Laurie Carmichael was a renowned organiser as a shop steward, senior shops steward and in his various roles as a union official.

In this excerpt from the Organising Works Trainees’ seminar, Carmichael explains his methods of organising at the workplace level, including the “thrippance” technique.

It is worth noting the educating character of his organising method.

Laurie Carmichael Speaks at Organising Works, Melbourne, Victoria, 1997: Excerpt

Key ideas in Carmichael’s presentation are summarised at the start of the video. 

Organising Works was an ACTU young organisers traineeship programme introduced in the early 1990s to support union efforts to reverse the decline in union density. The program concept and the organising method it taught the trainees drew heavily from the US unions that were organising relatively well in a hostile anti-union political climate.

This excerpt focuses on Carmichael’s method of union organizing including his “thrippence method”, “the active 10%”, and networked shop stewards’ committees.

The method he describes was an Australian method of organising – including within the context of the award system – that was established well before the Australian unions’ discovery of the core ideas in the US unions’ methods.

Carmichael’s election to his first full-time role as the Secretary of the AEU’s Melbourne District would not have been possible without the application of this method developed during his time as Convenor of the AEU and Combined Shop Committees at the Williamstown Naval Dockyard. As Secretary, he extended this method through his dedicated, strong-minded team of organizers and, that led to the successful union campaigns that followed.

Around the same time Carmichael was working with two other renowned, retired union leaders to contribute to the Organising Works Programme: Tom McDonald from the CFMEU and Tas Bull from the MUA.

Each gave a very important lecture about their experiences over decades of activism and leadership at an Organising Works Residential Course later in 1997. Those lectures were recoded but, regrettably, the recordings have been mislaid.

Carmichael’s lecture elaborated on the theme of strategy and leadership, providing a theoretical framework for strategy in a union and left political context, using three case studies out of his own direct experience: the defeat of the penal powers in 1969, the Vietnam Moratorium Movement against the war in Vietnam, and the shorter hours campaign.