This book provides a new perspective on and new insights into how and why workers organise, and what shapes this organisation. The Origins of Worker Mobilisation will be key reading for scholars, academics and policy makers the fields of industrial relations, HRM, labour economics, labour history and related disciplines.

Michael Quinlan is professor of industrial relations in the School of Management at the University of New South Wales, Australia. He is also an adjunct professor in the School of History and Classics at the University of Tasmania and a visiting professor at the Business School, Middlesex University in London. Born in Sydney he divides his time between this city and Launceston, Tasmania where much of this book was written.

1. Reconsidering the Collective Impulse and the Colonial Context

2. Law, the Courts and Inequality at Work

3. Overview of Worker Organisation, 1788-1850

4. Analysing the Components of Organisation

5. Organisation in Transport and Maritime Activities

6. Organisation in the Rural and Extractives Sectors

7. Organisation in Construction and Building Materials

8. Organisation in Manufacturing and Related Trades

9. Organisation in Government and Community Services

10. Organisation in Commercial, Personal Services and Retailing

11. Peak and Political Organisation

12. Re-evaluating Worker Mobilisation