No Power Greater: a History of Union Action in Australia
I will never forget the day that Marshall Baillieu, a former Liberal Party MP and second cousin to the Liberal Premier Ted Baillieu, learned firsthand a lesson that governments and employers have had to learn time and time again.
You really shouldn’t mess with nurses and midwives.
It was March 2012. The ANMF Victoria Branch was engaged in what it would later reflect was ‘the longest industrial and grassroots campaign in Victorian nursing and midwifery history.’
Union members (of what was then the ANF) had voted at the end of 2011 to participate in industrial action as part of the ‘Respect Our Work’ enterprise agreement campaign.
The union’s prime objective was to protect nurse/midwife to patient ratios. The Baillieu Government was seeking to undermine ratios, directly contradicting its electoral commitment.
I was a student at Melbourne University at the time, writing a thesis on early twentieth century union history. I spent a lot of my time in the archival reading room on the top floor of the Baillieu Library on campus. Yes, named for that famous Baillieu family.
Imagine my surprise one day to see on the news what became a very notorious photograph. Ted Baillieu had attended a function at the Baillieu Library on campus to launch a book. A small number of nurses at the Royal Melbourne Hospital (literally just across the road from campus) had heard about Baillieu’s presence, and had walked cross the road with signs about their campaign.
That’s when Marshall Baillieu decided to stand at one of the floor-to-ceiling windows in the library, leer out, and flip the gathered nurses the bird.
The response was outrage – of course it was! The opposition leader at the time, Dan Andrews, summed up how most Victorians felt: ‘A person flipping the bird like that, acting in that way, towards the people who care for the most vulnerable people in our community, is a pretty ordinary Victorian.’
Could there be a clearer picture of conservative elites disregarding the vital work of working people?
And could there be a clearer sign of the centrality of nurses and midwives to contemporary union action, and how much change there has been in the union movement since the period I was studying, the early twentieth century, when unionism was dominated by white male workers in heavy industry?
This was one small action in a massive campaign. There were rallies, door knocking, mass petitions, rolling workplace actions.
The ANMF was victorious, of course! Just three years later, ratios were legislated by the Andrews Government.
You really shouldn’t mess with nurses and midwives.
The union movement’s history is filled with stories like this – stories of working people coming together, taking action and changing Australia for the better.
What has inspired successive generations of working people to build, maintain and pass on their own collective organisations – even amid all the extraordinary changes that have taken place in the workforce and the economy since unions were first formed?
This is the major question I seek to answer in my new book on union history, No Power Greater: A History of Union Action in Australia released by Melbourne University Publishing in May 2025.
In my book I argue that unions have remained relevant to workers because unions are driven by a fundamental humanising mission. To assert the fundamental right of working people to be treated as human beings: not as machines, or numbers in a computing system.
The modern union movement traces its origins back to the new workers’ organisations of the 1850s.
That was a time when there were almost no regulations on work. There was no minimum wage. There was no significant workplace health and safety laws. Wages and conditions were determined by what employers said they could afford.
Workers complained that they felt dehumanised: they weren’t treated by employers as human beings, but as machines, or beasts of burden, or like slaves.
The origins of unionism can be found in workers banding together because they knew they had more power as a collective then they did alone. And what did they seek with this power? Industrial rights and protections that ensured their fundamental humanity.
A decent wage they could afford to live on.
Shorter working days so they could spend time outside of work.
Safer working conditions.
And to be treated with dignity and respect at work – not as machines.
The fundamental right to be human, and treated as a human being.
This mission inspired union campaigns.
From the stonemasons campaigning for the eight-hour day in the 1850s; to tailoresses striking for decent pay in the 1880s; to women public servants demanding equality in the 1890s – workers were fighting for better industrial conditions, and the fundamental right to be human.
But these early unionists were also a product of their time. The first unions were organisations of white, male, skilled workers who used these organisations to protect their industrial position. They often embraced and perpetuated the social exclusions of the time: sexism and racism.
This is a reality of union history that should not be ignored or excused.
My book tells the story of how excluded workers took action to challenge the perpetuation of discrimination within workplaces, and within the union movement itself.
This includes the remarkable story of nurses and midwives in Australia, who have challenged the sexist gendered undervaluation of their work and fought to assert their professional status.
In the nineteenth century, colonial ideology led to the chronic sexist undervaluing of work conducted by women. Gendered stereotypes presented masculine work as ‘real’ work, and stereotypes abounded of ‘care’ work as the feminine preserve of the domestic realm.
This was obviously garbage – but it was also deeply rooted in the power dynamics of the time.
And this colonial ideology has been deeply rooted in Australian society – and our workplaces, ever since.
This is part of what has made the history of the ANMF so incredible. The union has led amazing campaigns that have challenged this sexist undervaluation and demanded that the profession be properly recognised and respected.
In doing this, nurses and midwives have not just challenged sexism (they have), have not just improved their industrial conditions (they have), have not just become Australia’s largest union (they have!), but also protected the quality of care for all of us.
What a remarkable contribution!
No Power Greater takes these stories and puts them where they belong – at the absolute centre of union history. A history that is unfinished, and a history that continues to be made by the mighty ANMF!
