'Marginalised' workers of the late twentieth century were those last hired in times of plenty and first fired in times of recession. Often women, Maori, or people from the Pacifc, they were frequently unemployed, and marginalised within the union movement as well as the labour force. WORKERS IN THE MARGINS tells the story of these workers in the tumultuous years of post-war New Zealand. These were years characterised by massive changes in the workforce, as it expanded to accommodate a growing urban Maori population and an increasing desire for women to enter paid work. The world of trade unions and employment conflicts, such as the 1951 waterfront lockout, was vigorous and challenging. As free market policies deregulated the labour market and splintered the union movement toward the end of the century, Te Roopu Rawakore o Aotearoa, the national unemployed and beneficiaries' movement, gave a new voice to 'workers in the margins'. The people of this history come to life through oral histories - from the poet (and boilermaker) Hone Tuwhare building a palisade at Orakei through to activists Sue Bradford and Jane Stevens working with the unemployed in the 1980s and '90s. Their experiences speak to the lives of many workers of the early twenty-first century.

"This is the first full history of the most turbulent period in New Zealand's industrial history: the period of the "Red" Federation of Labour, from its beginnings in the coal mins of the West Coast of New Zealand. The story begins with the Blackball Strike of 1908, and finishes with the great strike of 1913, and its aftermath. The central actors in this story are the "unskilled", as they were coming to be known -- the miners, wharfies, shearers, labourers, flaxies, and seamen, without whom there would have been no Red Federation ... In his penetrating study of the period Erik Olssen focuses on the rank and file workers and their leaders, in their dramatic battle to achieve dignity and power, and the struggle over strategies. Much here is new. The author provides sensitive accounts of the world of work, vivid portraits of the revolutionaries who led the Federation, including Savage, Hickey, Fraser, Holland, Webb, and J.B. King. He explores the Australian dimension to New Zealand's labour history, describes working class life, the role of ideology, the impact of the Wobblies, and examines in detail the upheavals of 1912-1913. The result is a dramatic and thorough account of the decisive events in the making of New Zealand's working class ..."--Inside front cover.