12 Noon (QLD time).

This thesis focuses on the efforts of rank-and-file trade unionists to improve their lives and to open up new possibilities for the working class. The thesis will examine the nature and degree of democracy, militancy and radicalism in the rank-and-file shop committee and assembly movements in the Australian trade union movement from 1900-1990. It will identify to what degree the workers’ movement pursued a radical and rank-and-file approach to workplace organisation. It will also demonstrate to what degree this movement practised direct democracy, the degree of militancy in the movement and the degree of radicalism in the shop committee and workers’ control movements.

To do this, the thesis will use history from below and labour history to interpret and research this area. In the process of reading key secondary sources, primary source newspapers and archival research, this thesis will examine the struggles of shop-floor workers and show how workers change and challenge the capitalist system. This thesis will use this history to provide worker militants and their allies with the tools and context for current and future struggles against their employers and the system as a whole.