The National Union of Rail Workers of Australia (originally National Union of Railwaymen of Australia) (NUR) was an Australian trade union representing railway industry workers which operated from 1938 until 1993.
Origins
The union had its roots in dissident New South Wales railway workers who had refused to join the 1917 general strike. The dissident workers had formed two unions in the wake of the strike: the New South Wales Government Railways Permanent Way Association and the Association of Employees (Mechanical Branch) of the New South Wales Railways. A subsequent Labor state government had allowed the deregistered Australian Railways Union to be reregistered at state level and had stripped the dissident unions of their registration. A later Nationalist Party of Australia government had reregistered the dissident unions, which had then been revoked again by Labor under Jack Lang.
The two dissident unions amalgamated to form the Railway Service Association on 6 June 1930. The association then formed a new union, the National Union of Railwaymen in October 1932, with the intention of seeking federal registration as a union. Walter Skelton, a former New South Wales state MP, served as union secretary. The union and its predecessors were often referred as the "loyalist" union, which the union secretary stated that was because they had refused to "associate with strike-mad theorists" or "adhere to any political party"; many sources noted that they were frequently known as the "scab" union. Its constitution covered all railway workers at all levels, giving it the coverage of "one big union" covering railway workers throughout the Commonwealth if workers so chose.
1933 registration attempt
The union's first attempt at registration in late 1932 was withdrawn due to "technical irregularities". A second attempt at registration, in January 1933, met with strong opposition from the unions, with many unions – variously reported as being between 17 and 23 – opposing the application before the Commonwealth Arbitration Court, including the Australian Railways Union, the Federation of Salaried Officers of Railway Commissioners, the Australian Tramway and Motor Omnibus Employees' Association, and the Australian Workers' Union. The opposing unions dismissed the union as not being "bona fide" on the basis that only 206 members of the 5,000 in the Railway Service Association and of the 90,000 workers in the industry had joined the new union, while claiming that the union rules made the executive "a junta able to exercise despotic power". Other unions opposed "new organisations coming in to divide workers already properly catered for".
The case highlighted the strong ongoing antipathy between the Australian Railways Union and the dissident unions seeking to form the NUR. Several NUR members gave evidence that they had refused to join the ARU because they saw it as affiliated with Russia and inconsistent with Catholic beliefs. NUR officials had campaigned against the NSW Labor government of Jack Lang at the 1932 election, citing Lang's previous attempts to deregister them and their belief that some of Lang's legislation "bordered on Sovietism"; in return, they claimed during the case that feared that they would lose their jobs if Lang returned to government in the future. They were at times met with a strong response from the existing unions: NSW state MP Abe Landa publicly labelled the NUR a "corrupt organisation" which existed to "satisfy the personal ambitions of certain NUR officials" and described their witnesses as "weak, twisting and vacillating", while alleging that the NUR had violated its own rules.