People Australia

Lewis (also known as Louis) Sweeting (c.1860-1943) labourer and trade union official

Birth: about 1860 in London, England. Father’s details not known; mother’s Christian name was Hannah. Marriage: 13 April 1886 at Woolloomooloo, Sydney, New South Wales, with Presbyterian forms, to Margaret Newburn (1862-1936), born at Coalisland, Tyrone, Northern Ireland. They had one daughter and six sons. Death: 26 June 1943 at his daughter’s residence, Bunnerong Road, Matraville, Sydney. Religion: Anglican. 

• Arrived in NSW about 1883, probably as a seaman. Described his occupation as seaman in 1886 and 1887.
• Founder of Builder’s Labourers’ Federation in NSW. Member of United Laborers’ Protective Society (ULPS) from the 1880s to 1901. Active in the Newtown Branch of the ULPS in the late 1890s; ULPS auditor 1900; ULPS delegate to Trades and Labor Council of NSW 1890-1893; delegate of country unions on TLC.
• Delegate of Amalgamated Navvies and General Labourers’ Union at conference of unskilled union regarding clearance cards 1891. Lost election for ULPS secretary to J. P. Cochran and began to dissent from new strategy of ULPS to more inclusive membership.
• Instrumental in Newtown branch splitting from ULPS in 1901 to form the Builders Labourers’ Union (BLU) of NSW.
• Architect of BLU’s early strategy of enticing employers by undermining ULPS conditions.
• Secretary of BLU 1901 to 1903. President in 1904.
• Old age pensioner in his later years. Cause of death: cancer of the tongue.

Sources
Trades and Labor Council of NSW (and its various permutations), Minutes 1890-1910; United Laborers’ Protective Society Minutes; P. Sheldon, In Division is Strength: Unionism among Sydney Labourers 1890-1910; Labor History, 56