The Chullora Railway Workshops was the site for construction and maintenance of locomotives and rolling stock of the New South Wales rail system from the late 1920s, and was the major electric car workshop in NSW. Employees of the Chullora Railway Workshops were represented by trade union committes including the Electric Car Workshops Shop Committee, Boiler Shop Committee, Combined Union Stewards Committee (Erecting and Tender Shops), Area Union Stewards and Rolling Stock Shop Committee.

The first shop committees in the New South Wales Railways were formed at Eveleigh and Enfield railway workshops in about 1926. At the end of 1929 six workshops were affiliated to a Central Council of Railway Shop Committees: Chullora Signal Branch, Per Way Shops and Electric Car Shops, Enfield Locomotives, Clyde Workshop, and Mortdale Workshop. The first monthly issue of The Magnet, the official journal of the Central Council of Railway Shop Committees, was distributed free throughout the railway workshops in 1934. From 1960s, the campaigning activities of the shop committees were assumed by the trade unions.