The Australian- and New-Zealand-English noun Pommy, also Pommie, and the shortened form Pom, designate:
– a British immigrant to Australia or New Zealand;
– a British (especially an English) person.
—Cf. also the noun Pommy-bashing and the phrases whingeing Pommy and (as) dry as a Pommy’s towel.
The noun shop steward designates a person elected by his or her fellow-workers in a factory or other place of work as their spokesperson on conditions of work, etc., especially within the context of a trade union or other labour organisation.
The Australian-English phrase Pommy shop steward is a derogatory appellation for a radical British shop steward in an Australian trade union.
The following explanations are from If Pommies were our only worry…, an interview of the trade-union official and member of the Australian Labor Party John Egerton (1918-1998)—interview by Alan Reid, published in The Bulletin (Sydney, New South Wales, Australia) of Saturday 20th August 1977:
Egerton separates the bulk of English migrants, many of whom he believes came to Australia to escape the manifestations in their homeland of what has become known in Australia as “the Pommy shop steward syndrome,” from the numerous English shop stewards who have emerged on the local industrial scene.
Egerton says: “The Pommy shop steward, as distinct from the English migrant, has been responsible for a change in the pattern of industrial behaviour in Australia. Arriving in Australia, many at a time when the rigid, intractable attitude of employers and the arbitration tribunals and the use of penal clauses were destroying the confidence of Australian workers in arbitration tribunals, the English shop stewards found fertile fields to till.”
The earliest occurrences of the phrase Pommy shop steward that I have found are as follows, in chronological order:
1-: From Speculator’s Diary, published in The Bulletin (Sydney, New South Wales, Australia) of Saturday 15th June 1974:
As I predicted the previous week, Mainline Corporation, then at $1.05, was poised to plunge through the $1 barrier and would present a fair punt after the falling price stabilised.
In fact, Mainline went down faster than a Pommy shop steward could call a stoppage.
2-: From a speech made by the Liberal-Party politician Harold Young (1923-2006), who represented South Australia, during a debate on the Trade Union Training Authority Bill, which took place in the Senate on Wednesday 28th May 1975—as transcribed in Historic Hansard:
I want to […] refer to the guerrilla tactics which have been used in so many areas of industry. I refer to the position in my home State of South Australia where, in the motor industry, we have seen guerrilla tactics used by means of spot strikes. How costly have the strikes been? Whom do they affect? Do they affect an industry as much as they affect the community? It is John Citizen who finally pays the price by way of increased costs of those products, because of the high cost that is paid when disruption takes place in industry. What about the average worker? The average working man is a decent, honest Australian who wants to support his family. Because of the radicalism of a few union leaders, and more importantly shop stewards, he is pulled out of work. He does not have the opportunity to decide democratically whether he will stay at work. He is forced into a situation. One of the things that I hope will happen in this country—the sooner the better—is the replacement of what are called the belly-aching pommy shop stewards in this country who are disrupting so much of the industry in this country. Let me qualify that statement by saying that I have the greatest respect for English migrants and European migrants, but I am sick and tired to death of these shop stewards who cause so much disruption. How often of a morning when there has been a strike do we hear on ‘A.M.’ a strange accent? I consider that many of these people are industrial drop-outs from the United Kingdom. They could not make the grade in the union cause in the United Kingdom. They have come out here as semipros, with one purpose in mind—to be disruptive. The sooner they are replaced with good English, good European or the good old Australian shop stewards, the better off the unions, including the individual members, and this country will be.
[…]
I referred to pommy shop stewards. Let me clarify what I mean by that, for the sake of the interjector Senator Georges. There is a big difference between a pommy shop steward and an English shop steward. Let me make that clear. There is a big difference. If Senator Georges talked to many of the people in the workforce today he would find that they agree with me. They are getting rather tired of working in the factory and suddenly finding that they are out of work, not through choice but because of the decision of some radicals who have gone on strike.
3-: From the column Ebenezer, by Peter Smark (1936-2000), published in The Age (Melbourne, Victoria, Australia) of Tuesday 10th June 1975:
The Irish are hitting back. I sense a quick Gaelic tongue behind a spate of English hate jokes doing the rounds.
An example:
Q.: Why do employers want to have pommy shop stewards exempted from the morning and afternoon tea breaks?
A.: The cost of retraining is exorbitant.
4-: From Dragging out the Red peril, by Richard Hall, published in The Bulletin (Sydney, New South Wales, Australia) of Saturday 19th July 1975:
The tensions and conflicts in the factories of our contemporary society are not the product of sinister agitators or Pommie shop stewards (singling out the shop steward movement for the scapegoat, along with the sinister Communist, is the present manifestation of the refusal of some of our industrialists to face problems of the factory floor.)
word histories 
This is an interesting phrase indeed. As the text indicates the phrase refers to a situation of political tension regarding labour relations. The pommy shop steward was more of a political activist than the typical Aussie and they ‘led the charge’. With all the zeal of the migrant.
It has overtones reflecting upon the mindset of the typical Aussie: saying something about the Aussie culture at least then, perhaps now.
There is in Aussie parlance the word ‘urger’. People get called ‘urgers’. It is in use far more – or used to be – than in other English speaking countries. It was almost a common epithet.
It refers to people who persuade other people to do things that the urger himself would be frightened to do, perhaps things of mischief, perhaps things of common good but fraught with peril and most often generally things that put the urged in some jeopardy: hence an ‘urger’ was primarily in the first instance a threat.
But back in the days of the pommy shop stewart the Aussies were very largely ‘urgers’. They urged these ‘new chum’ people into the union and then they urged them into the high profile and precarious positions of shop stewards.
It can depend how you look at it: the Aussies were ‘behind them’ you could say or the Aussies were ‘a bunch of urgers’ you could say. Both at once perhaps.
Point is it was all very interesting and nationally significance. The poms were urged into prominence, they took the positions and fought well, they were backed by sufficient numbers of Aussies (far, far, far more than back Julian Assange for instance) and working conditions in Australia changed for the better.
LikeLike