Florence Anderson (; 1871–1949) was the first female trade union secretary in Victoria, Australia.

Early life Anderson was born Florence Meyer on 17 February 1871 in Bairnsdale, Victoria. She married John Anderson in 1911 and bore three children. After her husband became an invalid, Anderson took work as an office cleaner.

Trade union career According to the Biographical Register of the Australian Labour Movement 1788-1975, after her husband died, she "rebelled from expectation that cleaners take office towels home to launder". Anderson founded a union covering office cleaners in 1912 and lobbied, with the support of the Melbourne Trades Hall Council, for a wages board to set their pay and conditions. The first board fixed women's rates at 22 shillings and sixpence a week, against £2 2s for men doing comparable work.

She joined the Female Office Cleaners Union part-time from 1916 and later became a full-time worker in 1919. In 1920 she was made the chair of the Worker's Board with Henry E. Bessell and Richard Brooks. In 1921 her union amalgamated with the Miscellaneous Workers' Union, and Anderson was retained as a permanent official of the merged body.

Office cleaners' union, 1912–1930 By 1928 Anderson had served seven years on the union's federal council and had recently become its Victorian vice-president; women office cleaners in Victoria were by then reportedly the best-paid unskilled workers in the Commonwealth, working a 44-hour week introduced in 1923. During a wages tribunal hearing in the mid-1920s, employers called an American caretaker to testify that women cleaners were already adequately paid. Anderson's public campaign against the testimony was enough to force the employers to have it struck from the record.

Victorian secretary of the Miscellaneous Workers' Union, 1930–1946 Anderson was elected the Victorian Secretary of the Miscellaneous Workers Union (the "missos") in 1930, holding office until 1946. She was active in advocating for equal pay, in particular for cleaners who were often women and who worked long hours for little pay. In an interview for The Labor Call, Anderson called them "Workers of the Dawn, and Dusk too", and that,

She died at her home in Smith St, North Richmond on 20 December 1949, and was buried at Burwood Cemetery.

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