People Australia

Gordon Cahill, 1949

West Australian, 8 July 1949, p 25

Gordon Charles Cahill (1900-1981) boilermaker and trade union leader

Birth: 26 January 1900 in Perth, Western Australia, son of Irish-born parents Patrick Cahill (b.1872), labourer, from Mitchelstown, Cork, later financier, and Margaret, née O’Brien, from Galway (b.1877). Marriage: 2 January 1930 at Darlinghurst, New South Wales, to Kathleen Taylor. They had one son. Death: 14 August 1981 at Inglewood, WA. Religion: Catholic. 

• Apprenticed boilermaker in the Western Australian Government Railways & Tramways from 20 September 1915 to 27 October 1920. Except for periods of 12 months from November 1922 to December 1923 — when he was retrenched — and seven years from 1926 to the early 1930s – when he lived and worked in New South Wales — Cahill was a boilermaker in the WA railways from 1920 until he resigned on 30 June 1944.
• Served 24 years as secretary of the Perth Branch of the Boilermakers’ Society from 1941, also serving at various times as federal president, federal senior vice-president and federal councillor of union.
• Secretary of WA Metal Trades Federation, with some short breaks from 1944 to 1965.
• Candidate for the powerful position of State secretary of the Australian Labor Party in June 1949. Was defeated by F. E. 'Joe' Chamberlain
• Cause of death: myocardial degeneration.

Sources:
Boilermaker, May 1962, June 1965.