MacGregor, Marj

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.

Canberra, ACT

trade union official

Entered from deposit description on 27 September 2011; revised on 31 July 2012; revised 7 September 2016

Noel Butlin Archives Centre, Australian National University: N333, Papers of Marj MacGregor and Les Bowling, 1982-1994.
Personal communication with Marj MacGregor, July 2012 and Dan Bowling, July 2016.