The 1987 ACTU Congress: Reconstructing Australia?

* Senior Lecturer, Department of Industrial Relations, University of New South Wales, PO Box I, Kensington, NSW 2033. The 1987 Congress, celebrating the sixtieth year of the ACTU, met at the Dallas Brooks Hall in Melbourne from 7th to llth September. Nine hundred and thirty-four delegates from one hundred and sixty-one affiliated unions and from assorted labour councils attended. These delegates represented approximately 2.4 million adult and half a million junior members.’ There were four new affiliates, one of which was the Australian Journalists Association (AJA). There were a number of international guests, including John Vanderveken, president of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions; Ken Douglas, secretary of the New Zealand Federation of Labour; and James Raman, the secretary of the Fijian Trade Union Congress. There