Workers and Unions

A collection of items about trade unionism and industrial cooperatives in Christchurch.  A highlight is the Canterbury Trades and Labour Council’s Industrial Exhibition and Art Union catalogue from 1911.

Works included in this section:

• The formation and development of trades unionism in Canterbury (1950)
• Unemployment: can the problem be solved?
• Sixty years of sacrifice and struggle: a brief chronicle of trade union organisation in the Christchurch clothing industry (1939)
• After fifty years: being a passing record of early exploitation of women and later achievement by trade unionism in the Christchurch clothing trade (1940)
• The tailoresses' birthday: twenty-one years' of trade unionism (1911)
• Co-operation, its objects, its methods, its results (1897)
• Rules of the Canterbury Industrial Co-operative Society, Limited. New Zealand's industries and private profits : how wages, conditions, importation, quality and prices may be regulated by active state competition (1918)
• Canterbury Trades and Labour Council's Industrial Exhibition and Art Union (1911)
• Report of the Eighth N.Z. Painters and Decorators Industrial Union of Workers Annual conference, held in Christchurch (1919)
• New Zealand's industries and private profits : how wages, conditions, importation, quality and prices may be regulated by active state competition (1910)

For further resources see the Society section on the Ōtautahi - Christchurch Subject Guide.

The University of Canterbury Library's art and archive database Kā Kohika highlights some of the University's vast holdings on workers and union history.