A labour council, trades council or industrial council is an association of labour unions or union branches in a given area. Most commonly, they represent unions in a given geographical area, whether at the district, city, region, or provincial or state level. They may also be based on a particular industry rather than geographical area, as for example, in the Maritime Council of Australia which co-ordinated the waterfront and maritime unions involved in the 1890 Australian Maritime Dispute.
Affiliates of labour councils are trade union branches or locals, and occasionally other labour movement organisations. City-wide or provincial councils may have district or regional labour council affiliates as well as trade unions. Some labour councils restrict their membership to organisations which are affiliated with a particular national trade union federation, such as many state-level labour councils in the United States, which are chartered from the AFL-CIO national confederation.
Finances are usually obtained through an affiliation fee, often based on a per capita tax on the membership of affiliates. In Australia, Trades and Labour Councils often have their own hall and offices known as a Trades Hall, with the term Trades Hall often used as a colloquial expression for the Labour Council or Trades Hall Council.
Read more about Labour Council: Note On Usage, History
Famous quotes containing the words labour and/or council:
“By this also ye must know that women have dominion over you: do ye not labour and toil, and give and bring all to the woman? Yea, a man taketh his sword, and goeth his way to rob and to steal, to sail upon the sea and upon rivers, and looketh upon a lion, and goeth in the darkness; and when he hath stolen, spoiled, and robbed, he bringeth it to his love.”
—Apocrypha. Zorobabel, in Esdras I 4:22-24.
“There by some wrinkled stones round a leafless tree
With beards askew, their eyes dull and wild
Twelve ragged men, the council of charity
Wandering the face of the earth a fatherless child....”
—Allen Tate (1899–1979)