The Ironworkers: A History of the Federated Ironworkers' Association of Australia
Australian History Antiquarian & Collectible Biography & Memoir Industrial History Labour History Engineering & Technology History Trade Union History
The Ironworkers: A History of the Federated Ironworkers’ Association of Australia (1982 first edition) is the only comprehensive chronicle of the union that shaped the nation’s steel, ship-building and heavy-engineering industries. Written by respected labour historians Robert Murray and Kate White, this scarce 352-page paperback traces the FIA from its militant roots in the 1890s, through two world wars, the great strikes of the 1940s and the rise of BHP, to the high-tech plants of the late 1970s. Along the way readers meet the rivet gangs, boilermakers and furnace men whose sweat built the Sydney Harbour Bridge, the Murray River dams and the Hunter Valley steel towns—stories that rarely reach mainstream history books.
What makes this copy especially appealing to collectors and researchers is its pristine, unmarked interior: no ex-library stamps, ownership names or underlining—just the original 1982 text block with tight signatures and only the lightest even toning expected from four decades on the shelf. The illustrated wrappers show minor edge scuffing, but the colours remain vivid and the spine lettering is unfaded, a testament to careful storage in a smoke-free home. As the sole first-edition printing, it is already scarce in commerce; finding one without institutional markings is genuinely unusual.
For students of Australian industrial history, labour relations, or engineering heritage, this volume is both a readable narrative and a reliable reference: it reproduces wage schedules, shop-floor photographs, and rare union journals that are not digitised online. Gift-buyers searching for a distinctive present for a metal-worker, trade-union member, or apprentice boilermaker will appreciate the pride this book inspires—its cover photograph of ironworkers riding a moving gantry 200 feet above Sydney Harbour still stops browsers in their tracks. Secure this 1982 first edition now while it remains available; prices have risen steadily as Australia’s heavy-industry archives are broken up and original copies disappear into private collections.
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