1912 Brisbane general strike

The 1912 Brisbane General Strike in Queensland, Australia, began when members of the Australian Tramway and Motor Omnibus Employees' Association were dismissed when they wore union badges to work on 18 January 1912. They then marched to Brisbane Trades Hall where a meeting was held, with a mass protest meeting of 10,000 people held that night in Market Square (also known as Albert Square, now King George Square).

General Strike

The Brisbane Tramways were owned by the Brisbane Tramway Company, a mainly local owned company, linked with the former Metropolitan Tramway and Investment Company horse tramway company and the Melbourne Tramway and Omnibus Company but operated it as an English Company as the main investors - in Melbourne and Brisbane as well as England and Scotland - owned tramways on all continents, however, there were a number of inter-related companies all with Brisbane Tramways in the title. The equipment for the tramway was supplied by the General Electric Company of the USA. Joseph Stillman Badger came out with the equipment to Brisbane in 1896 to install and set up the tramways. The Company asked him to stay on as General Manager, a proposal which he accepted, becoming managing director of the Company eventually. The men wanted the right to wear the union badge. Two organisers, reportedly IWW, went to all the tramways in Australia to try to organise a simultaneous strike over the issue. Badger refused to negotiate with the union over the issue. He also refused to go into negotiations with the Queensland Council of Unions (Queensland's peak union body), then known as the Australian Labour Federation. After this rebuff, a meeting of delegates from forty-three Brisbane based Trade Unions formed the Combined Unions Committee and appointed a General Strike Committee.