The Australian Women's Register

Marj MacGregor was an Industrial Officer with the ACT Branch of the Australian Building Construction Employees and Builders Labourers Federation (ABCE&BLF) from March 1984 and during the period of the union’s deregistration in 1986. She was a member of the Women’s BLF Defence Committee which formed in early 1986 in support of unemployed BLF members and their families and organised a food co-operative, support with unemployment benefit claims and social activities.

From March 1987 to May 1989, Marj was employed as a welfare worker at a Canberra women’s refuge and during this period was a member of the Disputes Committee of the Australian Social Welfare Union.

She was a delegate to the ACT Trades and Labour Council from May 1984 to December 1988, and during this time was a member of the Council’s Women’s Committee. In 1988, she undertook a project for the Council on women’s participation in apprenticeships, organising public forums and surveys of former and current apprentices, tradeswomen, unions and employers. She wrote the report, Trades for Women: Women and Apprenticeship in the ACT, published in April 1989 by the ACT Trades and Labour Council, recommending that women be encouraged to take up apprenticeships in non-traditional trades.

She was appointed the Industrial Officer for the ACT Branch of the Health and Research Employees Association of Australia in May 1989 and was in this position till November 1990, when she was elected Secretary of the Branch. The branch became the ACT Higher Education branch of the Health Services’ Union on the amalgamation of the Health and Research Employees Association of Australia with the Hospital Employees Federation in January 1991, representing members at the Australian National University and the University of Canberra. She was a delegate to the ACT Trades and Labour Council for the union from June 1989 till 1994. She resigned in August 1994 prior to the branch’s incorporation into the National Tertiary Education Union to return to Adelaide.

Her husband, Les Bowling, was a union delegate and an activist in the Australian Building Construction Employees and Builders Labourers Federation.