Flo Humphries ‘a true daughter of the working class’🏠♀️
Meet Florence Ann Humphries, better known as “Flo.” Born in 1915, Flo’s life was defined by hard graft. She worked as a milk-bar maid, a shirt machinist, and a cook, knowing firsthand the reality of low-paid, gruelling work. But Flo’s deepest understanding of the struggle came from her own home: she raised her first child for five years as a single mother in an era when society offered solo mums almost no financial or social safety net.
Instead of letting the weight of those hardships break her, Flo used her lived experience to become one of New Zealand’s most fierce, compassionate advocates for women’s welfare.
Her career as an activist began during the historic 1951 waterfront industrial dispute, joining the Auckland Women’s Auxiliary to support working families. By 1954, she was the secretary of the Auckland Drug Factories’ Employees’ Union.
Flo became a trailblazer, eventually becoming the first woman to represent the New Zealand Federation of Labour (FOL) overseas. When she returned, she brought home a radical message rooted in what she had lived through: New Zealand women were being “victimised for being mothers.”
She didn’t mince words. Flo argued that if women wanted real maternity leave, equal pay, and proper childcare centres, they had to be the ones in the unions’ decision-making rooms. She knew that for single mothers especially, childcare and fair wages weren’t just political talking points—they were survival.
While fighting for equal pay on the factory floor, Flo noticed another massive burden falling squarely on women’s shoulders: trying to stretch a single household budget as prices skyrocketed. In November 1966, Flo and five other women took out a bold, simple advertisement in the Auckland Star: “Who wants to do something about high prices?”
The response was electric. A public meeting of fed-up housewives led to the launch of CARP (Campaign Against Rising Prices), with Flo elected as president. CARP became a national phenomenon. Across New Zealand, everyday women organized boycotts, challenged corporate price hikes, and demanded economic dignity. Flo famously noted that while CARP wasn’t tied to a political party, “everything we do is political.”
Flo’s fight for welfare wasn’t just abstract; it was deeply local. Whether she was raising funds for a neighbourhood kindergarten in Glen Innes or fighting local council demolition policies threatening working-class housing in Freemans Bay, she stood where the need was greatest.
Flo passed away in 1981, but her legacy is built into the fabric of the rights Kiwi women have today—from equal pay advocacy to the recognition that consumer rights are a vital piece of family welfare.
Flo Humphries: single mum, unionist, and champion of women and families.
Zoxoff FindAGrave
Florence Ann Humphries
Aged 65
Block X Row 31 Plot045
