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The Queensland Council of Unions (QCU) is a representative, peak body of Queensland trade union organisations, also known as a labour council, in the State of Queensland, Australia. As of 2014 there are 35 affiliated unions and 13 regional branches. The QCU represents unions covering more than 370,000 Queensland workers. The QCU is the state branch of the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU). Its offices are located in the suburb of South Brisbane, Queensland.〔(QCU website )〕 The history of the QCU is intertwined with the history of the Australian Labor Party (ALP) and the Australian labour movement generally. The QCU was formed in 1885 but in 1889 disbanded and transferred all its roles and responsibilities to a newly formed peak body the Australian Labor Federation (ALF) (which despite its name was restricted to Queensland). In 1902 the QCU reformed but again, in 1911, all its delegates moved to the ALF. In 1914 the ALF itself dissolved, its affiliates having been swallowed by the growing Australian Workers Union (AWU). At this time the roles of the QCU were shared by a number of labour organisations, including the Brisbane Industrial Council, the Eight Hour Union and the Brisbane Trades Hall Board. At the end of World War One in 1918 Queensland unions regrouped but it was another four years before 46 unions reformed the Queensland Trades and Labour Council, now known as the QCU.〔Fitzgerald, Ross. Seven Days to Remember: The world’s first Labor government, Queensland 1–7 December 1899. St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1999. ISBN 9780702231391〕 As a peak body for the Queensland trade unions the objective of the QCU is to achieve industrial, social and political justice for Queensland workers. Management structure of the QCU is made up of a committee of management and an executive of 35 representatives, one from each of the affiliated unions. ==History== The origins of the organisation lie in the rapid rise of the Australian labour movement in the 1880s. Due to a mining and pastoral boom in the regions outside South East Queensland there was an influx of large numbers of immigrant workers, while in Brisbane and South East Queensland a number of small craft unions were established. On 18 August 1885 a meeting of union secretaries decided to form the Trades and Labour Council, which came into being on 1 September 1885. The next year, 1886, the new labour organisation was sanctioned by the Liberal government of the day (led by the then moderate liberal Samuel Walter Griffith) which passed the Queensland Trade Union Act, legitimising trade unionism in the colony.〔 In the late 1880s, Queensland was a vast, decentralised colony where predominantly white, male workers were clustered in regional areas around the rural extractive industries – the mines and the great shearing sheds. Queensland had no industrial base to speak of, even in the south east corner.〔A History of Queensland by Raymond Evans, Cambridge University Press, 2007 ISBN 978-0-521-87692-6〕 Workers had been lured to Queensland, mainly from Britain, with the promise of being self-made men. The percentage of successful immigrants to become wealthy pastoralists, mining magnates or industrialists was very small – by 1887 most immigrant workers in the mining industries were wage-labourers for a mere 30 mining companies. The wool industry was similarly consolidated. In New South Wales there were 3,000 shearing sheds. In the whole of Queensland there were only 150. The forcing together of large numbers of bitter, disillusioned men encouraged working-class mateship, heavy drinking and a spectacular growth of trade unionism in the colony. Class activism was further fuelled by several firebrand journalists of the day, notably William Lane who worked on the Brisbane Courier and the Brisbane Observer before starting the Boomerang in 1887.〔 The racy, iconoclastic Boomerang took the colony by storm, propagating socialist and republican ideas. Henry Lawson wrote under the name Joe Swallow. This was a period of rapid growth and saw the establishment of several major unions. The Queensland Shearers Union was formed in January 1887 to help combat pastoralists' attempts to reduce the shearing rate. By August 1889 it had close to three thousand members. The Amalgamated Shearers' Union of Australia was formed in 1887, mostly representing workers in southern states, eventually in 1894 merging with other rural-based unions to form the Australian Workers' Union. The Queensland Labourers' Union was established at Saltern Creek in 1888 as the Central Queensland Labourers' Union, then in 1892 amalgamated with the Queensland Shearers' Union to form the Amalgamated Workers Union of Queensland. The Queensland Teachers Union was established in 1889.〔(Australian Trade Union Archives www.atua.org.au )〕 The Amalgamated Workers Union merged with the Australian Workers Union in 1904. The Fifth Intercolonial Trade Union Congress in Brisbane in 1889 accepted the proposal to form the Australian Labour Federation, with the inaugural meeting on 11 June 1889. The QCU disbanded, transferring its roles and responsibilities to the new peak body. For all intents and purposes, this was the QCU continuing under another name. The Australian Labour Federation was an attempt to create an Australia-wide peak body, but after failing to attract support outside Queensland it was dissolved in 1914 when its main supporter, the Amalgamated Workers Union merged with the Australian Workers' Union. In 1887 William Shand, aide-de-camp to the Queensland Governor William Musgrave, was sharply critical of the fanciful promises made to immigrant workers to make their fortune in a so-called workers paradise, when in fact poorer workers lived in wooden shanties cobbled together from old biscuit boxes and wine cases. Shand was even more alarmed at how the growing trade union movement was drafting new arrivals into unions, these labor organisations already having had some success in hiking up wages and blocking non-union (scab) labour. At this time, 1877, there were 2,500 union members registered under the Queensland Trade Union Act. By 1890 this number had ballooned more than eight-fold to 21,500. Even Liberals were caught up in the excitement. In 1889 Samuel Walter Griffith, barrister and 9th Premier of Queensland, after being defeated by the conservative Thomas McIlwraith in 1888, wrote radical articles advocating state intervention to curb capitalism, redistribute wealth, protect the weak and enforce the rule of freedom. Griffith's radical reformer phase was short lived however, as in 1890 he suddenly betrayed his radical friends and became Premier again at the head of an unlikely alliance with McIlwraith, forming the so-called "Griffilwraith" government. Also on the political front, Thomas Glassey became Australia's first Labour parliamentarian, representing Ipswich coalminers. He was joined in 1990 by John Plumper Hoolan. Early industrial action had international support, with the British Seamen's Union backing the Queensland Shearers Union to victory in the Jondaryan dispute, by blocking transport and handling of Jondaryan wool bales.〔 The Brisbane ''Worker'' newspaper was established in 1890 by the ALF under the editorship of William Lane, who remained in the post until 1892. This was a time of prolonged and bitter industrial disputes, with the first of the great Australian strikes in the 1890s: the 1890 Australian Maritime Dispute, followed by the 1891 Shearers' strike, and the 1894 Shearers strike. A Labour Council had formed again by 1903, but in 1911 all affiliates transferred to the ALF. In January 1914 the ALF itself effectively dissolved, as many of its affiliates had been swallowed by the Australian Workers' Union. A new organisation called the Brisbane Industrial Council was formed midyear. Other inter-union organisations included the Eight Hours Union and the Brisbane Trades Hall Board, responsible for managing Brisbane Trades Hall. During the First World War closer unity between labour movement organisations was explored culminating in a conference in September 1918 attended by 42 unions adopting an amalgamation scheme. After lengthy negotiations, on 12 April 1922 the ''Queensland Trades and Labour Council'' was established by 46 unions. In 1993 the organisation was renamed the ''Australian Council of Trade Unions Queensland Branch'' to reflect its primary function and role. The name again changed in 1999 to Queensland Council of Unions to rebuild its local identity as a peak organisation for Queensland trade unions.〔 Other important industrial disputes in Queensland include the 1912 Brisbane General Strike, the 1948 Queensland Railway strike, the SEQEB dispute 〔Seqeb electricity stoush won few friends by Bredan O'Malley in The Courier Mail 2009 ()〕 and the 1998 Australian waterfront dispute. In 2012, Queensland Labor leader Annastacia Palaszczuk announced the ALP and the QCU were providing seed funding for the TJ Ryan Foundation〔(Rae Wilson The Queensland Times 4 May 2012 )〕 to provide a forum for debate on policies and policy development. On 27 February 2014 the TJ Ryan Foundation was launched, taking the form of an online platform for the publication of commentary and analysis by public policy academics and experts.〔(ninemsn news 27 February 2014 )〕〔(TJ Ryan Foundation website )〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Queensland Council of Unions」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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