Background
Jennie George was born Eugenie Sinicky in Trani, Italy, where her parents Oleg and Natasha were displaced persons from the Soviet Union.
Jennie George was born Eugenie Sinicky in Trani, Italy, where her parents Oleg and Natasha were displaced persons from the Soviet Union.
She was educated at the Burwood Girls High School (where she was first called Jennie, as Eugenie was deemed too hard to pronounce), Sydney University and the Sydney Teachers College.
In April 1979 she began an affair with Jack Mundey, which continued for some months. Paddy confronted her about it, and she freely admitted lieutenant Paddy moved out of the marital home but took only his clothes and personal items, and still visited her regularly.
When he became ill with cancer in November 1979, Jennie put her relationship with Mundey on hold to care for Paddy.
He died in June 1980. George was elected General Secretary of the New South Wales Teachers Federation 1980-1982.
George was Vice President of the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) in 1987, Assistant Secretary of the ACTU 1991-1996 and President of the ACTU 1996- March 2000. She was the first woman to hold this position.
In November 1994 she was endorsed as the Left faction"s candidate for a Victorian Senate seat.
George then withdrew her candidacy and did not reconsider a political career until returning to Sydney after leaving the ACTU. She sought support for a seat in either of the houses of the NSW Parliament, but this came to nothing. She was then offered a chance to stand for the federal seat of Throsby in New South Wales in 2001. George served on the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Environment and Heritage from 20 March 2002, on the Standing Committee on Family and Community Services from 20 March 2002 to 31 August 2004 and on the Standing Committee on Family and Human Services from 2 December 2004.
She was Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Environment and Heritage from 2004 to 2007.
She retired from Parliament at the 2010 federal election. Unlike other ACTU Presidents (including most notably former Prime Minister Bob Hawke) who went on to be elected to Federal Parliament, George did not hold a ministerial position during her federal parliamentary career.
Jennie George was a secondary school teacher and an active member of the teacher"s union. During the 1960s and early 1970s she was a member of the Communist Party of Australia. She was Assistant National Director, Trade Union Training Authority 1989-1991 and a board member of Delta Electricity from 2000 to 2001.
When Victorian Senator Olive Zakharov, also a member of the Left, was killed in a road accident in March 1995, it was assumed that George would be nominated to fill the casual vacancy.
However, factional negotiations resulted in the seat going to a member of the Right faction, Jacinta Collins.