Tom Skinner
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Sir Tom Skinner KBE |
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| Member of the New Zealand Parliament for Tamaki |
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In office 1946 – 1949 |
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| Preceded by | seat created |
| Succeeded by | Eric Halstead |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
Thomas Edward Skinner 18 April 1909 Mangaweka, New Zealand |
| Died | 11 November 1991 (aged 82) Auckland, New Zealand |
| Political party | Labour |
| Spouse(s) |
Martha May Wangford (m. 1931) Mary Ethel "Molly" Yardley (m. 1947) |
| Children | 3 |
| Religion | Anglican |
Sir Thomas "Tom" Edward Skinner KBE (18 April 1909 – 11 November 1991) was a New Zealand politician and Trades Union leader.
Sir Tom served as President of the Auckland Trades Council from 1954 to 1976, and President of the New Zealand Federation of Labour from 1959 until 1979. Skinner was known as a conciliatory and accommodating political leader, and in the 1970s he was seen as the voice of unionism in New Zealand. He served on several international union forums, including a spell as a member of the body controlling the International Labour Organisation. He was instrumental in founding the Shipping Corporation of New Zealand, and was knighted in 1976.
Skinner was born in Mangaweka in 1909, the third child and eldest son in a family of five. His father was a South African-born plumber (also Thomas Edward Skinner); his mother was Australian-born Alice (née Chalk). The family moved to Auckland when Skinner was five, and he attended Bayfield school in Herne Bay. After leaving school he became an apprentice plumber, and established a plumbing business after finishing his apprenticeship. An accident on a motor-cycle left him unable to continue this work, and he had several other jobs until his health enabled him to return to plumbing. It was during the course of one of these jobs, as a milkman, that Skinner was first exposed to industrial action and union politics.
Skinner married Martha May Wangford in December 1931. In December 1937, the Skinner family became the first tenants of a state house in Coates Avenue, Orakei. Prime Minister Michael Joseph Savage helped carry furniture in through the front door (as he had with the first state house in Miramar, Wellington in September). This marriage was to produce one son but end in divorce. His second marriage to Mary Ethel "Molly" Yardley on 17 October 1942 resulted in a daughter and another son.
Skinner became secretary of the Auckland branch of the New Zealand Plumbers Union in 1940, and soon became involved in other smaller unions such as the Auckland Musicians Union, and also with the New Zealand Labour Party. In 1946 he was Labour candidate for the Tamaki electorate, winning the marginal seat by a slender margin. Labour was defeated in the following election in 1949, and his seat was lost to Eric Halstead. Skinner returned to his union career, becoming one of the new leaders of the movement after the disastrous 1951 Waterfront dispute. In 1952 he was elected vice president of the Auckland Trades Council and became president two years later, a position he retained for over 20 years. In 1959 Skinner was elected vice president of the New Zealand Federation of Labour and became president on the death of Fintan Patrick Walsh in 1963. As a leader, he was more conciliatory than his firebrand predecessor and encouraged several disaffected unions to rejoin the national body.
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