trying to gain ownership over some reserve lands, while sacred sites on Mumbulla Mountain, inland from Wallaga Lake, were being threatened. TUCAR pressured the State ALP government to grant Land Rights in NSW. Key personnel in TUCAR, including Kevin Cook, were members of the ALP and took active steps to shape the Party’s policy at the annual Conference. In an important and binding step in 1978, ALP Conference adopted the TUCAR motion to resolve that the current ALP State Government must focus on Aboriginal Affairs and in particular take up the demand for Land Rights. Heidi Norman has documented the role of TUCAR in mobilising the NSW State Government in this process, through the interviews with key players, including Kevin Cook, Frank Walker and Maurie Keane, discussed in her book: What Do We Want? A Political History of Aboriginal Land Rights in New South Wales, (Aboriginal Studies Press, 2015). 

As a result, the State Government set up a Select Committee chaired by Maurie Keane to report on issues of major impact on Aborigines, including Land, Health, Housing, Employment and other matters. After renewed and widespread calls to prioritise land rights amongst these terms of reference, the Select Committee agreed to do so. It reported in 1980, first on Land Rights, with a ‘Green Paper’ for discussion, which recommended that land rights be legislated. The remaining issues were addressed in Keane’s second report.

The Select Committee Green Paper on Land Rights was opened up for discussion, which occurred widely across the state with many Aboriginal individuals and communities presenting arguments for return of their land. TUCAR encouraged trade unions to support this demand and many did so, making repeated calls for the Wran Government to follow Conference policy and implement Land Rights.

The outcome was the NSW Aboriginal Land Rights Act, 1983, which ensured community tenure of Aboriginal land and opened up all Crown Land to Aboriginal Land Claims – people did not have to prove traditional association, which would have been difficult after 200 years of violent colonisation. Furthermore, given that much of the state’s land had been alienated to freehold, there was a substantial land purchase fund tied to 7.5% of State Land Tax for 15 years, making freehold land accessible through the market. This fund had been pushed through by NSW Attorney General and Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, Frank Walker and gained the support of many Trade Unions. The Act forced acceptance of earlier reserve revocations, but the fact that all Crown Land was able to be claimed and that there was a substantial land fund meant that a solid land base could be acquired through the combination of claim and purchase.

TUCAR and the AECG: Better Schools for Aboriginal kids

Learning was a core goal for Tranby – where so many staff and students had suffered from the deeply rooted racism and overall inadequacy of the school system. So TUCAR – founded on the belief that learning took place on the job – was a powerful advocate of better primary and secondary education for Aboriginal people – which meant better informing teachers and increasing the number and training of Aboriginal people in schools. As shown above, the NSW Teachers Federation and the national Australian Education Union were strong supporters of TUCAR. The NSW Teachers Federation, in 1980, had been the first union in Australia to launch a policy on Aboriginal Issues. It went on in 1986 to be one of the first unions to establish the position of Aboriginal Officer in its formal Union structure. In this process, TUCAR worked closely – as did Tranby – with the AECG – the Aboriginal Education Consultative Group.

The AECG had begun in 1977 when the Federal Schools Commission and NSW Government had invited a number of Aboriginal people to form an advisory board to the NSW Department of Education. The Commonwealth withdrew funding in 1980 and the NSW Government took up the whole financial responsibility. At the same time, the members of this Advisory Committee decided the body should be a representative body of elected members from each of the regions across NSW, serving a two-year term. From 1980, this independent, elected body advised the NSW Government on educational issues in public schools. At the same time, the AECG worked closely with TUCAR and the NSW Teachers Federation to demand appropriate pay and training for the network of Aboriginal Teachers’ Aides which had been established across the state, as well as to insist on active recruitment of Aboriginal people into Teacher Training courses to become fully qualified teachers and education leaders. TUCAR enabled the link between unions, educators and independent Indigenous-led education providers like Tranby. The Archives of AECG have been recognised by being listed on the NSW State Heritage Register, as ‘enriching the community’s understanding of the State’s History’.

Combined unions against racism

During this time in the early 1980s, there had been an increasing influence of racism circulating in Australian society. The activist unionists and Indigenous people in TUCAR were worried about the abuse and violence being increasingly suffered not only by Indigenous people but as well by students (particularly those with Asian backgrounds), immigrants and refugees, often in those years from Vietnam and South East Asia. TUCAR, for example, placed an advertisement in the Sydney Morning Herald headlined Immigration and Aboriginal Land Rights, supporting both a non-discriminatory immigration policy and self-determination for Aboriginal people. Signatories included individuals and trade unions.

In order to ensure the momentum on Aboriginal Land Rights and other Indigenous concerns was not diverted, TUCAR activists decided to form a parallel organisation: the Combined Unions Against Racism - CUAR - drawing largely on the same membership. Bronwyn Ridgway, of the NSW Nurses Association and a long-time activist in TUCAR, became the secretary and spokesperson for CUAR while Serge Zorino, a founding member of TUCAR, became CUAR President. There were many supporters among community groups, including FILEF, the Italian community organisation and the Anti-Apartheid groups including ANC representatives and others. CUAR commissioned a striking poster by Redback Graphix, illustrating that ‘the workplace is no place for racism’.

Bronwyn made a number of powerful speeches about the role of unions in challenging racism in the workplace. She drew examples from her own professional, personal and union experiences in the NSW Nurses Association where she had witnessed racist discrimination against both patients and medical staff in the health system.

The tide of anti-immigration, anti-Asian and white nationalist racism circulating in Australia had been given energy by Professor Geoffrey Blainey’s All for Australia (1984) which was in turn strongly supported by conservative politicians like then leader of the Federal Opposition and later Prime Minister, John Howard. One disturbing result was a rise in the activity of violent racist and neo-Nazi groups. The most aggressive was National Action, led by Jim Saleam but including also the South African Defence Committee. These groups targeted anyone speaking out against Blainey’s views or campaigning to end apartheid in South Africa, like John Brink whose home was firebombed in 1984. National Action accused CUAR of trying ‘to push ASIANISATION onto the trade union movement.’ (White Australia News, 4, 1 Nov 1985)

The heaviest attacks in 1985 were on CUAR and many of the union activists within it, including Meredith Burgmann, Serge Zorino, Glen Batchelor, journalist Denis Freney and in particular CUAR spokesperson, Bronwyn Ridgway. They were subjected to abusive messages, graffiti, stalking and death threats. On June 16 1985, Bronwyn Ridgway’s car was firebombed, just metres from where she was sleeping. There was widespread public shock, anger and protest, with strong union support. These violent attacks demonstrated the persistence of deep-seated racism among a minority of white Australians.

Impacting the national union stage, CUAR brought a motion to the 1985 ACTU Congress (9-13 September, 1985, Sydney Town Hall, moved Ridgway, seconded Zorino). In moving the motion, Bronwyn spoke about the intense damage caused by racism and its impact on students, immigrants, refugees and Australians of non-Anglo background like herself. The motion read in part:  

Congress repudiates all forms of racial discrimination. […] Racism deprives people of the benefits of social welfare and it discriminates against people in employment. […] 

Congress recognises that Australian society is multicultural and affirms that all Australians should be treated equally in terms of dignity and rights. Congress therefore denounces all doctrines of racial superiority […] and calls on all affiliated unions to undertake extensive educational campaigns against racism and further calls on Government to adopt immediate and effective means to combat racial prejudices. […]  

ACTU Congress recognises discrimination on the basis of race in all its forms as a crime against humanity. 

This motion was passed overwhelmingly, ensuring ACTU backing of the ongoing CUAR work to inform and educate Union members and to challenge racism in the workplace and the community.

1988: The Bicentennial protest, NUCAM and trade unions

Pushing on: TUCAR and unions after the Bicentennial

First Nations at the Peak: TUCAR & the ACTU

Working at the level of individual unions had often been successful, but TUCAR, CUAR and NUCAM all aimed to have the peak Australian trade union body, the Australian Council of Trade Unions – the ACTU - adopt a strong Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island Policy and appoint a First Nations Official to coordinate its programs. 

This goal was eventually accomplished after a long campaign building on the work of First Nations unionists and the group of union allies developed through TUCAR.

In 1987, TUCAR had taken a Draft Aboriginal and TSI policy to the ACTU.

The previous year, in 1986, ACTU Secretary Bill Kelty had made a speech in which he acknowledged that the ACTU had not done as much as it could have to support First Nations workers and communities. So TUCAR had been optimistic about the reception for the 1987 proposed draft policy but the policy was not accepted.  Some union delegates wanted more discussion, expressing concern over the concept of ‘sovereignty’. (Kevin Tory’s report, TUCAR News, Aug-Sept 1987)

In November 1989, the ACTU heard a powerful speech by Pat Fowells, the Victorian Teachers Federation Aboriginal officer (later known by her maiden name as Pat Anderson when she returned to the NT). As a result, the ACTU adopted a ‘policy statement’ with title ‘A Fairer Australia’. This pledged to run an awareness campaign on Aboriginal issues, to lobby the Federal government on National Land Rights, to bring Aboriginal community social service needs to the attention of all levels of government and to ensure that by the end of 1990, no Aboriginal worker enterprise would be ‘award-free’ and all should be funded to pay award rates. The ACTU committed as well to regular consultation with National Coalition of Aboriginal Organisations. (TUCAR News, November 1989, p2).

In 1991, the ACTU formed its Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Committee, with Martin Ferguson, then ACTU President, as Chair of the Committee and with ACTU researcher, Tim Harcourt, as staffer. It drew heavily on advice from TUCAR, through regular contact with Kevin Cook, Judy Chester, and Kevin Tory, who has recalled being closely in contact with the ATSI Committee to strengthen ATCU activities. Martin Ferguson had a strong interest in Aboriginal and TSI matters. (Interviews Kevin Tory, 21/2/23; Tim Harcourt, 14/2/23).

The UN had designated 1993 as the Year of the World’s Indigenous People. Through its ATSI Committee, the ACTU sponsored a Partners for Justice conference which was aimed at developing recommendations collaboratively with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander participants to take to the mid-year ACTU Congress.  The opening speech by ACTU President, Martin Ferguson made it clear that the peak union body wanted to respond to both the UN designated Year but also to the recent High Court Decision on Mabo, about which there had been intense debate and vitriolic denigration from conservative politicians and rural land owners and miners. Later discussion demonstrated also, however, that delegates wanted the ACTU to respond more adequately to the recommendations of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody which had reported two years previously.

The first session was led by a speech from Kevin Cook (delivered by Kevin Tory), in which Cookie stressed that while Aboriginal people had valued non-Aboriginal unionists’ support in past conflicts like the Pindan, Palm Island and Gurindji Strikes, it was important to see that this solidarity was at first limited. White unionists, he said, saw only what was familiar to them – so the Aboriginal demands for decent pay and conditions made sense – and it had been those issues which Unions supported. It was only because Aboriginal strikers had insisted over and over that their central demands were always about getting their land back, that union supporters have finally recognised this crucial demand. Read Kevin Cook’s speech

Kevin Cook and Kevin Tory were followed by Di Plater, a journalist and historian who had worked in Western Australia and interviewed the Pilbara strikers as well as Sydney urban Aboriginal leaders including Lester Bostock. Plater’s valuable account pointed out that a wide range of unions, in urban and rural areas, had eventually supported the rural Aboriginal strikers. Just as importantly, she showed that the large urban Aboriginal populations in south eastern cities were also calling for recognition of their land rights as well as their economic and political rights. Read Di Plater’s paper

Chairman of the Reconciliation Commission, Patrick Dodson spoke on the importance of Union movement participation in a wide public awareness campaign about the Mabo decision, while a research paper by economists Jon Altman and Anne Hawke, called ‘Aboriginal Australians and the Labour Market – issues for unions’, demonstrated the continuing disadvantages faced by Aboriginal workers in a changing economy.

Joanne Kerr, an Aboriginal woman who had lived in Sydney all her life and a member of the Public Sector Union, then addressed the Conference. Her paper was called: ‘How Attitudes Change: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Union Involvement’. She also pointed out what a long struggle it had been to have many sectors of the union movement recognise the importance of First Nations workers’ demands for industrial justice and for land rights. She continued: 

Although the initial period of union activism for the Aboriginal cause was slow and isolated, one of the most significant developments revealing a more co-ordinated and mature approach towards Aboriginal problems occurred in June, 1977, with the formation in Sydney of TUCAR, the NSW Trade Union Committee on Aboriginal Rights. TUCAR has since this time been developing links with the rest of the trade union movement, together with providing advice to the ACTU on its Aboriginal Policy. 

Jo Kerr stressed that Union involvement in Aboriginal issues had been slow, ‘despite the efforts of TUCAR’, but there had been important action by 10 unions in support of a Queensland Aboriginal crane driver in 1986. This campaign drew a great deal of publicity and generated even wider union support. By 1993, however, she argued that momentum had slowed, and that it was essential that the ACTU adopt a strong Aboriginal issues policy. She believed that while there had been progress now that the Keating Federal ALP government had funded Trades and Labor Councils in each state to establish Aboriginal Employment officers, but she urged the ACTU unions to continue their commitment.

The ACTU Congress later that year called strongly for the implementation of the Recommendations of the Royal Commission into Black Deaths. It supported the Federal Government’s call for an end to scaremongering about the Mabo Decision, and fully endorsed the Federal Government proposals to implement National Native Title. The research done for the Partners for Justice Conference was used to inform the ACTU as it set up an Employment Development Program which ran from 1993 to 1997. This Program was chaired by TUTA staff person, Janina Harding, who was a Torres Strait Islander, while the NSW Trades and Labor Aboriginal Employment Officer was Joyce Clague, a long-standing Aboriginal activist from Maclean. The Program aimed to address the disadvantage demonstrated in the Conference, as well as supporting WA Local Government Indigenous workers in their campaign for cultural and ceremonial leave.

In 1997, the ACTU created a position for an Indigenous representative on its Executive, an outcome for which TUCAR and the NSW Teachers Federation had long campaigned. (Kevin Tory to John Hennessey, Gen Sec, NSW Teachers Fed, 15 Sept 1999, NSW TF Archive.) In 2001, the ACTU strengthened the peak body’s Aboriginal & Islander Committee, which now advised the Executive and, finally, in 2006, the ACTU established an Indigenous Officer position, now held by Lara Watson. (Interview with Lara Watson, iv, May 2022)

TUCAR legacy: Building a network of Union Indigenous Officers

While the establishment of this First Nations position and endorsement of a full Aboriginal and Islander policy at the ACTU has been a major achievement, the development of a network of First Nations officers across the union movement is perhaps an even more important legacy of TUCAR. There are now Indigenous Officers in most unions and certainly in those which were affiliated with TUCAR.

This has been most visible in NSW Teachers Federation because of the film Naa Muru Gurung (to see a path for children) The Inspiring Story of Aboriginal Teachers and Their Union. 

View the trailer

TUCAR and Tranby

Tranby staff involved in TUCAR
Kevin Cook, Robert Stanley, Kevin Tory

Tranby students involved or employed in TUCAR [funded through CEP]
Veronica Collett (WA, TEPC 1983), Lee Silva (Redfern, Business Studies, 1982, TEPC 1983), Charmaine Wellington (Roseby Park, TEPC, 1990) [TUCAR workers V. Edgill & G. Homer were both family members of enrolled students]

Tranby staff working in TUCAR
Margaret Friel (Tranby tutor), Tony Amato

Union activists as teachers at Tranby
Joe Owens, Sergio Zorino, Viri Pires, Bob Pringle

TUCAR archival material + research sources

Despite Tranby staff and students taking such an active role in TUCAR, most of the records of the organisation are NOT held in the Tranby Archives. Instead, they are held in various Union archives or the personal papers of the activists involved, some of which have now been deposited into the major libraries, like the State Library of NSW (for personal papers) or the Noel Butlin Archive of Business and Labour (for unions). For more information on this important network around Tranby, see the following:

1. Tranby Archives 

Only papers from the two initial meetings are held: Series 1/36, File number ACP 369. 

a) 1 June 1977 – with attendance list including Jacko, Ted, Terry Fox and Alf Clint and Rod Pickette, Serge Zorino, Hannah Middleton, Marcia Langton and Kevin Cook and others. Next meeting set for 28 June 77. 

b) Then 12 July 1977 Jeff Barenthien (FMWU: Miscellaneous Workers, LCB – Convenor of Committee) report of this formal meeting of the Aboriginal Trade Union Committee (the 28/6/77 meeting) with additional unions attending.

2. Kevin Cook personal papers (now in Goodall-Torzillo archive)

Includes notice of initial meeting and some later notices, flyers, agendas & minutes, from 1977 to early 1979, when Kevin Cook was secretary and Rod Pickette coordinator. Includes draft TUCAR submission to NSW Select Committee on Aborigines and notes on TUCAR meetings Jan-Feb 1979 in Rod Pickette's handwriting. Then more detailed agendas and minutes while Hannah Middleton was secretary, 1979 and 1980.

No further TUCAR papers at all in later Kevin Cook Papers but much on various Indigenous campaigns including the ILO revision of Convention 169 on Indigenous and Tribal Peoples from 1985. All of these campaigns would have been brought to the attention of TUCAR representatives.  

3. Meredith Burgmann personal archive

See Burgmann catalogue (collated by Helen Randerson) 1977-1988, contains documents relating to the founding of TUCAR through to the establishment of NUCAM. Papers, notes, flyers, 1977- 1979 (when Burgmann was Treasurer; Kevin Cook was Secretary). Hannah Middleton became secretary in 1979, Kevin Cook became Treasurer. Documents only irregular after 1980 but there is a clipping from 2008: Interview by Peter Murphy with Kevin Tory (Search Foundation Newsletter) TUCAR – a Union Platform to Empower Aboriginal People. TUCAR had role in Aboriginal policies of various unions including NSW Teachers Fed, plus acting on a national level. Lists unions involved: PSA, Independent Education Union, CFMEU, Aust Ed Union, Plus Search Foundation.

4. SLNSW: Hannah Middleton’s material: 1982-1989. Box 4. SLNSW

See Middleton catalogue researched by Sophia Khan, including endorsements for TUCAR submission to Keane NSW Select Committee on Land Rights, 23 April 1979.

5. CUAR papers

In Bronwyn Ridgway’s papers on CUAR, 1984-1986, correspondence, press clippings and flyers, deposited at Noel Butlin Archive. Selected items scanned (by Imogen Williams, UTS) and now held in Tranby Digital Archive.

6. FED&FA Papers in Butlin Archives

Notes on FEDFA TUCAR papers held in Noel Butlin Archive of Business and Labour, Menzies Library, ANU (This is a complete set of TUCAR papers was gathered and carefully managed by FED&FA member and TUCAR rep, Sergio Zorino. Recently, notes on these TUCAR papers have been compiled and documents scanned by Dr Jayne Regan, NMA). All documents scanned now held in Tranby Digital Archives. 

The FEDFA papers contain:

• TUCAR Agendas and minutes 1982-1988. 

• A number of other folders with material about Tranby, BDIC, Land Rights and the Bicentennial – see Notes for details. 

7. TUCAR Newsletters in NLA and FEDFA files

Full set scanned by Dr Jayne Regan from holdings in the National Library of Australia and the Noel Butlin Archive of Business and Labour, Canberra – 1984 to 1990 (many issues also held in Hannah Middleton papers, SLNSW).

8. NSW Teachers Federation holds similar material to FED&FA archives but has additional records of the union’s support for TUCAR during the 1990s and 2000s.

See the Teachers Federation Library for further information. See also the 2018 film, directed by Paddy Gorman with advice from Kevin Tory, made by Matilda Films for the NSW Teachers Federation: ‘naa muru gurung: The Inspiring Story of Aboriginal Teachers and Their Union’. It can be watched for free at https://www.naamurugurung.com.au

MORE INFORMATION

→ The Black Defence Group

→ TUCAR newsletters

→ naa muru gurung: The Inspiring Story of Aboriginal Teachers and Their Union

→ Joe McGuinness

→ Terry O’Shane

→ Paddy Crumlin

→ Maritime Union of Australia celebration of Aboriginal ‘Original Activists’