The Union is the oldest and most successful of the blue collar unions in PNG. The union had its origins in the ethnically based welfare societies formed in Port Moresby in the late 1950s. Waterside workers were also active in the PNG Workers’ Association and its successor the Port Moresby Workers’ Association in the 1960s. The Central District Waterside Workers’ Union was established at a public meeting in Port Moresby on 24 July 1968 and registered under the PNG Industrial Organisations Ordinance on 28 January 1969. Between 1977 and 1980 the CDWWU embarked on a series of amalgamations with the Overseas Seamen’s Union, the Rabaul Workers’ Association, the Madang Waterside Workers’ Union and the Lae Stevedoring Union. The amalagamated union, the PNG Waterside Workers’ and Seamen’s Union, the first national private sector union in Papua New Guinea, was registered on 8 January 1980. The name of the organisation was changed to the Papua New Guinea Maritime Workers Industrial Union on 18 October 1993. (See Michael Hess, <I>Unions Under Economic Development: private sector unions in PNG</I>, Oxford University Press, 1992.)

<LI>Port Moresby Council of Trade Unions, Submission to the Urban Minimum Wages Board. Ts., roneo, 228pp., Aug 1974;</LI>
<LI>PNG Maritime Workers Industrial Union, Circulars to National Executive Council Members and Branch Presidents, Jun 1991-Jul 1997;</LI>
<LI>Press cuttings on industrial matters in Papua New Guinea, 1970-1990;</LI>
<LI>Further press cuttings on industrial matters in PNG, n.d.;</LI>
<LI>Rough list of non-current files held in the PNG Maritime Workers Industrial Union’s Port Moresby office in May 1994 and since destroyed, May 1994</LI><P><b>See reel list for further details</b>