Print & Politics: A History of Trade Unions in the New Zealand Printing Industry, 1865-1995

This comprehensive history of trade unions in the New Zealand printing industry provides an absorbing insight into a century and a half of new Zealand history. From the early 1860s, when the first typographical unions were formed in Dunedin and Wellington, to 1996, when printers and journalists amalgamated with the Engineers Union to form the country’s largest private sector trade union (the New Zealand Engineering, Printing, and Manufacturing Union) it addresses a number of fascinating stories. Issues discussed include changing technology and the question of worker control of change and the preservation of workers’ pay and conditions; divisions between different groups of workers in the workplace and at the bargaining table; the place of politically conservative trade unions in New Zealand’s labor history; and the growing involvement of Maori and women in unionism.

Peter Franks lives in Wellington, New Zealand.