Exploring Peak Union Purpose and Power: The Origins, Hegemony and Decline of the Barrier Industrial Council

This paper examines the rise, hegemony and fall of the Barrier Industrial Council (BIC) in the mining town ofBroken Hill. Arguably, Broken Hill has been one of the few locations in Australia where the working class has established something like a hegemony. The BIC was the institutional force behind, and expression of, this control. The outlines of the BIC's role in Broken Hill are well known to many. This peak union body not only presided over a local system of collective bargaining largely outside the processes of compulsory conciliation and arbitration but, for many years, exercised a formidable control of local exchange and consumption as well as social relations more broadly.