Marj MacGregor was born in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1947. She was an Industrial Officer with the ACT Branch of the Australian Building Construction Employees and Builders Labourers Federation from March 1984 and during the period of the union's deregistration in 1986. She was a member of the Women’s BLF Defence Committee which formed in early 1986 in support of unemployed BLF members and their families and organised a food co-operative, support with unemployment benefit claims and social activities. MacGregor wrote the report, Trades for Women: Women and Apprenticeship in the ACT, published by the Trades and Labour Council in April 1989. She was appointed the Industrial Officer for the ACT Branch of the Health and Research Employees Association of Australia in May 1989 and was in this position to November 1990, when she was elected Secretary of the Branch. The branch became the ACT Higher Education branch of the Health Services’ Union on the amalgamation of the Health and Research Employees Association of Australia with the Hospital Employees Federation in January 1991. MacGregor was a delegate to the ACT Trades and Labour Council 1984-1994 and resigned in August 1994 prior to the branch’s incorporation into the National Tertiary Education Union. Her husband, Les Bowling, was a delegate and an activist in the Builders Labourers Federation. She died on 9 July 2016.

Les Bowling was a Builders Labourers Federation delegate at the White Industries Pty Ltd National Convention Centre site. He was an activist in the Australian Building Construction Employees & Builders Labourers Federation, ACT Branch and was part of a reform team which contested the Building Workers' Industry Union ACT Branch elections in 1987. Bowling was married to Marj MacGregor, a trade union official with the ABCE&BLF, ACT Branch.