Skip to main content

Story: Unions and employee organisations

Shoe factory, Christchurch

Shoe factory, Christchurch

Crowded, noisy and dangerous conditions were common into the early 20th century in workplaces such as this Christchurch shoe factory. The Bootmakers’ Union was so militant in aiming to improve these conditions that its members were known as the ‘fighting bootmakers’.

Using this item

Alexander Turnbull Library, Samuel Heath Head Collection (PA-Group-00261)

Reference: 1/1-007455; G

by Samuel Heath Head

Permission of the Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand, Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa, must be obtained before any re-use of this image.

All images & media in this story

How to cite this page

Erik Olssen, Unions and employee organisations – Gain and loss, 1880–1890, Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, https://teara.govt.nz/en/photograph/22259/shoe-factory-christchurch (accessed 4 June 2026).

Story by Erik Olssen, published 4 February 2010.

Comments

Margaret Pollitt
30 October 2010
According to notes written by my grandfather, my great grandfather Thomas Wallis "was the first treasurer of the first bootmakers' union in Christchurch and like many others he suffered for his principles." He moved to the North Island with his family in 1898, however I believe he may have come out of the factories a little earlier than that and worked in his own business. He arrived in New Zealand as a young man in 1873. I would be interested to learn more about the early Christchurch bootmaker's union.