After he was discharged for fighting with a foreman, 600 miners struck, formed a local of the United Mine Workers of America (UMW), and elected (1904) Murray local president.
However, Murray was elected president of the United Steel Workers of America in 1942 when that union was formed.
Retaining the presidency of both the CIO and the United Steel Workers of America until his death, Murray was active in expelling (1949–50) Communist-dominated unions from the CIO.
She has published widely on Maori and Pacific writing and is the author of Postcolonial Pacific Writing: Representing the Body (Routledge 2005) and Pacific Islands Writing: The Postcolonial Literatures of Aotearoa/New Zealand and Oceania (Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2006).
She has also edited (with StuartMurray) a special issue of the Journal of New Zealand Literature (no. 21, 2003) focusing upon diasporic connections between New Zealand and the UK.
She is a founding committee member and membership secretary for the New Zealand Studies Association (NZSA), which holds annual conferences and publishes proceedings with Kakapo Books and in the NZSA-affiliated journal British Review of New Zealand Studies (BRONZS).
