Identity area
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Authorized form of name
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- Joe Owens
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Description area
Dates of existence
History
Joseph (Joe) Owens was born in Durham County in the north of England; his Welsh father was a coalminer. He arrived in Australia in 1958, having skipped ship as a seaman, then worked as a cane-cutter in Queensland before working as a dogman on Sydney building sites. He became a member of the Communist Party of Australia and an organiser in the New South Wales Branch of the Australian Building Construction Employees' and Builders' Labourers' Federation (ABCE&BLF). He was Secretary of the NSW Branch of the ABCE&BLF from 1973 to 1975 and along with the Branch leadership which included Jack Mundey and Bob Pringle, supported the BLF Green Bans. In 1975, Owens and other members of the NSW Branch leadership were expelled from the BLF by the federation's then federal secretary Norm Gallagher. Owens was also a Federated Engine Drivers' & Firemen's Association of Australasia (FEDFA) delegate and Senior Project Delegate of the Labour Council to the Darling Harbour Construction Project.
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New South Wales
Legal status
Functions, occupations and activities
construction worker; trade union official; trade unionist
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Internal structures/genealogy
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Dates of creation, revision and deletion
Entered from deposit description on 13 October 2011; revised 23 July 2014
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Script(s)
Sources
National Library of Australia, Interview with Joe Owens, former secretary, NSW Builders' Labourers' Federation [sound recording] / interviewer, Ann Turner.
Meredith Burgmann and Verity Burgmann, Green Bans, Red Union: Environmental activism and the New South Wales Builders' Labourers’ Federation (UNSW Press, 1998).
Obituary, The Hummer, Australian Society for the Study of Labour History, Sydney Branch, vol. 9, no.1, 2014, pp. 44-45.