The Brisbane Labour History Association is pleased to offer the Stella Nord Bursary. This award honours Stella Nord, a worker and campaigner whose writings reflected her commitment to the labour movement. Mindful of Stella’s example, the BLHA wishes to assist emerging or established historians whose circumstances make it difficult for them to carry out a labour history project.
The BLHA undertakes to provide to the successful applicant a grant of up to $1000 and mentoring on historical research and writing if required.
Applications
Applicants will outline a viable and original research project in the field of Australian labour history, and explain how the bursary would alleviate the circumstances which limit their opportunities for undertaking historical research; for example, by assisting travel to relevant archives and libraries or by defraying costs of oral history recording.
The nominated project should be completed within 18 months, and the results will be presented in a format agreed to by the BLHA. Presentation formats may include but are not limited to a journal article, a talk at a BLHA event, or an audio-visual work suitable for online publication. A copy of the complete rules of the bursary is available to download.
Candidates should apply by completing the application form and sending the form and any accompanying documents to the Stella Nord Bursary Administrator at:-
blha.sec@gmail.com or PO Box 766, Mount Gravatt Plaza QLD 4122
Please note, applications for 2025 have closed.
About Stella Nord
Stella Nord (nee Olsen, 1920-2009) grew up in the East End of London where her family lived through the Depression. Stella immigrated to Australia with her brother, Albert, in 1939 and had a daughter, Rosalind (Lindy), during her first marriage to James Ingram. From 1940 to 1968 she worked variously as a housemaid on a cattle station, shearers’ cook, drover, dental assistant, egg sorter, strawberry picker and office worker for the Trades and Labor Council.
From the mid-50s to the mid-60s, Stella was employed at Swifts Meat Packing Company at Cannon Hill, Brisbane, in horrific working conditions. When the women complained to their union delegate, he patronisingly referred to them as ‘the sheilas’ and ignored their complaints. Stella forced the union to hold meetings in the women’s dining room to discuss issues that directly affected the women, such as the bosses secretly speeding up the conveyor line, and women needing to ask permission to go to the toilet. As the first woman elected to represent the Queensland Meatworkers Union on the Queensland TLC, Stella addressed thousands of men and women at mass meetings for equal pay in Queensland.
In these years Stella was also President of the Brisbane Working Women’s Group of the Union of Australian Women.
During the 1970s, Stella was among many women who became hoist drivers, first aid and safety officers and job delegates in the Sydney construction industry after the NSW BLF opened its books to women. When she encountered sexism among the men, she argued it out with the offenders ‘boots and all’. During the Green Bans, she was in the thick of the campaign to save the Rocks area of Sydney.
The effect of Stella Nord, and of other CPA feminists, on CPA policies culminated in 1972 with the Party adopting a policy of support for Women’s Liberation and for other protest groups.
After being expelled from the BLF for alleged ‘impropriety’, Stella made good use of her time by earning a Bachelor of Arts in philosophy from Sydney University. She was readmitted to the BLF on 11 December 1981.
When not working in paid employment or attending union meetings, Stella loved to write. She scripted a 20-minute comedy play on equal pay (produced by New Theatre in 1970); two articles for Tribune in 1973 (‘Women’s Lib at the BLF’ and ‘On the Building Site’); and, in 1983, the book for which she is best known: Migrant Women Workers – These are your Rights. The book was a huge undertaking during which she conducted around 400 interviews, normally without a tape recorder or taking notes, afraid she would scare off the migrant women she needed to talk to.
The book was subsequently translated into half a dozen languages, and Stella insisted those working on the translations be paid. She wanted the book to not only make migrant women more confident about their rights, but also to enlighten male-dominated unions.
Stella Nord epitomises the committed worker-writer. Her writing was organically linked to a life spent campaigning for union rights, community justice and equality for women.
(With thanks to Doug Eaton and Dale Lorna Jacobsen whose obituary for Stella appeared in the QJLH in September 2009.)