People Australia

Robert Alexander Shields (1865-1947) schoolteacher, trade union official and headmaster

Birth: 11 October 1865 at Patrick Plains [Singleton], New South Wales, son of Irish-born parents Alexander Robert Shields (1835-1919), a railway inspector, from County Tyrone, and Elizabeth, née Redmond (1843-1887), from Ramstown, Gorey, County Wexford. Marriage: 1900 at Woollahra, New South Wales, to native-born Gertrude Bridget Loneragan (1877-1964). They had four daughters and one son. Three of the children died in childhood. Death: 23 January 1947 at Pennant Hills, NSW. Religion: Catholic. 

• First appointed to the Department of Public Instruction on 11 February 1879. In 1911, when he was 1st assistant teacher at Forest Lodge School, Sydney, he called a meeting at the Trades Hall, Sydney, with the stated object of forming a teachers’ union.
• He became a foundation member and president in 1911 of the Teachers’ Union of NSW, which emerged because of dissatisfaction with the Teachers’ Association which had formed in 1895 and served the social and professional interests of teachers but did not act strongly in relation to teachers’ salaries.
• In a public statement the union representatives denied that it was a political union, “No mention had been made of affiliating with the Trades and Labor Council, much less with the Political Labour League”.
• It was registered under the Trade Union Act in 1911. However, when the Teachers’ Union attempted to include teachers for coverage under the Industrial Arbitration Act, it was unsuccessful, as the Minister of Labour and Industry, G. S. Beeby, claimed that teachers who were in the professional and clerical divisions of the Public Service could approach parliament on salary and promotion issues.
• In 1912 he gave evidence before the South Australian Education Commission.
• Though it was a short-lived union — it held only three annual conferences and its membership was poor — it paved the way to the founding of the Teachers Federation in 1919.
• Shields taught in various schools throughout NSW, and was headmaster at Wallsend (Newcastle) in 1920 and then Mayfield East. He was elected an officer of the Newcastle district of the Public School Teachers’ Association in 1921. In 1924 he was appointed to the Public School at Camperdown, Sydney.
• After retiring as headmaster of Forest Lodge School, Sydney, in August 1930, he and Gertrude moved to Pennant Hills. He made occasional contributions on education policy to the NSW Teachers’ Federation’s journal, Education, from the 1920s.
• Cause of death: myeloid leukaemia (2 months).

Sources
Education, (Sydney), 19 March 1940 pp 132-33; Bruce Mitchell, Teachers, Education and Politics (Brisbane, 1975), pp 18?, 32 & 225.