Arbitration Or Collaboration? the Australasian Society of Engineers in South Australia, 1904-68‪.‬

Labour historians have by no means neglected Australia's metal trades unions, the most important of which have been the Amalgamated Engineering Union (AEU) (until 1920 the Amalgamated Society of Engineers) and the Australasian Society of Engineers (ASE). One has only to note Ken Buckley's pioneering study of the early years of the AEU published in 1970 and Tom Sheridan's better-known sequel published a few years later. Sheridan pursued his interest in this benchmark-setting union in journals such as Labour History and the Journal of Industrial Relations. Other scholars have produced the occasional postgraduate thesis or journal article on the AEU. (1) Similarly, the somewhat smaller Federated Ironworkers Association of Australia has won the attention of several labour historians. At the same time Sheridan was completing the doctoral thesis that eventually developed into Mindful Militants, John Merritt was finishing his extensive study into the FIA during the first half of the twentieth century. Both John Merritt and Daphne Gollan have produced journal articles on the ironworkers, the former at least one on the FIA in the Great Depression, the latter at least two on the union at the very beginning of the Cold War. (2)