Federated Ironworkers Association
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| Full name | Federated Ironworkers' Association of Australia |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1908 |
| Date dissolved | 1991 |
| Merged into | Federation of Industrial Manufacturing and Engineering Employees |
| Affiliation | ACTU, ALP |
| Country | Australia |
The Federated Ironworkers' Association of Australia (FIA) was an Australian trade union which existed between 1911 and 1991. It represented labourers and semi-skilled workers employed in the steel industry and ironworking, and later also the chemical industry.
The Federated Ironworkers' Assistants' Association of Australia was formed on the 25 September 1908 at a meeting held at the Sydney Trades Hall, attended by delegates from several small state-based unions from New South Wales and Victoria, including the Amalgamated Ironworkers' Assistants' Union and the Amalgamated Society of Ironworkers' Assistants of Victoria. The newly formed FIA expanded its representation to Queensland and South Australia in the following year at its first full conference held in Melbourne in April 1909. The union received federal registration in 1911, despite objections raised by several tradesmen's craft unions, including the Federated Society of Boilermakers and the Amalgamated Society of Engineers. These unions were concerned with preserving the distinction between their skilled members and the unskilled assistant ironworkers. The FIA resisted limiting their membership to assistant ironworkers following its recent amalgamation in January 1911 with the Eskbank Ironworkers' Association of Mill and Forge Workers, which represented workers at the G. & C. Hoskins steel mill at Lithgow.
Starting from a membership of approximately 5000 the union grew rapidly during World War I and also amalgamated with several smaller unions to reach a membership of close to 10,000 by the early 1920s, approximately 10 percent of total union membership in the Australian metal industry. Half the union's membership was from New South Wales, which was divided up into several branches, including Sydney, Lithgow, Newcastle and Granville. A new branch was formed in 1917 to represent ironworkers in the shipbuilding industry in Balmain.
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