Browse Items (13 total)

This illustration is an early reference to the beginnings of the eight-hour movement. One of the first marches took place in Melbourne in 1856, when the Stonemasons working on the build of the University of Melbourne, marched to Parliament protesting…

This illustration portrays the great fear of the establishment in the late nineteenth century in Australia, an organised workforce. Union organisation and affiliation and the strengthening of fraternities and friendly societies appeared to create a…

‘Labor Omnia Vincit’ (work conquers everything) is a historically significant slogan associated with the American and English labour movements. It was also the motto of the Knights of Labour, a group started in the 1860s in America. The…

Working or labour songs were a feature of nineteenth century (and later) union gatherings and processions. The songs and communal singing evoke peasant or folk traditions. The song gives the workers the high-ground because they resort to moral rather…

A photograph from c. 1911 of a large crowd lining Argent Street in Broken Hill to watch a Labor Day procession of men carrying union banners. Union banners have a medieval predecessor in the banners used by guilds (an association of craftsmen in the…