The development of labour and trade union movements from the 19th century, including the Chartist movement, the rise of mass unions and the Labour Party in Britain, the Australian Labor Party (1891) and Harvester Judgment (1907), the New Deal in the United States, and the late-20th century decline of organised labour

What this dot point is asking

QCAA wants Year 11 students to trace the development of labour and trade union movements from the early 19th century to the present, including British, Australian and American case studies, and to assess their political impact.

Early labour organising (1800-1850)

Combination Acts (1799-1800). British legislation banning trade unions; repealed in 1824-1825 under pressure.

Tolpuddle Martyrs (1834). Six Dorset farm workers transported to Van Diemen's Land for forming a trade union. Public outcry led to their pardon (1836) and shaped the early union movement.

Chartism (1838-1848). British working-class movement demanding the People's Charter (universal male suffrage, secret ballot, equal electoral districts, annual parliaments, abolition of property qualifications for MPs, payment of MPs). Mass petitions, demonstrations, and Newport Rising (1839). The Chartist demands were achieved progressively over the next century (most by 1928).

Mass unionisation (1850-1914)

British New Model Unions (1850s onward). Craft unions of skilled workers (engineers, carpenters).

London Dock Strike (1889). Mass strike led by unskilled workers ("New Unionism") winning the "Dockers' Tanner" (six pence per hour).

Australian shearers' strikes (1891 and 1894). Defeats for the unions on the ground but produced the formation of the Australian Labor Party in 1891 as a political wing of the labour movement.

International Workers of the World (IWW, "Wobblies", founded 1905). Industrial unionism that rejected craft divisions.

Political organisation

Australian Labor Party (1891). First labour party to form a national government anywhere in the world (1904, under Chris Watson). Australian Labor governments shaped Federation politics from the start.

British Labour Party (1900). Formed by trade unions and socialist societies. First Labour government 1924 under Ramsay MacDonald; majority Labour governments 1945-1951 under Attlee (welfare state) and 1997-2010 under Blair and Brown.

German Social Democratic Party (SPD). Strongest socialist party in Europe before 1914; the model for Marxian parliamentary politics.

The Harvester Judgment (1907)

Justice H.B. Higgins of the Australian Conciliation and Arbitration Court ruled that wages should be "fair and reasonable" to support a family in "frugal comfort". Established the "basic wage" principle: a moral floor below which wages could not fall. Indexed and adjusted through the 20th century. Created a distinctive Australian centralised arbitration system.

The New Deal (1933-1939)

Franklin D. Roosevelt's response to the Great Depression. National Industrial Recovery Act (1933) and Wagner Act (1935) gave US workers the right to organise. Membership of the American Federation of Labor (AFL) and Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO, founded 1935) grew rapidly. By 1945 about $35$% of US private-sector workers were union members.

Postwar settlement (1945-1973)

In Britain, the Attlee government nationalised major industries (coal, rail, steel, gas, electricity) and built the National Health Service (1948). In Australia, full employment was the central policy goal; centralised arbitration set wages.

Union density peaked around 1950-1970 across developed economies: about $50$% in Australia (1953), $45$% in Britain (1979), $35$% in the United States (1954).

Decline (1980-present)

Decline of industrial unionism. Manufacturing shrank in OECD economies; service-sector workers were harder to organise.

Thatcher's confrontation with British unions (Miners' Strike 1984-1985). Defeat of the National Union of Mineworkers symbolised the end of the postwar settlement.

Reagan's firing of the air traffic controllers (1981).

Australian Accord (1983-1996). Hawke-Keating Labor government and ACTU agreed to wage restraint in exchange for the "social wage" (Medicare, superannuation guarantee, family payments). Enterprise bargaining replaced centralised wage-setting from 1991.

Union density in 2020s OECD economies: Australia around $14$%, US around $10$%, Britain around $23$%.

Historiography

E.P. Thompson (The Making of the English Working Class, 1963). Class as a relationship, not a structure; agency from below.

Stuart Macintyre (A Concise History of Australia, 1999). Centred Australian labour and the arbitration system in the national story.

Eric Hobsbawm (Industry and Empire, 1968; The Age of Empire, 1987). Connected union strength to industrial capitalism's specific stages.

Howard Kimeldorf, Reds or Rackets? (1988). Studied the relative strength of left-wing and conservative US unions.

In one sentence

Labour and trade union movements developed from early-19th-century Chartism through mass unionisation, the formation of political parties (Australian Labor 1891, British Labour 1900), the Harvester Judgment (1907) and the New Deal (1933-1939) to the postwar settlement and the late-20th-century decline; their political impact built the welfare state, set the legal framework of modern work, and shaped the social compromises of every developed democracy.