V. Davis, in his reportage of the day to day life of Townsville meatworkers, provides a perceptive description of his fellow workers.  Three main aspects emerge from his, and other, contemporary characterisations of the meatworkers:  their group cohesion and inter-dependence, their mobility and their propensity to larrikinism.  The slaughtering gangs tended to be self-regulating and autonomous craft groups.  A shortage of skilled labour helped to entrench these travelling slaughtermen as the militant cadre within the industry.  The potential elitism of this group, however, was qualified by the inter-dependence of all meatworks labour, the comradeship which emerged within the complex system of interestate migration, and the co-ordinating role of the union in the engagement and placement of seasonal hands at each works.  At heart the syndicalism of the meatworkers was not so much a matter of organisational structure as an act of primitive rebellion.  Their attitudes reflected the conditioned recklessness of seasonal workers, and the rough, brutalising work they did.  The meatworkers have been continually accused of "anarchist" behaviour - reluctant to accept direction from the union, let alone submit to pressure from the management, they brought an element of larrikinism into the union.  The decentralised structure of the AMIEU gave reign to this undisciplined vehemence as, too, did the localism of the labour movement at many provincial centres.

The Board of Control, or shop committee, at each meatworks became the keystone of the AMIEU's syndicalism.  First established in Queensland, these boards grew out of the initial mode of organisation at the meatworks and reflected the degree of decentralisation within the union necessitated by sectional idiosyncrasies and by the tyranny of distance.  The boards consisted of a delegate elected annually from each department, together with a works president and secretary.  Once these delegates were protected from wholesale dismissal, the boards of control assumed a dynamic role.  First and foremost they laid down certain principles of employment at the works, the most basic of which was loyalty to the union.  A permit system was introduced whereby all members were required to obtain an authorisation from the union office before commencing work for the season.  Each works was staffed by a selection committee constituted by the local board of control.  The first men on and the last off each season were the union delegates.  The bulk of the men were selected on the basis of seniority lists - all members employed during the previous season to be placed before any new men would be accepted.  Finally, during the season, casual work was spread among the unemployed by means of a rotation system.

The board of control not only supervised the selection of labour but also played a significant role in the day to day operation of the works.  The delegates supplied the labour for overtime, decided the pace of work and handled any disputes as they arose.  In these circumstances the board of control duplicated the company's structure of supervisory staff and threatened to undermine it radically.  Further, the boards of control fulfilled a more general function as the primary initiators of policy within the union.  In Queensland, the boards at Alligator Creek and Ross River carried disproportionate influence within the branch.