Female Industrial Organisation in the NSW Public Service Association (PSA), 1899-1999

The Australian historical literature on women's work and industrial organisation has expanded considerably in the last twenty years. However, historical studies of office work, a major employer of women, are limited in scope, particularly in the public sector. Where public service women have been referred to, it is almost exclusively in the Commonwealth sphere. Historical accounts ofthe Australian equal pay movement have also tended to concentrate on the role of the Teachers' Federation and the Federated Clerks' Union, rather than of public service (non-teaching) industrial organisations. I Nevertheless, from an early stage the NSW public service was a major employer of women. Its main union, the Public Service Association (PSA), was also a major organiser of female employees at a very early stage, and as we shall see below, women played a major role within the union in their own right from the beginning. In attempting to partially redress the neglect offemale industrial organisation in the public sector by historians, this paper represents a preliminary assessment of broad trends emerging from a larger project for which research is as yet incomplete. The paper begins by examining the working conditions for women in the NSW public service, which encouraged the organisation of women within the PSA. It then traces the historical role of the PSA in attempting to improve these conditions, under the leadership of its women members. Finally, the paper assesses the impact of female organisation on the structure of the PSA itself.