IEU Labour History: Anna Stewart, the woman who inspired a generation of female unionists

For over 40 years, the Anna Stewart Memorial Project (ASMP) has offered work experience for women in unions, inspiring hundreds to take on new roles in the movement.

As Australian workplaces continue to diversify, the ASMP has never been more important. Jenny Bremner, a gifted writer who worked with Anna Stewart at the Municipal Officers Association (MOA), the forerunner of the Australian Services Union, produced a fascinating profile of her friend which was highlighted by the recent 40th anniversary of the ASMP.

ANNA STEWART MEMORIAL PROJECT 40TH ANNIVERSARY DINNER

‘She was never one to take the easy path or to shirk a fight,’ Jennie wrote.

‘Anna’s feisty personality, her jousting, acerbic wit and piercing intelligence made the rest of us feel safe; she dared to say and do what many of us had up to that point only thought about.

‘At the MOA she became known as the ‘crocodile’ – a tag applied by a hostile employer advocate and one which she wore as a badge of honour. She had a way of turning sexism on its head. Once during negotiations she asked a particularly aggressive male on the other side of the table if it was ‘that time of the month’ (to his considerable embarrassment); on another occasion she humiliated a cranky employer representative during a Commission hearing by rolling up her sleeves and asking him to ‘step outside’.’

Jenny says when Anna entered the union movement in the mid-1970s, after working as a journalist, Australian unions were still ‘largely in a time warp’, dominated by ‘blue collar, male, middle-aged, Anglo-Saxon officials’ who were ‘unaffected by the winds of change which had radicalised youth across the Western world, and which had blown the conservatives out of power in Canberra for the first time in 23 years…’

The aftermath of the vicious 1950s ALP split had left unions ‘closed and suspicious of new ideas’.

‘Up to this point they had therefore been relatively impervious to the liberalisation that was occurring in society and in particular to the new demands of women. In a sense these increasingly vocal demands – for child care, maternity leave, equal pay – were at odds with the history and culture of the union movement in Australia, which had largely been founded on the notion of defending male jobs and wages in order that women would not have to enter the paid workforce. By extension, these traditional views saw much female employment as an encroachment on the male domain and a threat to working class families.’

Anna Stewart in 1980.

When Anna appeared on the trade union scene in 1974, pregnant with her third child, her ‘anti-authoritarian feminist ideas and her brimming self-confidence set her on a determined path to implement far-reaching changes to the thinking and practices of the trade union establishment’.

In 1974 Anna was appointed to a temporary research position with the Federated Furnishing Trades Society. Her ability was so obvious that the position soon became full-time, despite her pregnancy. At this time, many public service employers still routinely sacked women once they got married. It was ‘unheard of’ to appoint a pregnant woman to a permanent position.

When Anna’s baby was born, she became ‘a legend in her own time’ by breast-feeding her son in the Federal Conciliation and Arbitration Commission and taking him on Commission inspections where for the first time the needs of a working mother had to be accommodated.

‘No one had ever done this before; she was setting a personal example which was an inspiration to others.’

The 2023 ASMP intake, with IEU member Lisa Hunter second from right in the back row.

Anna’s anti-sexual harassment campaigns made her one of the first officials with ‘the vision and the courage to give an old practice a new name and a new critique’.

‘She exposed it as a crucial facet of the exploitation of women and thereby made it a political issue; she challenged an aspect of male control which few before had dared to seriously tackle in such a public and male-dominated environment. She developed policies and pioneered techniques of campaigning on this issue which became pacesetting for the broader union movement.’

In 1980, when Anna was appointed as Federal Industrial Officer by the MOA, she of course challenged conservative, anti-female attitudes that lingered there.

‘She educated, she informed – she overwhelmed her opponents with the force of her logic and her persistence.’ Looking for ways to establish a fitting monument to Anna, her friends and admirers immediately dismissed the idea of a bricks and mortar tribute – ‘she would have laughed at the pomposity of that’.

‘Our thinking eventually led to the establishment of this affirmative action programme because we wanted to continue her struggle to make women a political force within trade unions.’

Jennie Bremner became the first facilitator of the resulting Anna Stewart Memorial Project. It honours Anna in the best way – providing practical assistance to women looking to learn and grow in the union movement.