Hugh Younger research papers relating to the building industry in New Zealand.

This collection contains correspondence, minutes, conference reports, notes, leaflets and newspaper clippings related to attempts to unify building industry associated unions during the 1940s. The bulk of the collection covers the period 1939 to 1942 and documents the formation and activities of the New Zealand Building and Allied Trades Federation which was formed in March 1940 from the Wellington Branch of the Amalgamated Carpenters and Joiners and Joiners Machinists Industrial Association of Workers’ Building Investigations Committee. However, the collection also includes material pertaining to the New Zealand Federated Building Trade Industrial Association of Workers which was formed in 1943 at the demise of the Building and Allied Trades Federation. These records cover the period from the Association’s formation in 1943 to mid 1946.

The papers in this collection were accumulated by Hugh Younger as part of the research for his 1974 MA thesis; The spirit of militancy: an examination of the New Zealand Building and Allied Trades Federation, 1940 – 1943. In his thesis Younger describes the papers as follows;

Gathered from a wide variety of sources, this material is diverse, and far ranging. As well as bridging the gaps in the McAra Collection, (MSS & Archives D – 6 and D-10) and the Daly Collection (MSS & Archives D- 22), it also contains material relating to the New Zealand Labour Party, the New Zealand Federation of Labour, the Government, and most of the Wellington building unions, especially the carpenters and plumbers unions. (Younger, 1974, ii).

Where and how, Younger accumulated the papers is unclear. Some material has clearly come from Wilfred McAra whom Younger interviewed for his thesis. During the late 1930s and early 1940s McAra was an active member of the Wellington Branch of the Amalgamated Carpenters and Joiners Association and was a key figure in the formation of the Association’s Building Investigations Committee and in turn the New Zealand Building and Allied Trades Federation. Other papers in the collection, however, can only have been extracted from the records of the Federation of Labour, the Wellington, Marlborough and Nelson Plasterer’s Union, the Plumbers Union and the records of the New Zealand Federated Building Trade Industrial Association of Workers.

Younger donated the papers to the University of Auckland in 1975. At some stage the papers were arranged and partly described by Library staff but a full inventory was not completed until now.

Among the papers are a number of index card with notes and summaries of events created by Younger while using the papers for his thesis, these have been left in situ.