Labour Australia

Halliday, Joseph Robert (Joe) (1902-1979) labourer and trade union official 

Birth: 1902 at Bendigo, Victoria, son of native-born parents William Alexander Halliday (1879-1917), a miner of Scottish descent, and native-born Clara, née Brocklesby (1878-1962). Marriage: 1978 at Footscray, Victoria, to Alice Jean Clark. Death: 2 September 1979 in his home at Footscray. 

• Joe started his working life at the Rosella Preserving Company, Richmond, Victoria, in the 1917 fruit season in the can shop and returned again in 1923.
• Held numerous positions with the Food Preservers’ Union of Australia’s Victorian Branch: member 1923; finance member on branch committee of management 1928; president, 1938-1939; organiser, October 1939; assistant State secretary and assistant general secretary 1940; acting secretary of both the federation and the branch; secretary from January 1950 to 1967.
• He was elected one of the Victorian delegates to the federal conference of the Food Preservers’ Union and was a federal council member of the union. He represented the union on the Jam Trade Wages Board from 1939 onwards in Arbitration Court proceedings and on the Food Trades Federation, the latter of which he became president in 1943.
• He represented the union at the Biennial Australian Council of Trade Unions and annual Australian Labor Party, Victorian branch, conferences — the latter from 1932 almost continuously until about 1967.
• Represented the union on Victorian Trades Hall Council from 1937 and was elected as vice-president in 1952 and president in 1953.
• He was presented with a souvenir Coronation medal.
• Cause of death: cardiac arrest, acute renal failure, carcinoma sigmoid and chronic obstructive airways disease.

Sources
Food Preserver, February 1950, July 1953, November 1959, February 1967.