Division of labour: industrial relations in the Chifley years, 1945-49 9780195549614

Table of contents :
Frontmatter
Acknowledgements (page vii)
List of tables (page ix)
List of abbreviations (page x)
Introduction (page 1)
1 The setting (page 5)
2 Ben Chifley: background, character and approach (page 18)
3 The government, the economy and the labour market (page 30)
4 The unions (page 53)
5 Private-sector employers (page 75)
6 The opening salvos: NSW steel and Queensland meat (page 89)
7 Hours and wages: the '40 years' case and the margins war (page 125)
8 Federal arbitration: reform, personnel and sanctions (page 149)
9 Victoria and Queensland 1947-49: getting tough with the unions (page 181)
10 The Communist Party and industrial relations (page 225)
11 Regulating market forces: the run-in to the 1949 coal strike (page 248)
12 'Boots and all': Mr Chifley and the miners (page 291)
Conclusions (page 317)
Notes (page 322)
Bibliography (page 373)
Index (page 387)

Citation preview

DIVISION OF LABOUR

This book 1s dedicated to the memory of Catherine Mitchell, mother and worker

DIVISION OF LABOUR Industrial Relations in the Chifley Years, 1945-49 Tom Sheridan

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS AUSTRALIA

Oxford New York Toronto Delhi Bombay Calcutta Madras Karachi

Petaling Jaya Singapore Hong Kong Tokyo Nairobi Dares Salaam Cape Town Melbourne Auckland and associated companies in Berlin Ibadan

OXFORD is a trade mark of Oxford University Press © Tom Sheridan 1989 First published 1989 This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of private study, research, criticism or review as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without prior written permission. Inquiries to be made to Oxford University Press.

Copying for educational purposes Where copies of part or the whole of the book are made under section 53B or section 53D of the Act, the law requires that records of such copying be kept. In such cases the copyright owner is entitled to claim payment. National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication data: Sheridan, Tom. Division of labour: industrial relations in the Chifley years, 1945-49. Bibliography. Includes index. ISBN 0 19 554961 9.

1. Industrial relations—Australia—History. 2. Australia—Politics and government— 1945-1965. __ I. Title. 331’.0994

Edited by Sarah Brenan Designed by Steve Randles Typeset by Asco Trade Typesetting Ltd Hong Kong Printed in Hong Kong Published by Oxford University Press, 253 Normanby Road, South Melbourne, Australia

CONTENTS |

Acknowledgements Vil List of tables 1X List of abbreviations X

Introduction l 1 ‘The setting 5 2 Ben Chifley: background, character and 18 approach

3 The government, the economy and the labour 30

45 Private-sector The unions 53 employers 75 market

6 The opening salvos: NSW steel and 89 Queensland meat

7 Hours and wages: the °40 years’ case and the 125 margins war

8 Federal arbitration: reform, personnel and 149 sanctions

9 Victoria and Queensland 1947—49: getting 181 tough with the unions

10 The Communist Party and industrial relations 225

11 Regulating market forces: the run-in to the 248 1949 coal strike

13 Conclusions 317

12 ‘Boots and all’: Mr Chifley and the miners 291

Notes 322 Bibliography 373 Index 387

v1 Division of Labour

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

By the time this book 1s published it will be virtually a decade since I began my research—initially with the help of an Australian Research Grant. In those years I have become indebted to scores of people for their kind help and encouragement. My first debt is to Pat Stretton, my part-time research assistant for four years, whose enormous enthusiasm was matched only by her efficiency. Others providing valu-

able research assistance at various times were Helen Wickens, Pauline Clarke, Melissa Gibbs, Simon Molloy and Adam Sheridan.

My next debt is to those involved in some aspect of industrial relations in the 1940s who agreed to be interviewed by me—often in

their own homes where I was offered splendid hospitality. Thus I wish to thank Laurie Aarons, John Arrowsmith, Ted Arrowsmith, Sir Henry Bland, Kim Beazley senior, J.D. Blake, Bob Brodney, J.J. Brown, Netta Burns, Dr. J.W. Burton, S.J. Butlin, Jim Comerford, W.R. Coulter, Neville Cunningham, James Chalmers, Dr Eric Dark, Alex Dowling, P.R. Dyball, Sir Richard Eggleston, E.V. Elliott, Bill Frame, B.W. Hartnell, Ted Hill, Jack Hughes, Amirah

Inglis, J.V. Jensen, Tom Jones, Pat Kennelly, Jack Kane, Jack Kidd, Bill Latter, Harry Lowe, Sir William McKell, Joe Mitchell, N.J.O. Makin, F.P. McManus, Jack McPhillips, Charlie Morgan, Doug Olive, Clarrie O’Shea, Frank Rooney, Edgar Ross, Lloyd Ross,

Sir Murray Tyrell, J.T. Tonkin and Harry Webb. Many other individuals either provided valuable information,

opinion or research material, or eased me through archives and manuscript collections. They include Doug Blackmur, Hazel Buter-

ac, Kath Cheshire, Les Church, Chris Coggin, Mel Davies, Bill Dobson, Norman Dufty, Rob Durbridge, June Edwards, Steve Frenkel, Jim Hagan, Kevin Hince, Wally Jurkiewicz, Bill Leslie, Malcolm MacIntosh, Richard Mitchell, Richard Morris, Rob Noble,

Trevor Olssen, Bob Phillips, David Plowman, Graham Powell,

vit Division of Labour Michael Quinlan, George: Seelaf, John Sendy, Peter Smith, Barry Stephenson, Hugh Stretton and Doreen Wheeler. I also wish to thank collectively the staff of the following organizations or institutions who at various times helped me along the way: Archives of Business and Labour (ANU), Archives Office of New

South Wales, Amalgamated Metal Workers’ Union, Australasian Coal and Shale Employees’ Union, Australasian Meat Industry Em-

ployees’ Union, Australian Archives (Canberra, Melbourne and Adelaide), Australian Bankers’ Association, Australian Conciliation and Arbitration Commission, Australian Federated Union of Loco-

motive Enginemen, Australian Iron and Steel Pty Ltd, Australian National Library, Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, Australian Workers’ Union, Barr Smith Library, Broken Hill Pty Ltd, Coal Industry Tribunal, Communist Party of Australia, Flinders University Library, Engineering Employers’ Association South Australia, Joint Coal Board, J.S. Battye Library of West Australian

History, La Trobe Library, Mitchell Library, Newcastle City Library, Newcastle Morning Herald, Newcastle Trades Hall Council, NSW Department of Labour and Industry, NSW Industrial Com-

mission, Parliament of New South Wales, Parliament of South Australia, State Library of New South Wales, State Library of South Australia, University of Newcastle Archives, University of Wollongong Archives. As my work moved towards completion it gained from constructive comments offered on all or part of the growing manuscript. My

main thanks here go to John Merritt, Chris Nyland and, again, Pat Stretton. I am also thankful to Stephen McDonald, Ron McIver and earlier Honours students who, by reading or questioning drafts, greatly stimulated my thought processes. At Oxford University Press Carla Taines and particularly Sarah Brenan offered incomparable editorial assistance. The daunting task of typing my bulky, ever-changing manuscript

fell on many shoulders over the years. By far the major share was undertaken with great speed and efficiency by Kerry Braini and Debbie Jackson but at various times I was also helped by Davina Dolman, Ann Dutschke, Julia Gregory, Michelle Raimondo and Marianne Woods. I am indebted to them all—as I am to Kyoko, Adam and Jack for their support and understanding.

LIST OF TABLES

1 Number of working days lost annually per employee in 6 industrial disputes 1913—86

2 Nominal wage rates 1939-49 15 3 Percentage change in average annual employment, by industry, 33 from 1938-39 to 1949-50

4 Average annual employment, by industry, as a percentage of the 34 total from 1938-39 to 1949-50

5 Official changes in purchasing power, net overseas immigration 39 and union unemployment 1939-50; percentage change on previous years

6 Civilian employment in selected years 54 7 Number of working days lost annually per employee in industrial 116 disputes, by state, 1939-50

8 Production, employment and industrial disputes in coalmining 254 1939-55

9 Federal voting preferences (%) 1949 311

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

ACSEF Australasian Coal and Shale Employees’ Federation ACMA Associated Chambers of Manufactures of Australia

ACTU Australian Council of Trade Unions

AEU Amalgamated Engineering Union AFULE Australian Federated Union of Locomotive Enginemen

ARU Australian Railways Union ASCJ Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and Joiners of Australia ATMOEA Australian Tramway and Motor Omnibus Employees’ Association

AWU Australian Workers’ Union BHP Broken Hill Proprietary Co Ltd BWIU Building Workers’ Industrial Union of Australia

CIT Coal Industry Tribunal

CMUC Coal Mining Unions’ Council

CPA Communist Party of Australia ETU Electrical Trades Union of Australia FCU Federated Clerks’ Union of Australia FEDFA Federated Engine Drivers and Firemen’s Association of Australasia

FIA Federated Ironworkers’ Association of Australia

JCB Joint Coal Board

MTEA Metal Trades Employers’ Association

MTF Metal Trades Federation of Unions

NSA National Security Act PIEU Printing Industry Employees’ Union of Australia SMWIU Sheet Metal Working Industrial Union of Australia

SUA Seamen’s Union of Australia

THC Trades Hall Council

TLC Trades and Labor Council

TWU Transport Workers’ Union of Australia WEB Women’s Employment Board WWE Waterside Workers’ Federation of Australia

INTRODUCTION

The second half of the 1940s was one of the most turbulent periods in Australian industrial history. In per capita working days lost in

disputes it was surpassed by only two other periods: the years 1916-21 and the years ushering in the Depression of the 1930s. The

workers’ recognition of the opportunities presented by the novel situation of full employment was heightened by awareness of bitter reverses in the Depression and of self-imposed restraint during the recent war emergency. Further, few in the community were confident that tight labour markets would persist beyond a relatively brief postwar boom. Hence workers and unions sought to make gains quickly before the inevitable slump arrived. Some important gains were made but the most notable feature of

the period was the effort made by government to restrain market forces and to limit labour’s advance. This effort was greatly aided by the fact that the party in power in Canberra and for most of the time in the states was the Australian Labor Party (ALP). The Commonwealth government, led by J.B. (‘Ben’) Chifley from 12 July 1945, was pre-eminent in industrial relations, not just because of 1ts control of macro-economic policy and the considerable centralization of arbitration decisions in what was then known as the Commonwealth

Court of Conciliation and Arbitration, but also because of its unusually secure position: Chifley’s government spanned four of the mere eight and a half years in which the ALP has ever enjoyed simultaneous majorities in the House of Representatives and in the Senate. Even more important was the fact that the Constitution allowed the Commonwealth government’s sweeping emergency war powers

to be extended into the postwar period to facilitate the economy’s transition to peacetime production. Rather than using its constitutional and political authority to aid the unions which theoretically controlled the ALP, the Chifley gov-

2 Division of Labour ernment sought always to slow down the rate of their advance. The situation was often confused by ALP leaders paying lip service to the desirability of union gains but, as we will see, the essential thrust of federal policy—backed wholeheartedly by the ALP governments which ruled in five of the six states in the first year of peace—was to block the spontaneous workforce drive. Overall, government policy was attended by great success: the implementation of the unions’ major wages and hours claims was great-

ly delayed. In the first two years of peace the major government weapons were the continuance of wartime National Security Regulations—which pegged ‘marginal’ wage rates—and the adroit deflection of union claims for shorter hours and a higher basic wage* into the cumbersome and conservative federal Arbitration Court. In 1947 important amendments to the Commonwealth Conciliation and Arbitration Act not merely failed to meet union wishes to decentral-

ize the system but also provided a future basis for constraint on union attempts to harness market forces. In 1948 and 1949 regulatory agencies created by the federal government directly sought to restrict union advances in the strategic coal and maritime industries and were involved in polemic clashes with vanguard militant unions. Ironically, government obstruction of union demands may have been assisted by the existence of an influential and vociferous group of communists among the more prominently militant unions. The ability of employers, mass media and conservative and ALP politicians alike to portray disputes over legitimate industrial claims as communist-inspired attempts to subvert democracy was made easier both by the commencement of the Cold War and by the associated tendencies of the Communist Party of Australia (CPA) to misread local political and economic signposts and to suffer delusions of gran-

deur. The ‘communist plot’ thesis was to render the industrial waters increasingly muddy during the Chifley years. It lent growing weight to the arguments of the naturally pacific, middle-of-the-road

unionists who officered many unions, the ACTU and most of the state Trades and Labor Councils. These ‘moderates’ instinctively

distrusted militancy and placed most weight on slow advance through legislative and arbitral decisions. The main areas of industrial contention were in steel, meat processing, the metal trades, rail, urban and maritime transport and, above

all, coalmining. The prime observation concerns the major role played by federal and state governments. Only in the earlier disputes did private-sector employers assume what might be regarded as their

* “Basic wage’ 1s used throughout this book in the specific sense attached to it after the 1907 Harvester case—the minimum wage for adult males.

Introduction 3 traditional role. In 1945—46, in major steel, meat and metal disputes,

employers appeared to take action to confront their militant workforce, but even here the federal and state governments soon occupied central positions in the settlement processes. Indeed the six-monthlong metal dispute which in the end produced the union movement’s

major pay breakthrough came to revolve around Chifley’s refusal to ease the wartime wage-pegging Regulations. For the most part, employers remained on the defensive. Their associations sought to

improve both their industrial relations efficiency and capital’s unfavourable public image while aiming to help breathe fresh life into the conservative political forces. In the remaining areas of major disputation, state control of trams and railways and federal regulation of the strategic maritime and coal industries ensured government involvement from the outset. Given

the electoral predominance of the ALP, most major disputes saw unions confronting ‘their’ party. Only in Victoria in 1948-49 was a Liberal—Country Party coalition government deeply involved. Otherwise the conservative parties were generally able to stand on the sidelines and offer well-publicized advice on the need for ALP governments to get tough with the unions. The Victorian conservatives’ attempt to implement such a policy did not produce the results

they expected but mounting Cold War hysteria blurred public understanding of this outcome—which in any case was completely dwarfed by the subsequent climactic decision of the federal government to ‘take on’ the communist-led miners in 1949. In its efforts to restrain natural labour market forces, government was well served by the arbitration tribunals. Conservative and em-

ployer doubts about ALP appointments proved groundless. The personnel of the Commonwealth Court, of the state tribunals and of the special maritime and coal tribunals all demonstrated their commitment to the premise that society must be cushioned from the full shock of labour’s new-found bargaining power. In the process some of them appeared to subscribe to the increasingly prevalent conspiracy theory of industrial relations which depicted union aggression as a sinister communist plot.

The first five chapters of this book set the scene and delineate the main actors. Chapter 1 establishes the backdrop against which the 1940s industrial relations drama was played out, emphasizing the recent experience and the postwar expectations of ordinary Austra-

lians. Chapter 2 assesses the character and aims of Prime Minister Chifley, who was undoubtedly the dominant individual force in 1ndustrial relations in our period. Chapter 3 examines the behind-thescenes discussions in which he and his economic advisers determined federal government labour market policies. Chapter 4 considers the

uncertain unity of the industrial labour movement and outlines the

4 Division of Labour ambivalent roles of the ACTU and its state branches. In Chapter 5 attention is focused on the defensive mobilization of private employers and their various associations.

The next four chapters look at the major disputes outside the coalfields. A complex web emerges but in the process the structure,

operation and motivation of each of the major militant unions 1s clearly established along with the input of employers, government and arbitration tribunals—particularly the reformed Commonwealth system. Chapter 10 pierces the curtain of myths 1n order to assess the true role of the Communist Party in industrial relations. This done, Chapters 11 and 12 turn to coalmining, that most turbulent of industries which, in 1949, became the site of the greatest— and least understood—of postwar disputes. Finally, Chapter 13 briefly draws together the main themes emerging from the study.

CHAPTER ONE

THE SETTING

The attitudes and actions of all industrial relations actors in the postwar years can only be understood if account is taken of their experi-

ence and comprehension of the immediately preceding periods. Above all it was the prewar period which coloured attitudes in the second half of the 1940s. The effects of their experience were perhaps strongest among employees and their leaders, but the calculations of all parties to industrial relations were shaped by their understanding of these earlier years. For employers, the 1920s or the late 1930s represented an approximation of ‘normalcy’, and their view of the boom conditions of the immediate postwar years was long affected by their expectation that full employment could not last.

For union activists it was not simply the memories of the economic catastrophe of the early 1930s which scarred them. The De-

pression itself was heralded by what they interpreted as a joint employer—government assault on unionists and unionism in the late

1920s. Powell and Nyland have suggested that the conservative federal government’s policy did not rest simply on union-bashing premises and that, in fact, the need to improve Australia’s industrial efficiency was its main concern.! However, given the tendency of so many conservatives to heap all the blame for the economy’s relatively

poor performance since World War I onto what they saw as high wage costs, the labour movement can be forgiven for failing to appreciate the government’s precise motivation. After its return with an increased majority in a 1925 general election centred on the issue of industrial ‘law and order’, the Bruce—Page coalition first stringently amended the Crimes Act and then turned to the federal arbitration system. In 1926 it reconstructed the Arbitration Court in a man-

ner which allowed it to punish unions for strikes and other award breaches and simultaneously ‘stacked’ the then very small Court (no commissioners and only three judges in 1926, extended to four in

6 Division of Labour Table 1 Number of working days lost annually per employee in industrial disputes 1913-86

Year (i) i)’ = = Year (i)? (11) Year (1)8 (11) 1913 0.42 — 1940 = 0.73 — 1967 — 0.18 1914 0.68 — 1941 0.47 0.50 1968 — 0.27 1915 0.48 — 1942 0.18 0.20 1969 — 0.47 1916 1.18 — 1943 = 0.48 0.52 1970 — 0.55 1917 3.40 — 1944 0.44 — 1971 — 0.69 1918 0.39 — 1945 1.00 1.11 1972 — 0.45 1919 3.01 — 1946 0.86 0.89 1973 — 0.57 1920 2.44 — 1947. 30.55 0.60 1974 — 1.28 1921 0.85 — 1948 0.66 0.71 1975 — 0.73 1922 0.55 — 1949 0.51 0.55 1976 — 0.71 1923 0.71 — 1950 = 0.75 0.81 1977 — 0.34 1924 0.55 — 1951 = 0.31 0.33 1978 — 0.43 1925 0.66 — 1952 = 0.41 0.44 1979 — 0.79 1926 0.75 — 1953 0.37 0.40 1980 — 0.66° 1927 0.96 — 1954 =0.31 0.33 198] — 0.83° 1928 0.44 — 1955 0.34 0.36 1982 — 0.39¢ 1929 2.58 — 1956 80.37 0.39 1983 — 0.32 1930 0.94 — 1957 = 0.20 0.22 1984 — 0.25 1931 0.16 — 1958 0.14 0.15 1985 — 0.23 1932 0.14 — 1959s 0.12 0.12 1986 — 0.24 1933 0.07 0.08 1960 0.22 0.23

1934 0.22 — 1961 — 0.19 1935 0.27 — 1962 — 0.16 1936 0.26 — 1963 — 0.18 1937 0.28 — 1964 —~ 0.26 1938 0.66 — 1965 — 0.23 1939 0.22 0.27 1966 — 0.19

a This series was calculated by ‘splicing’ Keating’s financial year estimates of civilian employees (op cit., Table 19.20) with ABS calendar year estimates of total working days lost in disputes. b This series is derived from official ABS data and, as well as defence force personnel, excludes employees in agriculture and private domestic service. Due to changes in the method of calculating employment statistics in 1966, 1972, 1980 and 1983 the ABS data cannot, strictly speaking, be used to compare years before and after each of these dates. c The ABS ceased publishing its old ‘Employed Wage and Salary Earners’ series in April 1980 and did not publish a similarly composite—but differently calculated—new series until 1983. Hence the 1980 figure given above relates only to the period January—April. The figures given for 1981 and 1982 are estimates based on an assumption of linear growth in the employment series between 1979 and 1983. Source: Labour Reports; M. Keating, The Australian Workforce 1910-11 to 1960-61 (Canberra, 1973)

The setting 7 1927) with known conservatives—including two ex-politicians. The new bench was explicitly instructed in 1928 to take account of the economic consequences of its decisions. This established the backdrop for what proved to be increasingly turbulent industrial relations

in the run-in to the Depression. The late 1920s saw employers in general constantly hammering the theme of wage costs, manufacturing employers insisting that incentive payment schemes be introduced throughout industry, and the unions—at least until their bargaining power completely ran out—endeavouring to secure extension of the 44-hour week to all industries and jurisdictions. The outcome was 9.8 million working days lost in 1926-30, with Australia’s record annual figure being approached in 1929 when an average of over two and a half days were lost per worker (Table 1). The major battles, at times marked by violence, revolved around

the new Arbitration Court’s controversial awards in the metals, wharf and timber industries and a lockout in the coal industry by employers who refused to continue operating under the wage clauses of a four-year-old award. Throughout, the federal government remained committed to the employers’ side, introducing for example a special Transport Workers’, or ‘dog collar’, Act for use against strik-

ing wharfies. After winning the 1928 election in which industrial relations issues again figured prominently, Prime Minister Bruce seemed to view even the onset of the Depression simply as the outcome of labour problems.* His parliamentary downfall came in September 1929 when he reacted to his failure to assemble all important state arbitral powers under the Commonwealth’s jurisdiction by peremptorily introducing a bill designed to hand virtually all federal

arbitral powers back to the states. In the subsequent election the ALP was swept back into office but, while managing to reduce the Arbitration Court’s penal powers, it failed to help the miners who were starved back to work after enduring a sixteen-month lockout. The impact of the world Depression then swept the party down into fractious ruin. En route the Court refused to heed the government’s appeals to delay its decision to cut all award wage rates by 10 per cent over and above the reductions ensured in this deflationary period by the automatic indexation process then applying. Workers, with their bargaining power reduced practically to zero, were left to suffer un-

precedented levels of unemployment, work rationing, wage cuts, adverse job reclassifications, ‘speed-up’ in production and a general

worsening of their on-the-job positions—including attempts by some employers to pay below the (reduced) award wage rates. The unemployed endured even greater personal stress and humiliation including mounting indebtedness, penury and enforced dependency on the inadequate ad hocery of the various state relief systems— which generally came to rely financially on regressive taxation of the

earnings of even the partially employed. Unemployment for many

8 Division of Labour also meant eviction or enforced ‘flits’ from their rented dwellings. Small wonder that iron entered the soul of so many forced to endure

these bitter and demoralizing years.

While the great majority of the workforce passively waited for the

world capitalist system somehow to right itself, union activists searched for explanations of the disaster. For the first time a significant proportion among the militant, the young and the idealistic turned to the radical solutions offered by the Communist Party of Australia (CPA), and communists began at last to make some lasting impact among trade unions. More widely held was the belief that a

major cause of the Depression was labour-displacing technical change. Thus, as a means of spreading work, a reduction in hours below 44 per week began to gain increasing priority in the union movement’s preferred log of claims. In practice, as the worst of the Depression eased it was all most unions could do to restore the wage cuts and complete the extension of the 44-hour week. Only among certain occupational groups, notably the metal tradesmen, printers

and coalminers who regained their bargaining power relatively quickly, were any important advances made in wages and other conditions before world war intervened. While the unions were concentrating their energies on bread-andbutter issues, overseas political events also had an important influ-

ence on industrial relations. The increase in Japanese aggression brought protests, particularly from left-wingers. These culminated in a major dispute at Port Kembla where workers met firm opposition from the conservative federal government when they sought to block pig-iron shipments to Japan. Australia’s own defence programme, initiated largely in response to Britain’s belated reaction to

the European threat, also created considerable friction. Most notably, the private interests involved in the new aircraft industry sought to break down long-established work practices, prompting defensive strike action by metal workers. Events such as these, combined with attacks on civil liberties and the abandonment of government welfare promises did little to ease the unions’ abiding suspicion of the Lyons and Menzies conservative governments. Efforts to introduce a peacetime national register of manpower met a solid union boycott until the persuasive intervention of the ALP Leader of the Opposition, John Curtin, on the very eve of war.* Of all the sordid foreign affairs of the 1930s 1t was the insurrection by General Franco that probably had the greatest long-run effect on the Australian industrial relations scene. The war in Spain kindled

emotions which, although confined to a smaller proportion of the population, were certainly as charged as those evoked by Vietnam thirty years later. Franco’s cause was firmly supported by the Australian Catholic hierarchy and press. The heated debates in Trades Halls and at ALP conferences, particularly bitter in Victoria, served

The setting 9

to illuminate for the first time in the minds of the young Catholic intelligentsia the exact degree of divergence between their social views and those of the left wing of the labour movement. For many more Catholics the Spanish War debates simply brought home the international nature of communism and consequently made the contemporary spread of communist influence among Australian trade unions seem more sinister. From these roots was soon to spring B.A. Santamaria’s famous Catholic Social Studies Movement, known to initiates simply as ‘The Movement’. Its drive to eradicate the communist influence in the trad€ unions was to colour industrial rela-

generation.>° . '

tions and sear the whole labour movement for more than a After the invasion of Poland the industrial labour movement viewed with understandable wariness the Menzies government’s hesitant attempts to place the economy on a war footing. The Soviet pact with Germany magically transformed communists’ views of the fascist menace but, as was true also in France and Britain, no such externally induced ideological gyrations were required to make most union activists suspicious of their conservative government’s sincerity. Unemployment lingered and national unity remained uncertain. As in the past, the more powerful unions charted their own course

and refused to allow their independence to be compromised. The miners pressed on with the ‘second round’ of their post-Depression campaign which culminated in a ten-week stoppage on the shorter hours issue in early 1940. The Menzies government did little to enhance its reputation in industrial labour circles with its efforts to introduce non-unionists to the mines and its unrestrained denunciation of the miners and their motives. Only the German breakthrough in France averted a serious escalation of the confrontation. Exaggerated estimates of the communist role in the strike helped persuade the government to declare the CPA an unlawful organization on 15 June. Raids were mounted on the offices and homes of its supporters and imprisonment or internment-followed for some.

In the mainstream of industrial relations other powerful unions such as the Australian Workers’ Union (AWU) and the Amalgamated Engineering Union (AEU) insisted on separate representation in government counsels and refused to delegate any powers to the ACTU on various new committees and panels proposed by the government. Generally speaking, unions sought to improve their members’ conditions in an unco-ordinated fashion. Most of them did, however, combine in May 1940 to denounce the engineering craftsmen whose union, the AEU, independently reached a self-protective agreement with the government on a craft dilution scheme allowing a carefully controlled expansion of the skilled workforce in ‘essential’ war industries through adult training schemes. Despite the accusatory chorus led by the ACTU, other skilled unions rapidly followed

10 Division of Labour the AEU’s example. Working days lost fell after the coal dispute but on the eve of Pearl Harbor the powerful Metal Trades Employers’ Association (MTEA) still claimed that in the preceding year it had ‘handled the greatest number of strikes in its 40 years history’ .© Wages in the 1940s were still conceptually split into (a) a basic wage component, to which all adult males were entitled and which was automatically ‘indexed’ according to quarterly movements in the ‘C Series’ cost of living index and (b) a secondary wage or ‘margin’ granted to anyone who could prove that their particular occupational skill warranted it. Margins were fixed in money terms and inflation thus implied an erosion of the differentials between skilled and un-

skilled workers. In 1939 the benchmark marginal rate of the engineering fitter was such that he got 30 per cent more than the basic wage. Base female rates were set at 54 per cent of the male basic wage on the imaginary grounds that all men—and only men—had dependants to support. During the war the process of formal wage settle-

ment moved out of the federal and state arbitration tribunals and

wages boards. The maximum wage level was pegged by emergency Regulations enacted under the 1939 National Security Act (NSA)

and although the tribunals continued to settle industrial disputes they could not move independently of the framework set out in the Regulations. In December 1940 further Regulations enlarged the powers of the federal Arbitration Court, including the right specifically to grant a common rule, to make awards not limited to the ambit of matters in dispute, to deal with intra-state disputes, to deal with industrial unrest before official disputes arose, and to speed up its working by cutting out inessential formalities. Provision was also

made for the appointment of conciliation commissioners and, if necessary, temporary conciliation officers. At the same time however, the government itself was entering the field of wage settlement by means of other Regulations and a confusing parallelism of action consequently arose.

In August 1940 the Commonwealth Arbitration Court began hearing union arguments for an increase in the real basic wage but rejected them largely on the grounds of the general uncertainty of wartime conditions. The judgement was announced in February 1941 but, shortly before it was known, the federal government decided to introduce child endowment which hitherto had existed only in New South Wales. The real basic wage remained unaltered for the rest of the war. On the margins front a pre-war agreement between the Department of Supply and thirteen unions for higher rates and favourable conditions at government munitions works was renewed for three years in December 1939. As the munitions sector expanded, the payment of the extra rates (6s per week—or 5.5 per cent over the fitter’s rate—for tradesmen and 3s per week—or 3.8 per cent over the basic wage—for most other workers) was extended by agreement

The setting 11 to all government and private plants. When the Menzies government placed a ceiling on wages the extra munition rates were incorporated in the relevant Regulations of July 1940. These Regulations imposed severe restrictions on the movement of labour, with the aim of channelling workers—particularly those with the requisite skills—into munitions work and of keeping them there without employers competitively bidding up their wages. Employees who before July 1940 had been receiving payments in excess of the new maximum wage

levels were not to suffer any reduction in pay. After an important amendment to the Regulations by the Labor government in December 1941 employers could also make excess payments due for long service or special ability, as bonuses based on output or the price of base metals, on incremental scales of wage increases, and to juniors occupying positions of responsibility. In May 1941 the munitions increases were extended to all areas covered by the key metal trades

award—although the employers insisted that the extra amounts should be classified separately as a ‘war loading’ and should not become an integral part of the award rates. By early 1942 the extra rates had flowed on to virtually all workers in non-rural industry. Other

gains first established by skilled workers also flowed on fairly promptly to other employees as the war effort began to quicken. Unskilled members of the Federated Ironworkers’ Association (FIA), for example, won improvements in shift rates, height, dirt, travel and board allowances, sick and annual leave and junior workers’ pay in December 1941.7 The second half of 1941 transformed the outlook of most Austra-

lians towards the war. First the German invasion of the USSR in June spun the communists round another 180 degrees into all-out support of the war effort—although the CPA itself was not formally

re-legitimized until eighteen months later.? Union attitudes were further affected by the fall of the Menzies government and the eventual installation of the first Curtin ALP ministry in October 1941. The Japanese attacks in December finally converted the conflict into an obvious struggle for national survival and allowed the government to take all measures necessary to place the economy on a complete

war footing. Nevertheless, while acknowledging the primacy of the war effort, both sides of the industrial relations divide sought to ensure their own major interests even in the months of apparently

greatest external peril. Employers still pursued profits and the unions, led by mining, metal and maritime workers, sought in the face of the clamour for ever more production to preserve hard-won conditions of work. Once the possibility of defeat passed, all industrial relations actors began to turn their eyes towards the postwar future. In conditions of now completely full employment the major cards lay in the unions’ hands. The fact that they did not seek to take immediate, unrestrained advantage of their position was due mainly

12 Division of Labour

to their continued patriotism and to their loyalty to the Labor government. It owed something also to the all-out efforts of the dedicated and expanded membership of the CPA to ensure that no industrial action harmed the Allied war effort before the successful conclusion of the Soviet—German conflict. The communists’ fanatical support for increased production, while sneered at by a variety of independent industrial militants and scarcely if ever recognized by employers and conservative spokesmen, was to sow some important seeds of rank-and-file dissent—notably in the Balmain branch of the FIA. More generally, the degree to which workers such as seamen, miners and engineers who were supposedly increasingly ‘controlled’

by communist officials, proved to be the very ones most likely to reject the wartime instructions of their CPA ‘masters’, constitutes one of the best possible antidotes to simplistic but long-prevalent

notions of the role and influence of the CPA in the union movement.? In general, though, the workforce proved amenable to the govern-

ment’s wartime economic policy. The stevedoring, maritime and coalmining industries were placed under the control of special tribunals. For other workers!® the only official adjustments to wage rates after February 1942 were to the basic wage in response to increases in the cost of living or where arbitration tribunals could be convinced that ‘anomalies’ existed within the wage structure of a particular industry or trade. Government attempts to hold down the retail price index were largely successful. It only rose by 23 per cent in Australia between the last quarters of 1939 and 1945 compared with increases of 27 per cent in the USA and 31 per cent in Great Britain. Yet this still meant that the increase from 30s to 36s in the fitter’s benchmark weekly margin was more than balanced by the general wartime price rise. The discrepancy between nominal wage rates and the official cost of living was made good, however, by increases in over-award payments and/or the great increase in overtime working at penalty rates. Workers whose skills were in demand were assisted in their initial efforts to gain higher over-award payments by the ‘cost-plus’ method

of pricing tenders for war work in essential industries. This meant that employers simply estimated their total costs, including wages, and then added a fixed percentage of profit. Even after the general phasing out of cost-plus pricing and the successive tightening of the wage-pegging Regulations, employers continued to offer financial in-

ducements to skilled workers. In part they did so by nominally transferring employees to higher-paid classifications or by establishing the existence of ‘anomalies’. But in many cases firms did not attempt to disguise their evasion of the Regulations. In July 1941, for example, the forceful MTEA reported that the government was concerned over Sydney newspaper advertisements such as that offering

The setting 13 employment to a toolmaker (a highly skilled trade) at £12 per week. The current award rate was £6 11s. Several employers were fined for

such breaches, but in the last months of the war the MTEA was again remonstrating (in vain) against the short-sightedness of some of its members. The only issues to cause anything like generalized unrest before victory was clearly in sight were holidays and wage ‘anomalies’. On the first point, grievances arose from government-imposed restrictions on public holidays and annual leave which probably helped increase absenteeism rates. Even after the worst of the restrictions were removed in October 1942, ill feeling continued to be engen-

dered in the defence industries.!! The anomalies loophole in the wage-pegging regulations was, almost by definition, bound to create industrial relations problems and these were exacerbated by the dif-

fering interpretations of the federal and various state tribunals. Growing discontent in 1944 induced the government to clarify and broaden the anomalies clause and also to seek uniformity of interpretation by channelling all tribunals’ decisions on the matter for consideration by the chief judge of the federal Arbitration Court. Workers’ total real income was further enlarged by the great increase in daily and weekly hours of work. The result was that, in

response to an ever-growing demand for essential occupations, efforts were made ‘to supplement the 44-hour week with as much overtime as the human form can stand’.!4 Inevitably fatigue became a serious industrial problem, and absenteeism and workshop friction increased in proportion. Eventually the federal government was forced to intervene and in October 1942 special Regulations were issued which limited working hours, excluding meal breaks, to 48 for war workers under eighteen years of age, and to 56 for adults. !3 With many employees in war industries working up to 12 hours overtime at penalty rates, their real income remained considerably higher than in the prewar years. Hence the wartime stabilization of wages did not cause any great unrest among rank-and-file unionists who were largely content to wait until final Allied military victory had been secured before pressing for further increases in nominal rates and a reduction in standard hours. To late-twentieth-century observers, however, one portion of the workforce appears to have had every right to be resentful about its relative position. As it was, contemporary social conditioning about women’s status, rights and expectations prevented unrest surfacing in a generally dislocative fashion in the female workforce in this period. Nevertheless it was in connection with women’s wages that the major efforts were made by the unions to lift rates above the peg.

There were at least two distinct strands to this, one resting on the serious anomalies arising from the methods adopted in wartime to determine female rates, the second arising from the feelings of fear

14 Division of Labour and hostility harboured by so many male workers towards the influx of women into the workforce.

Given the desperate manpower problems at the outset of the Pacific war and the need for a rapid expansion of the female workforce, a Women’s Employment Board (WEB)!* was established to determine rates in industries where no industrial award for female wages existed and an employer wished to engage women. The Board consisted of an arbitration judge plus two representatives from each side of industry. In deference to union opinion the relevant Regulations declared that the WEB’s determinations had to lie within the

range of 60 and 100 per cent of the going male rate. Employers, fearing the long-run consequences of any departure from the traditional 54 per cent level, fiercely opposed the Board and successfully obstructed its work. In this they were aided by High Court decisions

and by the Senate in which the Opposition parties maintained a majority until mid-1944. The Board, after several enforced reconstitutions, was finally scrapped in October 1944, by which time it had managed to make decisions covering a mere 9 per cent of the female workforce. The rates set ranged between 75 and 100 per cent

of the male rate with 90 per cent being the most common. Small though its coverage was, the Board’s decisions naturally affected aspirations in industries beyond its jurisdiction, causing discontent which manifested primarily in turnover problems. The main pressure for change came from within defence industries not covered by

the WEB and in December 1943 judge Drake-Brockman of the federal Court conceded a 75 per cent rate to female clothing and rubber workers. Government subsidies greatly eased the cost of this to employers. In July 1944 the government authorized a reference to the Court to determine anew female pay in other industries vital to

the war effort, including textiles, food processing, munitions and hospitals. The full bench, however, in May 1945 decided three to two in favour of the employers’ arguments and rejected the notion of any increase. The war closed with female rates averaged over all industries running at about 60 per cent of male award rates (see Table

2) and with the union movement publicly determined to advance them still further. There was little altruism in male unionists’ approach. To modern eyes their typical attitude towards women workers seems at best defensively sexist and, when not tinged with outright hostility, was marked by offensively patronizing ignorance. The underlying fear was that women would in peacetime retain jobs hitherto regarded as male preserves. On this basis skilled men had long fought to restrict the craft dilution schemes solely to male workers, while fear of more general female inroads was an important underpinning of the agreements on postwar job preference for returned servicemen. Male fears had ensured both the establishment of the WEB and the nature of its

The setting 15

Table 2 Nominal wage rates 1939-49 Nominal wages rates as a proportion of basic wage

Six Adult female

capitals Adult Adult as a percentage basic wage male female of adult male

(shillings)? (%) (%) wage rates

1939 $3.3 1940 79 83120.6 118.266.6 65.4* 55.3

194] 87 119.8 66.9 55.8 1942 95 121.9 67.7 55.6 1943 97 123.1 70.4 57.2 1944 96 124.5 74.9 60.2 1945 96 125.3 76.5 61.0 1946 105 122.4 76.9 62.8 1947 109 126.5 78.6 62.1 1948 119 131.4 84.3 1949 129 131.5 84.6 64.2 64.3

a4 November figure b These consist of ‘Weighted Average Nominal Weekly Wage Rates for “All

Industries’? in December of each year. For coverage and compilation methods and problems see individual Labour Reports Source: Labour Reports

brief to increase rates above the 54 per cent norm, if possible to equality with men—who were confident of their own higher intrinsic value to employers. At the height of the controversies over the WEB and women’s rates the union case was ably presented by E.J. (Eddie)

Ward, Minister for Labour and National Service until September 1943 and Minister for Transport and External Territories thereafter, who bombarded the Cabinet with proposals to ensure an increase in the rates at least to the 75 per cent mark. His constant pressure failed because Curtin and Chifley were concerned with the likely effects on prices.!> Among the strident calls for equality of pay could be heard stern public warnings from male union officials that most women

workers could not expect to stay around in the postwar period.!® Even those unionists with a supposedly avant-garde social outlook offered little enlightenment. The FIA enrolled thousands of wartime female metal workers but its radical leadership viewed them 1n anything but a liberated or enthusiastic light. !” Although the full wartime history of women has yet to be written, the evidence to date suggests that several of the assumptions shared alike by authorities, employers and union leaders were wide of the

mark. During the war, in fact, the Manpower Directorate came to feel

16 Division of Labour that wage incentives were not sufficiently strong to achieve much movement

of female labour. Frequently more important were such elements as the proximity of home and work place, working conditions including hours of work and canteen facilities, transport arrangements and so on. Married women in particular were more concerned about these conditions than wages. !8

This view is countered by at least one articulate member of the female workforce who also strongly qualifies the view ‘held by modern feminists’ that jobs taken by women in wartime ‘opened up fine new horizons for women which were cruelly closed off at the end of

the war’. Rather, Daphne Gollan recalls the work being so hard, dirty and monotonous that only the higher pay could compensate those involved. !?

In summary, during the war years Australians voluntarily surrendered important aspects of their traditional civil freedoms and other-

wise suffered considerable disruption to their lifestyles. Out of patriotism and for the sake of the war effort the common people accepted an unprecedented level of governmental regulation and in-

terference both at home and in the workplace. Perhaps most notably, military conscription—the suggestion of which had split the nation into two bitterly opposed factions in World War I—was implemented after the Japanese attack with surprising ease. Its industrial counterpart—embodied in the Civil Construction Corps and very tight manpower direction—which had so alarmed unionists as re-

cently as 1939, was also cheerfully accepted at the height of the emergency.*° Wage pegs were tolerated; the key shorter hours campaign was abandoned—indeed a considerable increase both in work-

ing hours and in the incidence of tiring shift-work was accepted; skilled workers agreed to dilution of their jealously guarded trades by the entry of adult trainees—even, eventually, including females. Simultaneously, hard-won public holidays and annual leave were severely restricted by government directive at the very time that for most workers the actual conditions of work in general deteriorated, particularly in hastily constructed munitions factories. Outside the workplace, taxes were increased and many low-wage earners found themselves paying income tax for the first time. The national housing stock deteriorated, as did the conditions and frequency of nearly all forms of civilian travel. The general availability of most consumer goods was drastically curtailed and rationing of petrol and the key food and clothing items was inaugurated. Alcohol and tobacco were in short supply, taxes on entertainment were increased and deliberate or incidental restrictions cut back the major spectator sporting pastimes including football, cricket and racing. Black markets naturally favoured the rich in the general search for illicit supplies of all

The setting 17 controlled commodities from housing to beer. When all these factors were taken into consideration the wartime industrial relations record looks particularly good. The overall restraint and cheerful discipline

of the workforce in these years is all the more remarkable if the industrial suspicion and bitterness of the prewar period is recalled. Yet those earlier traumatic experiences had by no means been forgotten. Once peace was seen to be obviously approaching, the workforce turned eagerly to its considerable backlog of industrial claims.

The presentation of its bill set in motion the major campaigns in postwar industrial relations. The dimensions, pace and political ramifications of the ensuing encounters were in turn determined by the reaction of employers and, more importantly, the federal Labor government.

CHAPTER TWO

BEN CHIFLEY: BACKGROUND, CHARACTER AND APPROACH

Joseph Benedict Chifley possessed great charisma. Few were unaffected by it. He inspired affection among virtually all of his personal contacts. On his first trip to Britain, for example, hardened British journalists were unanimous in their personal praise.! Even his political opponents privately accorded him a genuine respect. To anyone on labour’s side of the fence his personal charm was unmatched and

proof against all but the most vindictive grudge-whetters such as J.T. (Jack) Lang. In the years after his death, during the ALP split and the subsequent long federal conservative predominance, fond memories ripened into virtual reverence. To understand Chifley’s involvement in industrial relations in the 1940s it is necessary to have

a Slightly clearer picture of the Prime Minister than the homespun version of a pipe-smoking, gravelly-voiced, Lincolnesque figure bequeathed to us by tradition. The actual details may provide us with several important insights into his attitude and approach. Chifley’s background contains many of the elements once classically associated with labour leaders. Born in 1885, he was raised in the Bathurst region, the eldest of three sons of a blacksmith. His paternal grandparents had emigrated from Tipperary, his mother from County Fermanagh. Between the age of five and fourteen he was brought up alone by his grandfather and aunt in their four-room farmer’s shack. This experience seems to have encouraged precocity and an interest in current affairs. While still a boy he proclaimed his ambition to enter parliament, a determination which he continued to express as a young railwayman. His occupation of train driver was near the top of the blue-collar status tree and offered above-average independence of action. Chifley was never a paid official of his union—eventually known as the Australian Federated Union of Locomotive Enginemen (AFULE)—although he was a regional delegate to the state conferences. He was by no means a militant. In the

Ben Chifley 19 bitter NSW railways dispute of 1917 Chifley proved a strong local force for moderation and conciliation. He was nevertheless at first put on a black list along with other union leaders but upon appeal was quickly reinstated—albeit with loss of seniority which involved temporary demotions to fireman until newly elected ALP Premier, Jack Lang, restored the strikers’ rights in 1925. After the stoppage Chifley became a prime mover in the formation of a federal loco drivers’ union registered with the national arbitration system. With this goal achieved he became a regular expert witness, respected on all sides, in the AFULE’s federal arbitration cases. Chifley was naturally pained when, as a result of his opposition to Jack Lang and the ALP’s state branch during the Depression, he was expelled from the AFULE in 1931 and not reinstated until 1941. Yet a salient fact about Chifley is that his route upwards in public life

did not stem simply from his union activity. Above all he was a Bathurst man. Throughout his adult life he was deeply involved in his local community in a variety of ways and attracted general warm respect in the process. Starting off as a highly useful forward in the Bathurst football team, he subsequently branched out into other 1mportant spheres of regional life. Most notably, in addition to prominent participation in the ALP’s Macquarie district assembly, he became a director of the Bathurst National Advocate, member and later president of the shire council, and member and later chairman of the Bathurst district hospital committee. An informal indication of his respected local position is provided by the fact that from the early 1920s he was acting as trustee, executor or adviser to various local

deceased estates. On the political front, after early failures to win ALP preselection for the local state seat he was adopted as the ALP candidate for the federal seat of Macquarie, contesting it unsuccessfully in 1925 and winning it in 1928. In parliament he soon made his

mark as a thoughtful and competent moderate. After barely two years in Canberra he became Minister of Defence in J.H. Scullin’s crumbling Cabinet. Chifley also acted as assistant to E.G. Theodore in some Treasury responsibilities. His colleagues soon came to respect his grasp of financial affairs. The defecting J.A. Lyons offered him the Treasury if he were to join the new conservative party while Theodore subsequently sought unsuccessfully his association in private enterprise. On the central Depression controversies Chifley stuck firmly to the middle of the road. He supported the orthodox Premiers’ Plan, was equivocal about the mildly expansionary proposals of Theodore and risked his whole political career by opposing the majority of both his state ALP branch and of his constituency party in their support for the radical Lang Plan. After inevitable electoral defeat in 1931 Chifley became the leader of the long and bitter internecine struggle to oust Lang from leadership of the NSW Labor Party. Lang never forgave him and went

20 Division of Labour on to become Chifley’s most persistent critic in the 1946—49 federal parliament. The 1930s battle reached depths of vituperation seldom plumbed even in the ALP’s battle-scarred history. Chifley was president of the NSW ‘official’ ALP and, as well as being obstructed by a Langite candidate in the Macquarie seat in 1934, he unsuccessfully

bearded Lang himself in the latter’s Auburn constituency in the 1935 state election. It was the vicious and exhausting Auburn campaign which irretrievably damaged Chifley’s vocal cords. The compromise merger of the two factions engineered by the federal ALP in 1936 left Chifley feeling somewhat betrayed. He did not stand for Macquarie in the 1937 election. In 1938 he threw his weight behind the emerging Heffron faction which finally ousted Lang from leadership of the NSW branch of the ALP in 1939. The end of the long internal conflict left Chifley as the senior federal ALP figure in the electorally most important state. After his electoral defeat in 1931 Chifley enjoyed no regular wage. Without children, he and his wife lived their normal frugal life, relying largely upon interest on their savings, on his Advocate directorship fees and on agent’s commissions derived from local business and property dealings. This was to give rise to personal controversy in later years. The most notable extra-ALP event in Chifley’s career in the 1930s was his membership of the Lyons government’s Royal Commission on Banking (1936-37). In the preceding five years he had greatly extended his reading on economics and finance. The banking inquiry represented ‘an intensive eighteen months “‘higher education”’’.* Chifley became the outstanding member of the Commission, displaying a firm grasp of all the intricacies of the financial

system and entering a weighty minority report which called for nationalization of the private banks. The war brought new challenges. In October 1939 Prime Minister R.G. Menzies gave him a place on the new wartime Capital Issue Advisory Board and in June 1940 he was co-opted into Essington Lewis’s Munitions Department as Director of Labour Supply. His re-election in Macquarie by a large majority in the September general election cut short his career as a public servant—but not before

he and Lewis, the erstwhile steel king, had earned each other’s considerable and lasting respect.° Such was Chifley’s reputation that even after re-entering the parliamentary Opposition’s ranks he was still asked by Minister Harold Holt to assist in the establishment of

the new Department of Labour and National Service. When the ALP took over the reins of government one year later it was no great surprise that the foremost New South Welshman in the parliament should be appointed national Treasurer, becoming ‘a sort of Prime Minister for the economic home front’.® So successful was he that he

proved the natural and overwhelming choice as leader upon the death of Curtin in July 1945. After comfortably winning the general

Ben Chifley 21 election of September 1946 he lost to Menzies in December 1949. Two months after losing a second election he collapsed and died in Canberra in June 1951. When we review Chifley’s background and his experiences before he strode on to the centre stage in 1941 it is possible to discern several features which influenced his performance as Prime Minister and

Treasurer. As with us all, influences in the formative childhood years left an indelible mark. In Chifley’s case his materially austere circumstances and his interaction with adults as much as with children produced a determined and independent youngster endowed . with frugal tastes. It has occasionally been suggested that his powerful and somewhat obsessive views on private banks were influenced not simply by the labour tradition and the ALP’s experience in the Scullin period, but also by the fact that his grandfather was a loser during the bank crash of the 1890s depression.’ Certainly a materially poor background combined with subsequent political and personal circumstance to incline Chifley towards an abiding interest in matters of economy and finance. His expertise in his chosen field was recognized by four successive Prime Ministers—Scullin, Lyons, Menzies and Curtin. In his adult life Chifley endured some hard personal knocks which further tempered the resilient steel of his character. On one level his decision—requiring considerable courage for a practising Catholic of the time—to marry according to his wife’s Presbyterian rites de-

barred him evermore from receiving the sacraments of his own church. On another he became a prime target for all the slander and

muckraking that a decade-long ALP faction fight could manufacture. Altogether, his schooling in full-time politics proved a testing one—first faithfully sinking with the vacillating Scullin government and then slugging it out with the formidable Lang machine. He emerged from it with enormous prestige, with his independence and single-mindedness confirmed, with a masterly knowledge of ALP internal operations, and with the proven ability to dish it out with the best and to act just as ruthlessly as the situation demanded.® In other areas of his life Chifley regularly dealt with a wider crosssection of the community than was usual for most ALP men. Both personally and publicly he became very much involved in and knowledgeable about the private enterprise system. His contacts ranged from local Bathurst-Lithgow businessmen and pastoralist fellow members of the shire council to fellow Royal Commissioners and Essington Lewis, the head of the nation’s largest firm. While they

learnt to admire and respect him, Chifley digested their views of society and came to appreciate their hopes and fears. Such contacts strengthened his pragmatism and the moderation of his views on social reform. Except on banking, Chifley was a confirmed middleof-the-roader from the earliest days. A natural leader, independent

22 Division of Labour in thought, most stable in character, Chifley was always a pragmatist, never an ideologue. In the 1917 strike he was a ‘moderate’; in the 1920s he opposed such radical agitations as that for the release of the American anarchist martyrs Sacco and Vanzetti;? in the 1930s he supported the orthodox, deflationary Premiers’ Plan; in the 1940s he argued against upsetting the ‘middle classes’.!° In July 1945, the conservative Melbourne Argus commented that ‘Chifley’s appointment as Prime Minister emphasises that despite the Party’s written objective of socialism, Labor members who aspire to the highest _ Office in the Parliamentary party should keep to the right.’!! In office

his attributes made him a most conscientious and able minister.

While always remaining ‘the chief’ and his own man in every way, his natural administrative bent combined with his dedication and charisma to provide him with a working relationship with federal public servants probably unsurpassed by any other Labor politician before or since. !4

With Lang as the notable, unremitting exception, the overwhelm-

ing assessment of Chifley by his contemporaries was favourable. Even those who clashed head-on with him during his Prime Ministership, as did some communist union leaders, still retained a fond impression of him. Interviews with survivors reveal that here the impact of Chifley’s enormous charm lasted long after the rights and

wrongs of particular issues had blurred.!* His wife, whose health was ‘indifferent’, preferred to live in their unpretentious cottage in Bathurst. In a rare interview, Mrs Chifley reported that her husband did not like social gatherings and even avoided her home card parties. He had never visited a cinema to her knowledge.!+ When visiting Bathurst, having no garage, he parked his ten-year-old car on the

street. While in Canberra, rather than use the Prime Miuinister’s Lodge Chifley preferred when possible to live in spartan fashion in the Hotel Kurrajong. For occasional breaks in his very long working hours, he reportedly turned to radio boxing commentaries, detective stories and the Bible which, by mid-1947, he had read nine times. !° A Prime Minister who humbly queues in line for theatre tickets!® can be forgiven many character defects. In fact, the remarkably few

personal foibles reported by contemporaries—a mild vanity concerning his distinguished good looks and a need to receive the undivided attention of the hostess at small informal gatherings!’—make Chifley seem even more humanly attractive. On only two points does he seem to come in for any serious criticism from his contemporaries. These concern his financial austerity and his relative inflexibility. In both instances the actual circumstances of his Prime Ministership may have exacerbated his natural predilections. Certainly both characteristics proved important in the area of industrial relations. With regard to the first, the strength of the allegation is indicated

Ben Chifley 23 by the fact that comments concerning his overzealous austerity come from some of his closest admirers. The Prime Minister’s frugality in

his personal life was widely known. Indeed trade unionists were moved to complain about the potential implications for union wage claims of the well-publicized ability of the Chifley household to get

by on a couple of pounds per week.!8 The real problem arose, however, from the fact that Chifley carried over this personal austerity into his handling of the national treasure. His pennypinching in handling official expense accounts was legendary and annoying even to his closest and most loyal contemporaries.!? More important, he brought this tight-fistedness to bear on all financial issues, from funding the arts2° to social service expenditure and the desirable level of national wage rates. Individual judgements vary.

Crisp makes kindly reference to his ‘austerity’ and the fact that “Treasury work was a passion’. Butlin felt that he was ‘too good a Treasurer’ and ‘not prepared to spend money’ while Makin claimed that he ‘sat too heavily on the chest of public finance’.*! Newspaper editor Edgar Holt considered that he had ‘a reverence for money’. Ex-Labor political opponents, major and minor, offered stronger views, calling him grasping, ‘mean’ and ‘obsessed with money’.?2 Here two factors connected with his twin positions of Prime Minister and Treasurer came to bear. In the first place the natural function of a Treasurer and his department is to look critically at virtually every

proposal for increased expenditure. Second, Chifley’s intimate knowledge of the Curtin government’s expedients in war financing and the inflationary dangers which these could entail for the peacetime economy heightened his natural caution. By far the number one danger for Chifley throughout his ministry was inflation. Everything else had to be subordinated to its containment. Contemporary comments concerning Chifley’s inflexibility range from Crisp’s sympathetic references to his tenacity and ‘inflexible

firmness of decision’ to accusations that he was ‘pig-headed’ or arrogant.** Journalist Alan Reid may have put his finger on it at the time of Chifley’s election to ALP leadership: But under the exterior of the homespun philosopher and pipe smoking humourist is a hard granite like quality and a strain of ruthlessness. Ben Chifley can say ‘no’ probably more charmingly than any other politician in the country. But that does not alter the fact that his ‘noes’ have a rare inflexibility. . . He is almost impervious to criticism.?>

On at least two major issues—the decision to nationalize the banks in 1947 and to dismantle price controls immediately after the failure of his 1948 referendum—conservatives alleged that he reacted inflexibly from pique.2° There can be little doubting the fairly universal observation that when Chifley came down on one side of an issue he lent his support

24 Division of Labour with every ounce of his considerable energy. Also, once having made

up his mind he seldom changed it. The problem during his Prime

Ministership seems to have been that Chifley’s tough singlemindedness was not provided with the requisite balance of a few equally strong and determined colleagues in the 1946—49 parliament. In N.J.O. Makin, J.A. Beasley and F.M. Forde he lost three of his weightier lieutenants after the 1946 election. Henceforth Chifley completely dominated Cabinet and caucus alike. In some respects H.V. (‘Doc’) Evatt can be seen as operating in the same division as Chifley, but the former’s interests did not encompass money and finance and he appears to have left domestic economic issues to his leader.*” At the height of Chifley’s battle with the unions over

wage-pegging, E. (Ernie) Thornton, communist secretary of the FIA, offered an interesting private analysis of the ALP’s federal leaders. Evatt he saw as ‘unpredictable’, driven by ‘tremendous personal ambition’ and ‘quite unscrupulous in pushing his own barrow’. His opinion of Chifley is worth reproducing in full. To Thornton the Prime Minister was already a Tory, he is a most conservative gentleman if you get under his very clever working class mask, and he 1s very clever in maintaining that mask, a man of the people, a simple person, calling trade union officials by their first names—even Jack McPhillips, he calls by his first name and that is saying a lot after what Jack said to him and about him during the steel strike—but underneath that he is a most conservative gentleman in every possible way. Not by any stretch of the imagination an admirer of socialism or a believer in such things as nationalisation, and I think we must always recognise that he

completely doininates the Government because he is, in his way, a very strong character and is able to handle the very weak characters that constitute the Federal Labor Party.2®

Inevitably, Chifley acquired the political art of dissembling when the occasion required it. Such was the popular image of the man that as recent scholars have begun to uncover evidence of this trait their discoveries have somehow seemed more shocking than similar evi-

dence unearthed about less revered father figures. Beresford and Kerr disclose his ‘white lies’ and ‘cynicism’ during the Bretton Woods debates, Markus suggests that he (and A.A. Calwell) deliberately misled Cabinet over their intentions on European immigration, while Watts reveals Chifley’s (and Curtin’s) ‘patent deceit’ concerning the creation of the 1943 Welfare Fund.2? Further examples of Chifley’s public disingenuousness will be revealed in the following pages. The aim will, however, in no way be to undermine the respect in which this impressive figure is held in the labour movement and elsewhere. It is probably inevitable for politicians to utter white lies

and to dress up both actions and motives in the public arena. It is also common for ALP leaders in office to alter or to ignore party policy determined at the supposedly supreme party conferences. What follows is an attempt to present a more accurate account of

Ben Chifley 25 events than that somewhat bowdlerized version which has lingered in the collective memory of the national labour movement partly as the result of the eulogistic portrait presented by L.F. Crisp,° a former leading official of the Department of Postwar Reconstruction who worked closely with Chifley. While he explicitly wrote from a committed and admiring viewpoint, some of the points which Crisp makes concerning Chifley’s personality are worth quoting at length. Naturally enough Chifley’s great charm is emphasized by his biographer who also points out that his wry humour and refusal to bear grudges greatly aided the man-management side of his duties, particularly with Caucus (pp. 214—5, 234). While denying all charges of inflexibility or ‘pigheadedness’ (239-40) Crisp does have a number of slight reservations about Chifley’s overall performance. In essence these centre around his personal austerity and his predominance in both his Cabinet and party. After clearly establishing Chifley’s background and personal frugality Crisp, in the context of the 1949 election defeat, ponders their consequences: Without children to educate and launch in life, able and willing to live ona small budget in a small cottage, capable of working from early in the morning until the small hours of its successor without thought of profit or spur of competition—was Chifley in all this too remote from the normal reactions of the average sensual man? Was this his Achilles’ heel? (370).

Moreover, one of his strengths as a Treasurer implied a corresponding defect for a Prime Minister: some of those who have almost unqualified praise for him as Treasurer have

reservations about him as Prime Minister. They have suggested that his

very closeness to his official advisers and to the business of sheer administration—an absorption which made him a sort of super-Secretary to the Treasury, an administrator among administrators—was a real weakness in a Prime Minister. He should, it has been argued, have been a more successful Prime Minister had he stood rather above and apart, able to make a

more detached and objective assessment of the issues thrown up by or through the governmental apparatus. . . (262).?!

Two occasions on which Crisp feels certain that the Treasurer dominated to the detriment of the politician concerned Chifley’s refusal either to abolish the means test for social services at one go or to provide endowment for the first child (315). On his overriding concern to combat inflationary tendencies which continued in Opposition—at times rather naively in view of the changed political circumstances (380)32—-Crisp argues that Chifley’s approach stemmed from his concern for inflation’s inequitable consequences

(301). This view is somewhat eroded by the immediately subsequent admission that Chifley retained regressive indirect taxes because of their anti-inflationary impact (302). At the outset Curtin ‘did much to widen Chifley’s more austere

26 Division of Labour

“Treasury” view (214n) but Crisp argues strongly that after Curtin’s death the dual Prime Minister—Treasurer role served to increase an already remarkable personal dominance over Cabinet (296-8). He believes that Chifley would have been an even more

outstanding Prime Minister if he, like Curtin, had nad another tough-minded, first-class colleague both close to him and ready to stand up to him. Moreover, had Chifley been less willing to have other ministers bring problems to him, their statures might have risen—and his own burden been lightened. Not even Evatt would stand out strongly once Chifley’s mind was made up. Crisp considers

that Cabinet members’ unanimity when Chifley brought the bank nationalization issue before them out of the blue (327-8) was an important indicator of Chifley’s degree of ascendancy. It seems possible with the advantage of hindsight that the lack of opposition within Cabinet may have contributed to the ‘unusually poor judgement’ (328) which the Prime Minister revealed in announcing Cabinet’s banking decision in such an ‘off-hand brusque’ fashion. Caucus was usually similarly docile. Only towards the very end, when in Opposition, did the young turks of the anti-communist wing begin to pose a serious challenge to their leader’s judgement. Chifley’s dominance extended beyond the parliamentary party— and to a quite surprising degree. It was most unusual for the ALP federal executive and federal conference to go ‘cap in hand’ to any-

one. But in Chifley’s case the ALP ‘acknowledge[d] a virtual dictatorship—cheerfully’ (242). The direction in which this indomitable figure took his government and party was along the traditional ALP reformist path towards better social security guided by twin lights of moderation and pragmatism (29, 249-52).

Concerning industrial relations Crisp makes two broad errors. First, he misunderstands both the mainsprings of contemporary industrial conflict and Chifley’s involvement in specific industrial relations events.** Broadly speaking these mistakes probably flow from his second, more important, error. This rests in the fact that he does not integrate his account of ‘industrial problems’ with his discussion of Chifley’s economic policies. Hence Crisp’s analysis of labour relations—like that of most other observers in the past—does not carry into the topic his own strictures regarding the overriding effect on the Prime Minister of his “Treasury approach’. This is in fact, as

later pages will demonstrate, the key to understanding the major events in the relevant period. Nevertheless Crisp, from his intimate vantage point, offers several important insights on Chifley and industrial relations. For our purposes two are particularly worth stressing. The first concerns the Prime Minister’s dominance in this field: In industrial matters—so important for a Labour [sic] Prime Minister— Holloway, Drakeford, Ashley and (in the earlier period) Beasley and Keane

Ben Chifley 27 could reinforce his experience or contacts. But Beasley, the ablest and most versatile of them, was ill when Chifley took over and retired from Cabinet within a year; those who remained after 1946 were for the most part prepared to live content under Chifley’s broad shadow. (238)34

My own research leaves little doubt that E.J. Holloway, the nominal Minister for Labour, deferred to Chifley on all important issues.

Crisp’s second insight concerns the subjective values which Chifley brought to the knotty task. In particular, his rather special and isolated work as a train-driver ‘aristocrat of labour’ coloured his attitude at times. Crisp argues that Had his working experience been in one of the big mass-production industries of the 1940s his reactions, for instance, to the problems associated with

Communist permeation and dominance of large industrial unions might have been different. Had he been, in his time, less successful in personal and informal negotiation with the local and central railways authorities on behalf of his mates in the Bathurst railway community, he might during his Prime

Ministership have given even more time to such continuing problems of management-employee relations as consultative machinery at the several levels of industry. (346)

One final issue needs to be considered before moving on. This concerns the single truly radical measure which Chifley sought to implement—that is, the nationalization of private banking. This abortive attempt is widely regarded on all sides as his biggest single mistake. It provided an enormous boost to his conservative oppo-

nents in politics and in the press, bestowing upon them a cause célébre with which to kindle a grassroots campaign against the ALP’s hitherto invisible (because non-existent) predatory socialistic designs

against private property. A major factor in Menzies’ 1949 election victory was the lengthy campaign against the bank proposals. This began as soon as the Bill was announced so dramatically in August 1947 and was quickly translated into a denial of supply to the Cain Labor government by the tory Victorian upper house. This paved the way for an hysterical but successful state election campaign involving all major federal Opposition figures. The ferment continued as the banks successfully appealed against the Act to the High Court Gudgement given August 1948). The Government’s unsuccessful appeal to the Privy Council, whose reasons for judgement were given in October 1949, kept the issue very much on the boil in the run-up to the 1949 general election.?°

Commentators on the 1940s have continued to be puzzled by aspects of Chifley’s behaviour. The banks had always been a target for ALP criticism.*© The populist suspicion of their power had been heightened by the events of the depressions of the 1890s and 1930s— catastrophes of which Chifley had close personal experience. During the war, emergency Regulations had given the federal government

28 Division of Labour control of the whole banking system. The 1945 legislation promised

similar peacetime control. So, Labor’s basic motivation can be understood. Nevertheless Chifley and Curtin had easily defeated in Cabinet and caucus moves by Ward and T.P. Burke to nationalize rather than regulate the banks in 1945.3” Thus a real puzzle arises in the timing and execution of the 1947 measures. No effort was made to prepare the party and its close supporters—let alone the electorate at large. The matter was introduced at virtually a moment’s notice to a Saturday morning meeting of the Cabinet, and after all the surprised ministers had spoken in favour it was resolved that legislation should be introduced forthwith. At the conclusion of the meeting Chifley made a single brusque 43-word announcement of intent to the startled press gallery. The ALP’s side of the subsequent hectic and hysterical public debate never recovered from its ill-prepared

Start, remaining unimpressively low-key and generally uncoordinated. The pro-nationalization forces were ‘left for dead’ by the increasingly smoothly presented case of the Opposition. The painstaking earlier work of J.H.O. Paterson, the federal president of the Australian Bank Officers’ Association, in persuading other banking unions that nationalization was inevitable was destroyed by Chifley’s initial “blunt refusal’—later retracted—to guarantee all bank officers

employment after nationalization and by Cabinet Minister J.J. Dedman’s injudicious comment that the nation’s banking could be carried out with 5000 fewer employees. #® Most subsequent discussion has surrounded Chifley’s exact role in the maladroit initiation of the explosive issue. Crisp denies any knee-

jerk reaction by the Prime Minister through pique at the High Court decision in the Melbourne City Council Case but accepts his central responsibility. This view is largely supported by Breen, Butlin and Coombs. Breen reports his own and Essington Lewis’s surprise at Chifley’s refusal to compromise and suggests poor health was a factor. Butlin sees the decision as ‘very much Chifley’s initiative’ and also notes his personal insistence on the implementation of Section 48 of the 1945 legislation, the announcement of which gave rise to the Melbourne Council High Court challenge, which in turn prompted

Cabinet’s decision to nationalize. Coombs accepts the version of Chifley’s close friend, W.C. Taylor, who saw the Prime Minister as more concerned with future challenges to the Special Accounts provision of the legislation and hence decided to make an immediate pre-emptive strike.*? Accepting this, the appalling execution of the plan still needs explaining. Here Crisp sees the Cabinet unanimity as indicative of Chifley’s predominance among his colleagues. In the circumstances this seems to read as a tacit acceptance of his responsi-

bility for the error. Indeed there is one report that Chifley himself accepted the blame. F.C. Green, then Clerk of the House of Representatives and an admirer of the Prime Minister, relates that

Ben Chifley 29 On the Monday morning after the 1949 elections Chifley came to the House as usual and walked into my room. After striking a few matches and lighting his pipe he expressed his disappointment at his defeat, but admitted it was

probably his own fault for moving too fast on banking. He said: ‘It is a mistake to show the rooster the axe when you are going to take his head off;

you should show him a bit of corn first’.

The bank nationalization controversies certainly had a considerable industrial relations impact. Leaving aside the level and varying intensity of union support and employer opposition to the proposal, the issue helped change markedly the atmosphere in which industrial issues were publicly debated. The banks and their supporters

were able to couch the nationalization debate in terms of an evil socialist plot similar to Moscow’s fiendish designs. This, in the new Cold War background, helped make eminently more reasonable—at least to the uninitiated—the evergreen claims that behind every industrial relations bush there lurked a sinister Red troll or two. As we shall see, Chifley’s decision to confront the miners head-on in the climactic 1949 coal strike fortified this view and made a further con-

siderable contribution to his electoral defeat. The final comment

here is to note that on the bank issue Chifley’s behaviour— outwardly at least—appears to fit well the general pattern of his behaviour in the industrial relations field—at least towards the trade unions. He adopted a tough, obdurate stand. “Take it or leave it’, he said to the banks and (virtually) to the public, ‘I’ve little or no need to beg you or greatly to explain my policy’. Some observers felt that this approach spilled over into his electoral posture. The generally critical Whitington felt that ‘Chifley [in 1949]. . . was showing signs of delusions of grandeur, or at least of a tendency to disregard the wishes of the electorate’.*! Certainly the Prime Minister tended simply to stand on his record in his 1949 election campaign. Was Chifley merely being consistent with his successful tactics of 1946 or does

power tend to corrupt judgement? This last was the view of the anonymous conservative author of a 1950 cover story in People titled ‘Power changes a man’. After becoming Prime Minister, He listened less and talked more. He was more assertive, more sure, less tolerant—of course he was busier, for in many respects he was a one-man Government, making most of the decisions, telling Cabinet what to do, tending more and more to govern by regulation with less and less respect for Parliament and public opinion.*

Overall, the consummate ease with which Chifley handled the official labour movement probably helped him misjudge the changing mood of the electorate and contributed to his flawed campaigns on price control, on banking and in the 1949 and 1951 elections.

CHAPTER THREE

THE GOVERNMENT, THE ECONOMY AND THE LABOUR MARKET

The Curtin and Chifley ministries had more scope to inaugurate social and economic change than any other federal government in Australian history. From July 1944, the government controlled the Senate—a rare position for a Labor ministry. In addition the National Security Act (NSA) bestowed extraordinary powers on the Commonwealth. These were fortified by the wartime establishment of certain patterns of economic management—notably in the bank-

ing and taxation spheres—which demonstrated the practicability and efficiency of federal control. The exact nature and extent of the government’s emergency powers in the postwar period were, however, blurred by at least two factors. On the one hand the disinclination of the Chifley government to implement the immediate demands of its trade union supporters caused it to deny its own authority to move in some of the requisite directions. On the other, as the national emergency receded, the judiciary, the states and the private sector were less ready to tolerate the intrusions of the federal government. Central to Canberra’s control of the post-war economy was its ability to maintain certain key economic Regulations.! This hinged on the determination of the date of expiry of the NSA and interpretation of the degree to which the Commonwealth’s ‘defence power’ could be used to enable Regulations to remain in force even afterwards on the grounds that they were essential for an orderly transi-

tion from war to peace. In April 1946 the government decided to terminate the NSA by special legislation as from 31 December 1946,

but in November 1946 it also introduced a Defence (Transitional Provisions) Bill which extended the principal economic controls until the end of 1947. In the meantime it had been hoping that the states

would implement agreements reached at premiers’ conferences in 1945 and 1946 to refer temporarily all price control powers to the Commonwealth for a minimum of three years after the termination

Government, economy and labour market 31

of the NSA. Only Queensland in fact passed legislation covering the

whole of the agreed period. The other states seemed prepared to allow federal controls to continue on an ad hoc basis after 1947 but the Commonwealth felt 1t necessary to try and acquire permanent power over prices and rents through a constitutional referendum in May 1948. By then, as we will see, the original rigid control of wages had been wrested from the government. However, the point to be stressed here is that in the key transitional period the government maintained control over the major economic variables. Apart from direct controls, by the time the war ended the govern-

ment possessed other economic weapons which gave it unprecedented leverage in the monetary and fiscal spheres. The banking

legislation of 1945 confirmed the powers first granted under the NSA. Subsequent banking controversies from mid-1947 onwards in no way limited the government’s firm control of the money supply. On the taxation front the Commonwealth had irrevocably moved to centre stage by establishing the primacy of its income taxing power in 1942 through legislation whose peacetime applicability was con-

firmed by the High Court. Higher income taxation was a major source of wartime finance. The manner in which Chifley introduced the extension of tax to the lower income groups provides probably the first major example of his ability to fudge public debate in order to divert popular criticism. Watts has demonstrated the real reasons for the unveiling of the

celebrated National Welfare Fund in February 1943. Rather than establishing the “Welfare State’ the scheme represented a definite move away from ALP principles of non-contributory social insurance towards the policies consistently urged on preceding conservative governments by the Treasury, and advocated with ‘benevolent cynicism’ by wartime economic advisers such as H.C. Coombs and L.F. Giblin. The scheme was launched with considerable fanfare at

a time when little would be paid out in benefits—particularly unemployment—while extending income tax coverage to lower income earners under the guise of paying for the new benefits. It extended the tax threshold to people earning £104 p.a. or 41 per cent of the 1943 basic wage and raised ‘about two-thirds of the new tax receipts. . . from very low to low-middle incomes’. Its potential unpopularity was successfully diverted by rhetorical reference to the

brave new world. It says much both for the ALP leadership’s domination of the party when in office and for the lack of economic

and financial sophistication of the bulk of the labour movement; political and industrial, that the move did not attract more criticism outside the Opposition’s ranks. There was some ALP and union criticism but although Senator Don Cameron in Labor Call ‘fulminated against Chifley’s proposal as a “‘confidence trick”’’ and Chifley was sufficiently stung by comments on Labor’s Melbourne 3KZ radio

32 Division of Labour station to describe them as ‘a mass of inaccurancies and a disgrace’, the overall reaction was remarkably subdued. Chifley had achieved a considerable political coup by shifting party policy on welfare without securing party approval. . . . Chifley’s innocent guile is no

better illustrated than in his. . .claim that as Treasurer he had presided over a vast redistribution of national income. Apparently no one saw through this patent deceit; contributory social services are not compatible with income redistribution as Communist Party criticisms of the Beveridge plan noted in the 1940s and as Richard Titmuss demonstrated in the early 1960s in his examination of Britain’s welfare state.3

Of course the major reason why the government needed to raise tax revenue in 1943 was to finance the war effort which expanded so

dramatically after Pearl Harbor. In 1942-43 war expenditure amounted to over 38 per cent of national income, and the diversion of resources occurred more rapidly than did the government’s initial

ability to pay through taxation receipts and borrowed funds. The gap was met, perforce, by the short-term expedient of creating Treasury bills and placing them with the central bank. In 1942-43 virtually one-third of war expenditure was financed from this source. Given the highly inflationary potential of this move, the government

thereafter accorded the highest priority to the elimination of Treasury bill finance. (In the post-war world the inflationary threat arising from war financing was of course exacerbated by the enormous backlog of investment and consumer demand which had banked up during the war.)

Despite the inflationary dangers the war did not lead to any weakening in the economy. Manufacturing experienced a great leap forward under the pressure of war demands (Tables 3, 4). More significantly in view of Australian economic history, the overseas debt did not rise to burden the postwar years with heavy payment problems. Indeed a combination of debt repatriation, falling interest rates and inflation transformed the traditional picture. In absolute terms total overseas indebtedness actually fell by 12.3 per cent in the seven years to 1945—46 while the average rate of interest payable declined

by 10.5 per cent over the same period. In 1938-39 public-sector fixed-interest commitments absorbed 15.6 per cent of balance of payments credits on current account; by 1945—46 the proportion had

been reduced to 6.0 per cent and was to fall even further as the authorities continued to take advantage of a healthy balance of payments and cheap money in Britain to repatriate and/or convert old loans to lower rates. Given the continued buoyant demand for primary produce, the scene was set, at war’s end, for the commencement of one of the most prosperous periods in Australian history, heading off into a thirty-year boom. The planners, of course, were not to know this. Consideration of

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Government, economy and labour market 35

post-war economic problems had been initiated long before Pearl Harbor. As with all the Western allies the major concerns in Australia were full employment and economic growth. Basing their predictions on the recent past, the planners were essentially pessimistic. They underestimated the level of world demand for Australian primary produce, while employment creation in the manufacturing sector was expected to entail ‘growing industrial inefficiency at the margin and regression in the level of average real income’.* Australian advisers believed that the trade liberalization envisaged in the US-initiated Article VII of the Mutual Aid Agreement could not bring employment stability but instead would threaten Australia’s

newly expanded manufacturing base; they insisted that an unequivocal agreement to maintain full employment should be part of any such international undertaking. Faith in the full employment doctrine was genuine. . . [but] promotion of a full employment agreement was designed in part to provide Australia with an escape clause: a way of avoiding wholesale tariff reduction and any obligation to surrender control of the exchange rate. For it was accepted at the outset that the United States was unlikely to accept the degree of interference in its domestic policy implied by the full employment charter. At best the doctrine would generate salutary propaganda and at worst help to safeguard national independence.>

Yet while Australian negotiators sometimes irritated foreigners by the persistence with which they plugged the full employment theme at international conferences leading up to Bretton Woods in July 1944, actual preparation of an integrated domestic plan did not commence until August 1944. After eight successive drafts the White Paper Full Employment in Australia was published at the end of May

1945. Despite its bland, generalized contents, the White Paper’s clear commitment to high and stable employment represented an unprecedented policy declaration for an Australian government. The Department of Post-War Reconstruction (PWR) which was to co-ordinate and help inspire the government’s policies for the new post-war world had been established in 1943. Treasurer Chifley was Minister in charge until February 1945 when J.J. Dedman, hitherto Minister of War Organisation of Industry, took over. The Director-

General was economist Dr H.C. Coombs, previously a Treasury adviser and then Director of Rationing. The Department was often to be depicted by Labor’s political opponents as a particularly dangerous nest of bureaucratic enemies of free enterprise, determined to impose the government’s control-ridden, socialist plan on the hapless postwar Australian economy.® Reality was quite different. To begin with even the Opposition accepted from the outset the necessity of the continuance of controls during the tricky period of transition from wartime to peacetime production.’ More impor-

36 Division of Labour

tantly, notwithstanding the fevered public rhetoric of its political opponents and the dreams of some of its supporters, the ALP of the 1940s was not a socialist party in any normally accepted sense of the

term. At the height of the war emergency, when the party enjoyed unprecedented electoral popularity, its leaders made it clear that they had no intention of either clearing the ground for, or actually implementing socialist policies. Waters has demonstrated how, in the 1943 federal election and the 1944 referendum campaigns, Prime

Minister Curtin and his senior colleagues, including Chifley and Evatt, unequivocally ruled out socialization measures and offered explicit assurances to private enterprise of its undisturbed place in the post-war world.® Dr Evatt said, credit was due to Mr Curtin, who had been successful because he had refused to govern in the interests of any group or class. The Labor Party could not govern merely as a trade union movement; it must also guard the interests of the great middle groups. . .In Dr Evatt’s opinion. . . there would be more room for private enterprise and business initiative after the war than ever before.”

In 1944 Curtin pledged that even after the war ‘No question of socialisation or any other fundamental alteration in the economic system arises’.!° Waters has also recorded the reaction of radicals such as Brian Fitzpatrick to the raising of the socialist bogey by the ALP’s critics: “This is a good joke. Who are the members of Mr Curtin’s Government who have “‘socialistic plans?”’ I can think of two, and two only, who on record care two hoots for socialism’.!! Rank-and-file radical proposals were emasculated by the party leadership, whose stance was seen by Fitzpatrick to be ‘socialism, but not in my time, O Lord’.!2 No change occurred when Chifley took over the leadership. Ex-

cept on banking, he was a moderate to his bootstraps. In 1941 in Opposition he had indulged in rhetoric about the need for ‘a revolutionary change in the control of industry and finance [which] meant far more government control’ but once in office he offered no threat

to the private enterprise system. Breen attests to Chifley’s sympathetic personal dealings with individual, industrialists.13 In June 1949, in a keynote speech surveying his work as Prime Minister, Chifley was able to offer a justifiable rebuke to his private-enterprise critics: “I make this challenge here this morning. No government in the history of Australia has ever given to private industry so much assistance and advice and help as has been given by the Common_ wealth Labour [sic] government.’!* Catley and McFarlane conclude that far from over-regulating the private sector the ALP was less interventionist than either the contemporary Labour government in Britain or the subsequent Menzies ministries in Australia.!> Clark pointed to the fact that no capital gains tax was introduced and that

Government, economy and labour market 37

the percentage of GNP ‘controlled by the state’ only rose from 13 per

cent in 194] to 14.9 per cent in 1949—when indirect taxes still accounted for an ‘inordinately high’ 44.7 per cent of tax revenue and the degree of income tax progressiveness was ‘very much below’ the British or Scandinavian scales.!© Watts detected a ‘faustian pact’ between government and the ‘liberal’ economics of the planners which ensured the freedom of private enterprise from any post-war socialist inroads. !7

Despite the real moderation of politicians and advisers, they suffered an initial setback as the electorate in 1944 resoundingly rejected the ‘powers’ referendum. The fourteen powers which the government sought to have transferred to it for five years after the end of

hostilities covered a very wide area. The presentation of all items holus-bolus to the electorate was tactically questionable and made it easier for Opposition charges of ‘socialization’ and ‘industrial conscription’ to register with voters already wearying of the current unprecedented level of controls. Indeed the accusations of not pulling

their weight in the referendum campaign levelled at Chifley and other ALP leaders!® may hinge on the leaders’ awareness that the referendum was being held too late in the war for success.!? The powers sought which were most relevant to reconstruction would have allowed the Commonwealth to make laws to cover: the reinstatement and advancement of ex-servicemen, employment and unemployment, organized marketing of commodities, national works, profiteering and prices. However, the government still retained suf-

ficient means under its defence power and through its enlarged macro-economic weaponry to cover these areas during the immediate postwar period. Thus ‘there was only minor modification to the [reconstruction] programme after rejection of the Government’s [referendum] case’.2° In 1946, although favoured by an overall majority . of voters, the employment and marketing provisions again failed to secure the requisite majority in four states in a referendum which did, however, widen and secure the Commonwealth’s social security powers. The major elements of the government’s pragmatic reconstruction programme were: (a) the maintenance of full employment—largely by means of creating a standby ‘shelf’ of public works ready to be

initiated whenever employment levels turned downwards; (b) a housing programme designed to protect low-income earners; (c) demobilization and training schemes for service personnel designed to avoid suddenly overloading the labour market; (d) the bolstering of industrial employment behind the traditional tariff wall, largely by encouraging automobile manufacture but also by giving assistance to shipbuilding for strategic reasons; (e) the avoidance of uneconomic

agricultural development while placing small numbers of exservicemen on the land; (f) an immigration scheme aimed to stimu-

38 Division of Labour

late overall development. The only part of the programme which seemed in any way at variance with the key aim of full employment was the plan for large-scale immigration. In the event the international shipping shortage meant there was little scope for a major migrant inflow until after all economic interest groups had experienced the _ exceptionally tight postwar labour market. The major controls with which the government sought to launch

its reconstruction programme were delineated in the 1945 White Paper on full employment. They covered trade, money supply,

prices, building materials, capital issues and primary produce marketing. The first two were already clearly within the constitutional power of the Commonwealth. The remainder all rested on the ephemeral defence power and the willingness of the states to transfer

powers. The Commonwealth fought with varying fortune to maintain these “White Paper controls’ but undoubtedly it saw price control as the key to its economic strategy; and in the minds of all policy makers, whether politicians or advisers, wage control was explicitly understood to be the sine gua non of price control. The attempt by the Chifley government to maintain its wages freeze provided the central theme to industrial relations during the first two and a half years of peace. Further, the divisions—real and imagined—which

arose from the union movement’s unco-ordinated rejection of the government’s strategy were strongly to colour industrial events during the second half of Chifley’s rule. The details of industrial bargaining, maneouvre and confrontation and of the union movement’s surprising inability to comprehend the central importance of the wage freeze to the government’s entire economic strategy will emerge in later pages. Suffice it here to say that the Prime Minister conducted a masterful rearguard action. Helped by wage stability, the ‘C Series’ retail price index increased by a total of only 5.5 per cent in the two years 1946 and 1947. A major union

complaint, however, was that this both underestimated the true cost of living and inflated the official figures on purchasing power ‘Real Wage Index Numbers’, (see Table 5). Since the basic wage was

‘indexed’ to the C Series, the government’s key price stabilization scheme was aimed at holding down through subsidies the price of goods included in its regimen. Goods which did not enter basic wage calculations were subject to much greater price increase.?! With black markets favouring higher income earners, workers saw from 1943 an increased share of wages go in taxes to pay subsidies to keep wages steady. Three major preoccupations showed up clearly in Chifley’s postwar fiscal policy. Above all, he feared inflation and sought to restrain national expenditure. Next, like the rest of the community he feared

the slump which he believed would follow inflation—although he felt that his and other governments could prevent a decline of the

Government, economy and labour market 39 Table 5 Official changes in purchasing power, net overseas immigration and union unemployment 1939-50; percentage change on previous year

Real wage Trade union

C series index-numbers unemployretail for adult Net overseas ment

price index males? immigration (per cent)

1939 2.6—1.7 0.1 13 1940 4.0 13891 400 9.7 8.0

194] 5.3 0.3 5184 3.7 1942 8.2 0.2 6166 1.6 1943 3.5 2.9 1271 1.1 1944 —0.4 1.2 —2183 1.2

1945 0.00.9 0.5—15 — 2629 1.2 1946 ].7 148 1.4 1947 3.83.0 4.455 10611] 1.2 1948 9.0 115® 0.9 1949 9.3 0.7 150001° 2.0¢ 1950 10.2 1.6 152 505° 0.8

4 j.e., relative purchasing power of weighted average nominal weekly rates over the regimen of the C Series retail price index b includes movements of defence personnel ¢ includes all members of reporting unions indirectly affected by national dispute in the coalmining industry Sources: Commonwealth Yearbooks, Labour Reports

1930s order of magnitude.2? Finally, Chifley proved to be an Anglophile, anxious about Britain’s weakened position in the world

economy and prepared to render all assistance possible to the ‘mother country’. Robertson concludes that the government’s preference for British investment and restriction of US investment was logical, for in economic terms the advantages of membership of the sterling pool outweighed the disadvantages. Politically, however, abiding strictly to the dollar restrictions imposed on the sterling area made for electoral unpopularity—particularly as a result of petrol rationing.?? Despite his inflationary fears, Chifley was unable to resist the considerable pressure within his party and from the electorate to honour wartime promises to reduce nominal tax rates. He did so, however, at the slowest pace possible. When inflation quickened in 1948 and

1949, ‘tax creep’ eroded the concessions. Johnson has recently emphasized the conservative and subordinate nature of Chifley’s welfare policies. Notably, he consistently opposed extending endowment to the first child and lifting the means test. The government’s

effort to introduce the first instalment of a national health scheme was completely blocked by the nation’s strongest and most obdurate trade union—the doctors’ Medical Association.2*

40 Division of Labour Chifley’s reduction of sales taxes in 1946 was closely connected with keeping down the C Series price index to which the basic wage was linked. The official budget accounts were somewhat misleading. Chifley’s method of allocating revenue to various special accounts and to gifts to Britain usually disguised a real budget surplus. Overall, Chifley’s peacetime budgets, with the exception of 1949-50, were as demand-restraining as the political parameters would allow.2> On the monetary side Chifley maintained low interest rates in line with

international thinking. To a degree this ran against the antiinflationary controls contained in the 1945 Banking Act. Clark has even argued that, while assisting borrowers, cheap money ‘caused a flight from government bonds, thereby forcing the Commonwealth Bank to buy up bonds placed on the market by the private sector with the consequent effect of injecting large and inflationary spurts of money into the economy.’26 The crucial importance of wage pegging to government policy and connected concern for the effects of a full employment policy on labour ‘discipline’ emerged in virtually all discussions among ALP politicians and advisers from 1942 onwards. The evidence indicates that the overriding fear of inflation was closely affected by and related to the planners’ realization of the workforce mood. A conscious decision was made to ensure the best possible public relations by endeavouring to disguise the implications of the government’s central economic strategy for wage earners. In the circumstances, reliance on the trusting nature and economic naivety of the workforce and its union leaders proved remarkably successful.27 Even in the gloomiest period of the struggle against the Japanese, Chifley and his advisers held serious doubts that a wage freeze could hold.28 After the crisis passed, few in planning circles were naive enough to imagine that the wartime themes of sacrifice for a common cause would do the trick in peacetime. Planners therefore tried to avoid spelling out to the workforce the implications of government policy. Their public statements and appeals, as far as lower income earners were concerned, were couched in general terms of pulling together for the brave new world and of the deadly threat posed by

inflation. Occasionally the blinds would be lifted—as when Dr Lloyd Ross of the PWR Department revealed that the effects of full employment on industrial relations were ‘dominating much of our thoughts on post-war planning’.2? More usually the planners, while indicating the likely importance of the issue—which was after all, _ attracting speculation throughout the allied democracies?°—did not dwell on the topic or its potential unpleasant implications.?! Detailed insights into their thinking emerge only from internal memoranda.?2

The very first discussions in the PWR Department on the full

Government, economy and labour market 41

employment White Paper stressed that there ‘will be considerable pressure for higher wages’? but that ‘we must do everything possible to hold wages during the critical period’.3+ ‘No general wage in-

creases can be contemplated’>> at least until after the transition period—for, as Coombs was later to assert, ‘If you remove [wage] pegging, you can remove price control’.© Several associated labour market problems also loomed large in the planners’ minds in the last war year. High on the list was the likely adverse effect on industrial ‘discipline’-—and hence overall efficiency—of labour’s enhanced bargaining power in a full employment economy. Another was the potential difficulty of persuading workers to engage either in essen-

tial projects in remote locations or in uncongenial or low-wage

jobs—a set of problems barely surmounted in the wartime

emergency. The common acceptance of these likely postwar problems begged the question of how to deal with them. From the outset both public servants and their ministers were fully aware of the pitfalls on either side of the political tightrope which an ALP government must walk in endeavouring to continue the wartime wage freeze. Cornish, in his

wider study of the interdepartmental debates during preparation of the full employment White Paper has captured well the political flavour of many of the contributions.?” Those involved were relative-

ly young public servants who had been influenced by world-wide political trends and who were persuaded of the basic justice of workers’ claims for a better deal in the postwar world. Nevertheless, there

was a majority feeling that public airing of specific controversial issues might inflame rather than inform community debate. This was the nub of criticisms of the labour market sections of early White Paper drafts A and B made within the PWR Department and then of criticisms made by other departments, notably Treasury, of subsequent drafts. The idea of publicly advocating incentive wage schemes, long a béte noire of most organized labour, came in for harsh criticism. More importantly there was the anxiety, more apparent in the non-PWR departments, to avoid drawing general attention to the

necessity for wage control in the postwar world. The criticism by Treasury’s F.H. (later Sir Frederick) Wheeler of the relevant sections of draft D provides possibly the best example of this concern.*8

One relatively junior official, B.W. Hartnell, did drew attention to the paradox of the government ‘having put out the red carpet for the manufacturers’ by meeting them in conference to discuss future economic policy, yet failing to consult the unions, its major allies and supporters. Another, E.J.R. Heyward, went so far as to argue that the wages policy implications should be set out explicitly in the White Paper. But such views were exceptional. For the rest even those officials generally critical of the conservative approach were equally keen to avoid public airing of issues likely to arouse the

42 Division of Labour

unions. When the politicians were brought into the White Paper debate they proved even more sensitive to this danger. E.J. Holloway, Minister for Labour and National Service (LNS), was particularly anxious that the government should not become involved in incentive scheme controversies. He did, however, agree

that a commission or committee of inquiry both into minimum wages and hours standards and into ways to simplify the federal arbitration system ‘should be set up early to checkmate quick rush demands for sectional interests’.2? Curtin’s annotations on his copy of the draft? reveal that he desired greater emphasis on the dangers of a wage—price spiral but the deletion of any reference to wage rates being increased to help redistribute national income. He also disapproved of any public suggestion that unions reconsider incentive wage schemes. Most other ministers proved equally keen to remove any element of controversy—although H.P. Lazzarini (Works and Housing) did lambast the dry, academic flavour of the draft and implied support for a more radical statement of the government’s role in the postwar economy.*! The major figures involved were those ministers whose departments were most directly concerned; Chifley (Treasury), Dedman (PWR), Holloway (LNS) and Calwell (Immigration and Information). These four formed a Cabinet sub-committee in March 1945 to oversee the final stages of the White Paper’s compilation but it was Chifley and, to a lesser extent, Calwell who dominated the subcommittee. As Cornish says, its ‘primary objective was to remove those aspects of the draft [E] which it felt were indelicate from the political point of view’.*2 The major target, therefore, was the section on wages policy which was ‘the only one that [was] hacked about on a large scale’.*3 Notably, Chifley and Calwell rejected as ‘political-

ly dangerous’ Dedman’s notion of consulting the unions directly on wages policy. Unlike Dedman they even feared the implications of too wide-ranging a debate in the full Cabinet and hence toned down the extent of the proposed review of wage fixing by deleting any definite commitment to link the basic wage to a productivity index. Even so, when the full Cabinet met to consider the penultimate draft considerable disagreement emerged. The details of the three-day debate are unavailable, but Cornish tells us that it appears to have centred for the most part on the political implications of the paper, including the role that administrative controls would have to play after the war, the constitutional implications of the policy proposals enunciated in the document, the ramifications of full employment for the trade union movement— including, above all, wage pressures in the labour market—and matters attaching to public finance.

The final result was a bland document which, while taking the important step of asserting the government’s commitment to full employment and emphasizing the crucial importance of wages,

Government, economy and labour market 43

nevertheless so carefully concealed the Cabinet’s true intentions that the central issue of wage control is simply not mentioned anywhere

in the White Paper, although every other item to be controlled 1s clearly listed in paragraphs 101-6. This was enough to throw at least one important employer group off the scent and cause it to believe that the government did not contemplate any wage control.* The White Paper planners had to face the realities of the postwar labour market rather sooner than they had expected. Twin nuclear strikes and the prompt capitulation of Japan ensured the speedy dismantling of many wartime controls and the acceleration of the workforce aggression already evident before the end of hostilities. In some areas of the economy such as transport and mining the militance of the workforce was heightened by the cumulative strain of the long war effort. In others—particularly manufacturing—industrial tension was exacerbated by the very toning down of the war effort in 1944 and 1945 which involved lower earnings as overtime declined while employers sought to end informal wartime concessions such as tea-breaks and tacit recognition of workers’ ‘seniority’ rights. Dis-

putes arose spontaneously in a multitude of industries, and major confrontations in the printing, power and steel industries began to crystallize around the central issues of shorter hours and higher wages. A general call went up for the honouring of wartime promises. Although attempts by sections of its membership to have the ALP adopt a specifically socialistic postwar programme had been blocked by the party’s leaders, there had been no gainsaying rankand-file determination to make provision for immediate ‘economistic? improvements in the workers’ peacetime standards of living. Thus the 1943 ALP federal conference had determined that an ALP federal government would move to introduce a 40-hour week by legislation within six months of the end of hostilities. It also called for a lifting of the wage-pegging Regulations within the same period and an increase in the basic wage.

The union movement’s official bill was presented to the federal government by the June 1945 ACTU congress which demanded, in addition to shorter hours, (a) the launching of a joint government— union inquiry into ‘proper’ criteria for a new basic wage; (b) the immediate incorporation into the basic wage of the war loading and the 1937 ‘prosperity’ loading (between 4s and 6s per week), both adjusted for intervening price changes; (c) a further increase of £1 per week immediately on cessation of hostilities; (d) a guaranteed annual wage (to be established by a joint government—union committee); (e) a remodelling of the federal arbitration system along

lines to be indicated by the ACTU; (f)—the only one to be achieved—a minimum of two weeks annual leave. This agenda for reform prompted fresh debate among departmen-

44 Division of Labour tal officials. Six main strands can be identified. First it was common-

ly accepted that a national wage policy had to be determined immediately. Ad hocery would be dangerous. Second, efforts were made to assess the likely economic impact of the ACTU demands. Third, it was strongly argued that there was little or no room for redistribution of income shares between wages and profits. Fourth, every effort should therefore be made to educate workers and to reas-

sure them that (a) they would receive their rightful share of any national gains from productivity (or improvements in Australia’s terms of trade) and (b) that the progressive taxation and social secur-

ity mechanism, not wage increases, held the key to income redistribution. Fifth, any means possible should be used to delay the union offensive and to lessen its eventual gains. Thus the Commonwealth Arbitration Court should be the medium for any general inquiry into the basic wage—and this should be held in conjunction with any proposed investigation into standard hours. Finally, as the success of the federal government’s delaying tactics became clear an advocacy arose that the Prices Branch should be used to police the wage freeze and prevent market forces triumphing over government regulation. In pursuit of their aims the planners worked to ensure close correspondence between the cases to be presented to the Court by the government and by supposedly ‘independent’ expert witnesses. The original idea came from Dr R. (later Sir Roland) Wilson, Secretary,

Department of LNS, at a meeting with Chifley, Senator N.E. McKenna and Wheeler where he suggested that arrangements should be made for the presentation to the Court of the general economic principles which the Court should keep in mind in approaching the problem and making its assessment [and that] this might be done by Professor [L.F.] Giblin on the basis of agreed views prepared by a Committee consisting of [Colin] Clark, [L.G. (later Sir Leslie) ] Melville and Giblin.*¢

The proposed degree of independence of the expert committee was clarified by Wheeler in correspondence with Giblin . . . you will see that [your! dissertation on wage theory is meant to be quite independent in status from the Commonwealth’s evidence, although naturally we shall have to take care that two things [szc] fit as far as possible. At the same time it must be remembered that the dissertation is meant to be that of ‘independent experts’.*’

G.G. Firth (PWR) emphasized the point in relaying the information to Coombs: ‘You will see that, in addition to the [interdepartmental] Committee, there is to be a group of “‘independent”’ (but not too independent!) experts to prepare a statement on “principles”’ for the Court’.*® Thereafter Giblin liaised closely with the department officials and at the meeting of the interdepartmental committee it was

Government, economy and labour market 45

agreed that the ‘independent’ expert committee should be ‘objective

in character and take account in its evidence of the recent Social Service Legislation. . . and the effect of this legislation in enabling the Court to make wage determination on the basis of capacity of industry to pay’.4? The government’s own evidence on wages should emphasize the dangers of a wage—cost spiral, the redistributive role of the federal social service programme, the need to link basic wage

changes to productivity performance, and the wartime gains to workers from child endowment. In the event, Giblin’s authoritative ‘independent’ evidence made a significant impact on the Court and also influenced the ACTU executive’s thinking.>° As for the effect of granting the ACTU requests in full, Cabinet established a top-level interdepartmental committee to prepare a report. The report constantly emphasized the need to delay and stagger the granting of the ACTU claims—among which it judged the 40-hour week to be the least hurtful. It thus concluded that . . . there should be a gradual transition over two or more years to a higher price level which will reflect the costs at present concealed by price stabilisation subsidies and any future cost increases. . . To achieve such a gradual and orderly transition it would be essential that effective wage control should be maintained. . .It would also be necessary (1) to cushion any sharp cost 1ncreases by temporary price subsidies or appropriately timed remissions of indirect taxes, (11) to maintain rent pegging, and (ii) to grant price increases only after close scrutiny.*! (original emphasis)

Most departmental advisers, however, were privately pessimistic

about the government’s ability to withstand union pressure— particularly in the early postwar months. Firth argued, for example, ‘There can be no doubt but that the Wage Pegging Regulations are a purely wartime expedient, or that it will be necessary substantially to abandon these Regulations in the very near future’.°* Yet because Chifley rode out the initial storm, the authorities were able to give

serious attention from early 1946 to checking breaches of the wage-pegging Regulations. PWR officials accepted that the ‘series of

widespread and savage prosecutions’ needed to enforce universal observance of the wage peg were not ‘politically practicable’ in

peacetime. They consequently argued that the price-control mechanism should be used by refusing employers’ ‘applications for price increases based upon cost increases which arise from the payment of excess wages’.°? The Prices Branch, however, argued that it was not its function to police wages. Treasury fully accepted PWR’s view of the serious inflationary implications of the current situation but felt that ‘the problem of wage control enforcement 1s primarily political and it would be no use a committee of officials considering future measures unless Ministers first gave a broad indication of how far they were prepared to face up to enforcement by one means or

46 Division of Labour other’.°* As a result Chifley, Dedman, Holloway, and Senator W.P. Ashley (Supply and Shipping) met officials from their departments in a Series of meetings from July 1946 onward which discussed all

possible options. A virtual purge was commenced in the clothing industry—a key contributor to the C Series regimen—in which federal arbitration inspectors were given authority as prices officers to check wages being paid. It was, however, simultaneously agreed that the policy of price stabilisation subsidies cannot be continued permanently. . . that a movement to a higher price level is inevitable sooner or later and that that movement should be orderly and gradual [but] should not commence for some time yet (perhaps until March 1947). . .if [the] Court grants a 40 hour week this would be a convenient point at which to commence the movement to a higher price level by:— (1) allowing the increased costs arising from the 40 hour week to pass into the price-level, and (ii) at the same tume liquidating certain minor existing subsidies. . . In the meantime the Treasurer [Chifley] approved of a gradual extension of the policy of price increase instead of subsidy in respect of goods which do not enter into the cost of living of the average wage earner.*>

Towards the end of 1946 PWR officials began to assess the likely impact of an increase in wages which they again considered to be imminent.’ Essentially they feared that efforts to block all wage rises might induce such an explosion of unrest as would sweep aside the

whole structure of wage-pegging Regulations: better therefore to yield a little on the basic wage and so preserve control over other rates.°© In November, when union industrial action had forced the Arbitration Court to announce its acceptance of the ‘principle’ of a 40-hour week and to restore the 1940 basic wage case to the list, Chifley called, over-pessimistically, for ‘definite administrative plans in view of the early prospect of an interim Basic Wage Declaration—

to be followed perhaps within a few months by a 40 Hour Week Judgement and a “‘final’’ Basic Wage Declaration’.>’ After a series of meetings involving Chifley, other ministers and their advisers it was

decided that although some exceptions might be made for basic items, “future increases in costs arising from wage increases granted by the Courts and from other causes must be reflected in prices’.*8 At the same time the unions were forcing Chifley to amend the Regulations to allow for adjustments to margins and penalty rates subject to the supervision of the chief judge of the federal Arbitration Court. It was pointed out to the Prime Minister that the relaxations of the wage peg which had been decided on were substantial and perhaps excessively so from the point of view of keeping price and cost movements within reasonable

bounds. ..

The Prime Minister indicated, however, that he was [sic] little possibility of any of the relaxations being postponed beyond the present proposed date

Government, economy and labour market 47 i.e., the 31st December next. The Prime Minister’s view was based on the substantially unanimous feeling that ‘something had to be done’ of all parties, i.e., employees, employers, press and the Court.°?

Even so the interim basic wage decision granted only 7s, margins

did not begin to be unpegged for a further six months and the 40hour week was not federally inaugurated for yet another six months after that. Thus during 1947, the year which witnessed the accelerated phasing out of subsidies, planners were able to shift their labour market emphasis to other issues. Discussion also moved out of ad hoc conferences and committees to a more formalized structure— the Investment and Employment Committee (IEC) and its working

committee. The initiative for the establishment of the IEC

came from officials in PWR, Treasury and LNS who felt the need for regular consultation on the major economic issues. The details were worked out by Coombs, $.G. McFarlane (Secretary to the Treasury)

and W. Funnell (Director-General, Manpower) and accepted by Chifley in late 1946. The first meeting of the TEC occurred on 2 February 1947 when Chifley and Dedman were attended by the three department heads plus a total of ten other advisers from their departments and from the Bureau of Statistics and the Commonwealth Bank (including Melville). Wheeler was appointed to the key position of secretary and a working committee of officials was established to prepare the groundwork for the less regular meetings of the

IEC itself. There were eventually three other Cabinet economic standing committees®® but the IEC appears to have been the dominant one. As its significance grew, other departments sought membership. In mid-1949 attendance at the working committee had to be limited to one nominee plus an ‘offsider’ per department, by which time the Division of Industrial Development, the Bureau of Agricultural Economics and the Departments of Taxation and Immigration had been added to the membership, with the latter’s minister, Calwell, also joining the IEC proper. In principle the IEC was designed to ensure that public and private investment plans led neither to unemployment or inflation. In practice it aimed to keep the overall economic situation under constant survey by means of at least two major reviews per annum and, from time to time, consideration of special problems of policy that had investment and employment implications. Over the three years 1947-49 the IEC maintained a detailed watch over all important economic variables and trends, but the contemporary economic climate meant that the major priority was given to the price—wage nexus and other labour market problems—increasingly, the difficulties in ensuring a requisite supply of workers in certain strategic industries. The ‘National Economic Survey’, offered to the first IEC meeting, set the broad scenario:

48 Division of Labour The two outstanding objectives of economic policy at the present are: (a) to withstand successfully the inflationary pressure which is at present evidenced in labour shortages and in a tendency for costs and prices to rise;

(b) to prepare now against the possibility that before long we will be threat[enJed by the contrary danger of insufficient demand to provide full employment. These two aspects are closely linked. The more successful we are in restricting the inflationary pressure of today, the better will be our international

competitive position if in the course of time Australia’s full employment policy is endangered by a slump overseas, and the less likely is it that the international [sic] situation in Australia will develop into an unhealthy ‘boom’ with subsequent collapse.

When questioned by Coombs on the issue of wage—price controls continuing after December 1947, Chifley correctly ‘thought that wage pegging could hardly be continued beyond this year’ but implied that price control would and could be maintained. From the outset the IEC planners were concerned about scarce labour flowing into manufacturing away from essential power and materials production. The implications of the resulting ‘uneven’ economic expansion when current pent-up demand for manufactured goods was satisfied were viewed with considerable pessimism. In general discussion at the first meeting Chifley made reference to possible control through capital issues, by central bank supervision of trading bank advance policies and by asking the states to concentrate their investment on ‘essential’ public works. He did not accept McFarlane’s suggestion that the Secondary Industries Commission (SIC) should slow down the promotion of new, ‘inessential’ industries but agreed with Funnell that large-scale immigration would provide the answer. And, Chifley pointed out, since Britain could

not provide migrants in sufficiently large numbers, continental Europe must be looked to as the major source. Markus suggests that Chifley and Calwell were deliberately concealing these intentions from Cabinet.®!

Shipping shortages meant that large-scale immigration still lay some time ahead. Thus the IEC’s 1947 background papers consid-

ered the possibility of either ‘attraction wages’, introduced by the Arbitration Court, or “differential relaxation of wage pegging’ by

the government being used to ensure that labour be directed to essential industries. The authors concluded, however, that other methods might prove politically preferable. These included much stricter control of the flow of fuel and raw materials to industry, a more positive allocative role being adopted by the Commonwealth Employment Service (CES), discrimination on accommodation allowances in favour of essential industries and the restriction of

immigrant labour to selected industries. Even the notion of the

Government, economy and labour market 49

CES witholding details of jobs available in less essential areas was

considered but was rejected along with the suggestion that the government should intervene in federal arbitration cases where ‘attraction wages’ would be desirable in the national interest. At the end of 1947 an IEC survey presented to Cabinet by Chifley

pointed to symptoms of the continuing labour shortage. Labour poaching was prevalent, as was increasing labour turnover, estimated at 100 per cent per annum in textiles. ‘Even more serious 1s the fact that basic industries. . . are being starved for labour’ .°* The huge demand for goods and labour posed obvious inflationary dangers. Price control still had an important role to play, ‘But [now] without the support of wage pegging and control of materials, price control must be allowed to register genuine increases in costs’. Subsidies should be used to keep down the price of key commodities only. Current taxation levels would be maintained as far as politically

practicable and bank advance policy should be cautious and selective—Chifley already having ensured close liaison between the SIC and Commonwealth Bank.

The government had been urging greater work effort from employees since 1945 but its exhortations took on a new urgency as universal application of a 40-hour week loomed. August 1947 saw a long-delayed tripartite industrial ‘summit’ at which, inter alia, the ACTU leaders agreed at least to consider the implications of ‘modern’ incentive payment systems. A year later Chifley and six Cabinet ministers met 140 federal union delegates to again urge increased production. The vigorous advocacy of incentive schemes by McKen-

na and Holloway on the reconstituted Federal Labour Advisory Committee (see Chapter 4) was sympathetically received by the ACTU leaders. Although the 1949 ACTU congress was to reject a formal inquiry, the government campaign had some effect in lessen-

ing opposition within individual unions—including even the ‘moderate’-led Melbourne branch of the Waterside Workers’ Federation (WWF).®°

By early 1948 the labour situation was looking somewhat better. The February IEC meeting mainly concentrated on price issues. Detailed estimates had been made of the effects of recent wage cost increases

on the C Series index and it was felt that, outside of clothing, the impact had been moderate. The workforce currently appeared content to digest the margins—hours gains of late 1947-early 1948 (see Chapter 7). The IEC was informed that most unions were not looking for a ‘2nd round of marginal increases’ although ‘sections of the rank and file of the [FIA] and the AEU’ were making demands similar to the first round. To head off the incipient danger ‘The Chairman (Mr. Chifley) indicated that he would, at the earliest appropriate

50 Division of Labour opportunity, make a public statement emphasising dangers [sic] 1nherent in the present situation, and urging the importance of moderating pressures—particularly sectional pressures—that would result in further increases in costs’.°4 Recent primary producer calls for increased domestic prices for their products were included in public reference to such sectional pressures but the main aim was ‘to “campaign” against further basic wage and marginal increases’.®> In April Wheeler reported: ‘In discussion with the Treasurer [Chifley] today he stated that he had “given the matter a run” at Lithgow and also at the Easter Conference of the ALP in Melbourne. The Treasurer also stated that Senator [Courtice] and Mr Dedman had been plugging the same line at various places and conferences.’ Hence some ‘facts and figures’ were needed to help the speakers.®® Departmental estimates of likely union success again proved overpessimistic. The Department of LNS felt that now the ‘cycle of marginal increases is almost complete’ the emphasis could be expected to swing to the basic wage. In looking to an increase ‘before September [1948]? the Department overestimated considerably the speed with which the third leg of the unions’ hours—wages campaign would reach fruition.®’

In 1949, with price controls dismantled, detailed and intricate attempts were made to measure the impact of a likely but still delayed basic wage rise. Chifley personally considered the unions’ eventual claim for a £10 wage to be ‘absurd’®® but now at last the emphasis was clearly swinging from wage costs towards the contribution made by external factors to inflation. In working committee meetings the economists debated the merits of cost—push and demand-—pull inflation theses. The whole question of income distribution is as befogged in this period as it is in most others.°? The unions argued in the 1949-50 basic wage case that labour’s share of GNP had fallen during the war. There is little doubt that any advance in labour’s share as a result of the 1947—48 margins gains had already been eroded. Campaigns for over-award payments by milltant unions such as the AEU lagged behind price movements.’° The general belief among economists was that labour’s share dipped as

early as 1947-48, was lower than the prewar proportion but was partially compensated by the increase in pension and social security benefits.71 In view of the definite shift in income distribution towards the rural sector because of export price rises, a lengthy IEC discussion of the basic wage case reached general agreement that an increase would not present a big problem. The final, significant minute read ‘Wheeler—leave it that if Government were to take a positive

view [in the case] it should be a cautious one but not excluding a moderate increase’.’2 During the remainder of 1949, wage levels lessened in significance

Government, economy and labour market 51

before the growth of other inflationary forces at work in the economy. PWR could still argue in May that one of ‘the chief dangers [for 1949] lie[s] in. . . the wage-price spiral. . .’”? but the US recession externally and the power, fuel and materials bottleneck internally moved firmly to centre stage. While Australia’s policy-makers were confident that a re-run of the 1930s would be prevented by international ‘Keynesian’ awareness and by domestic activation of the White Paper ‘shelf’ of public works, US trends inevitably fuelled

fears of an international downturn similar to 1921-22. For some time advisers had also been concerned that the increased importance of manufacturing since 1939 was making the economy more vulnerable to internally caused recession as against the traditional external triggers. From 1948 onwards it was increasingly argued that domestic inflation could lead to local recession through adverse changes in consumers’ and investors’ expectations reducing aggregate demand. In this scenario the rapid growth of ‘inessential’ manufacturing since

1945 was seen as the critical factor.’* In June 1949 the IEC was informed that the ‘outstanding features of recent Australian development’ were ‘(a) the extraordinary growth of secondary industries. . . (b) the lag in basic industries and services’ (original emphasis).’>

The remainder of this background paper argued strongly that the expansion of many consumer goods industries was unhealthy for the economy as a whole and would not outlast the satisfaction of backlog demand and inflationary pressures. The IEC now gave even greater attention to the solution of problems in strategic industries. Varied suggestions were made, including giving these sectors priority in the public works programme and in the allocation of immigrants and of

imported capital equipment and materials. The coal industry remained the number one bottleneck and specific targets there included expanding the Queensland fields, improving accommodation and also the transport and handling facilities for steel for use in the mines. Immigration rose rapidly from late 1948 (Table 5). Chifley

had placed it high on the agenda of his discussions with British ministers in 1948 but it was accepted that only continental Europe could provide labour in the requisite quantity. At first European immigration was limited to unmarried ‘Balts’ who had not served in the German forces but qualifications were speedily relaxed. Ukrai-

nians and Slovenes were accepted by the end of 1947, Czechs, Yugoslavs and Poles in January 1948, ‘Balts’ who had served in German forces in March 1948, family units in June 1948 and, finally, ‘all European races’ were accepted in April 1949. In 1949 75 300 Europeans arrived compared with 38000 Anglo-Celts. ACTU and AWU officials were kept informed of the expanding programme. Although the displaced persons worked on award rates they were indentured

for two years, were sent to the least attractive jobs, could not dis-

$2 Division of Labour

place Australian workers and government guidelines established that, irrespective of their length of service, they were first to be laid off in case of redundancy. ’®

The growth in importance of immigration is reflected in the experience of the CES. In the first year after its establishment in May 1946 demobilization provided its main work. In 1947—48 it catered mainly for workers moving between jobs. But from 1949 immigrants became its major clients. The IEC working committee clearly saw that the coal and metal trades unions posed the greatest potential

Opposition to migrant placement, while the building unions’ restrictive recruitment practices made it difficult to overcome the major accommodation shortage constraining the immigration programme.’’ Some employers used the arrival of ‘DPs’ to withdraw

bonus payments but, apart from increasing union acceptance that full employment was not threatened by the influx, left-right faction battles helped to ensure that no monolithic union opposition to the programme emerged. LNS kept track of the sometimes Byzantine complexities. Speaking of possible dangers to government plans to bring in 100000 ‘Balts’, H.A. (later Sir Henry) Bland observed that ‘employers are sponsoring migration to break power of unions [sic]. Moderate employees know this but Communists realise the change in balance of power and from that moderates are using the scheme to get control of the ballot box’.’® Anti-communist unionists including the AWU leadership and the ‘Grouper’ faction in the FIA thus welcomed the new arrivals almost as warmly as did employers.’”?

CHAPTER FOUR

THE UNIONS

Union membership rose from 47 per cent of employees in 1938 to 54 per cent in 1945. To a large degree this simply reflected the improvement in workers’ bargaining strength as the demand for labour grew

and unemployment was wiped out. In addition, the Curtin government, while not falling in with supporters’ demands to enforce universal preference to unionists, nevertheless encouraged union membership in the extended workforce. Virtual compulsion was applied in clothing firms contracting to the Department of Supply and Development, to members of the Civil Construction Corps and among staff of the Departments of Munitions and the Navy and the Manpower Directorate. ! As they had always been, Australian trade unions in the mid-1940s

were generally small, very far from monolithic, overwhelmingly ‘economistic’ in outlook and the male majority (80 per cent) of unionists greatly feared competition from cheaper female labour. In 1945 some 362 unions organized 1.2 million workers, and the small average size of federal unions was open to further sub-division as

most state branches of federal unions jealously maintained their autonomy. It was not at all uncommon for state branches to take opposing political stances. Moreover, their absorption with shortrun bread-and-butter issues meant, for example, that even such fiery

debates within the ALP as that over ratification of the Bretton

Woods agreement establishing the postwar international economic order did not concern most unions. As for women, the unions’ fruitless call for equal pay masked a continued fear of cheap female labour ousting males from their traditional occupations. After a brief fall, hastened both by the 1945 Reestablishment and Employment Act granting automatic reinstatement and preference for returned servicemen and by the lapsing of federal government subsidies to wartime nurseries, the total number

54 Division of Labour Table 6 Civilian employment in selected years

Per- Per-

All industries Manufacturing

Total Females centage Total Females centage

(000) (000) of total (000) (000) of total

1938-39 2034.5 554.9 2/ 561.0 155.2 28 1943-44 2063.8 653.5 32 793.9 257.6 32 1946-47 2358.0 634.2 27 795.3 204.4 26 1949-50 2680.6 701.5 26 886.1 225.2 25

Source: calculated from M. Keating, The Australian Workforce 1910-11 to 1960-61, (Canberra, 1973). Table 19.19

of females in the civilian workforce soon surpassed the peak wartime

levels. Even in manufacturing there were only 8.7 per cent less women employed in 1949-50 than in.the record war year. Table 6

reveals, however, that male employment rose even faster, thus assuaging the worst union fears. Although nearly 40 per cent of female workers were unionists, wherever job competition between the sexes arose the unions supported the males, who usually won hands down. South Australian Labor MLA, F.K. Nieass, spoke for many unionists when he asserted that married women had no right to work and sought to ensure that women would always be sacked if men required their jobs.“ Action such as that of the Victorian tramways union in supporting retention of female conductors (but not the idea of female drivers) or of workers at one Sydney factory striking to secure the reinstatement of eight women sacked after the management decided to employ only men, were rare exceptions. Demands

for equal pay elicited more support—particularly from militants who, for example, backed a successful campaign of 250 women railworkers in Sydney in 1948. But, despite the emphasis given to equal

pay by the CPA, at heart even male communists tended to see women’s place as being in the home.?

Blue-collar unions were proportionately much more important than they are now. They ranged from a few giants such as the general

AWU (over 100000 members) and the skilled AEU (68000) down to a long tail of tiny outfits whose memberships were counted in

mere hundreds and scores. For different reasons—the AWU’s renowned industrial passivity and the AEU’s important friendly society functions—the nation’s two largest unions possessed aboveaverage per capita financial reserves. Even so, the AEU’s prized savings were to be wiped out in a single—albeit very lengthy—dispute.

Most other unions had little financial depth. Because of its mushroom wartime growth and its militant profile, the third largest, the unskilled FIA (55000), was portrayed by the media as a particu-

The unions SS larly dangerous red ogre. In reality, two large disputes in 1945 and 1946-47 severely strained its resources. Thereafter it was largely a paper tiger. Relying almost solely on notoriously low membership contributions for income, few unions were well staffed. Research facilities were non-existent and there was no tradition of long-run analysis. Union reflexes responded automatically to the business cycle. It was the individual abilities of full-time officers which determined the performance of many unions, particularly in the middle size range. Most blue-collar full-time officers were originally elected from the membership ranks. The smallest unions were generally served by part-time officials, some of whom could make a full-time career by sharing their services among several such unions. Even the wealthier unions tended to rely heavily on the dedication of part-time officials somewhere along the line, drawing them from the generally small

percentage of members prepared to take a continuing interest in their union’s affairs and perhaps compete electorally for full-time positions. With some important exceptions, including tramworkers, wharfies, seamen and miners, the bulk of rank-and-file unionists normally paid little heed to internal union politics. Their apathy was sometimes welcome to officials fearing challenge and was fortified by the centralized format of dispute settlement in arbitration tribunals which left little scope for rank-and-file involvement. Some unions, like the AWU, seemed positively opposed to rank-and-file participation and most ‘moderate’ union officials were highly suspicious of

suggestions that workshop committees should be established to afford union members a more active role. The enthusiasm for such grassroots involvement displayed by communists explains some of their reservations but it should be emphasized that, after the communist tide receded, efforts to expand the proportion of activists was one reason why the anti-communist ‘Groupers’ in their turn fell foul of certain union hierarchies such as the AWU in NSW and Queens-

land and the Transport Workers’ Union (TWU) in NSW. In the 1940s the communists incurred much non-ideological hostility for

their efforts to expose autocracy and for their opposition to life appointments to union office.

Essentially running small-scale outfits often parochial in outlook, many union officers then, as now, preferred the quiet life of pushing for legislative change and general domestic improvement through the ALP while searching also for industrial gains by pre-

senting arguments before the network of arbitration tribunals. Others were ideologically opposed to direct action (and to its advocates). In the mid-1940s, however, the mood of the workforce made both the quiet life and the ‘responsible’ approach particularly difficult to maintain. Virtually every sector of the workforce involved itself in the spontaneous drive for improvement. The traditionally

$6 Division of Labour

_ mulitant coalminers, maritime and metalworkers were joined by a vast range of traditionally quiescent employees, including waitresses, bakers, postal and pastoral workers. So, for a few years, the political spectrum within the union movement shifted markedly towards industrial militancy. The quiet-lifers pulled their heads in and uneasily sought to ride the wave while the naturally militant could be aggressive without having constantly to guard their backs. Nevertheless, some aspects of the prosperous new world of full employment presented problems for the militants. The FIA in 1945 operated on prewar premises when it fined members for taking alternative employment during the steel strike, but by 1947 most unions were accepting the practice for its financial and bargaining advantages. This made it difficult for militants to heighten the

political consciousness of the rank and file by drawing them into picketing and other strike activities.+ Similarly, the prospect of increasing home ownership was expected to dampen rank-and-file militancy.° Because the contemporary industrial relations debate was dominated by the topic, considerable attention will be devoted in this book to the true role of communists in the unions. In contrast, the CPA’s

major opponents within the labour movement, the ALP Industrial Groups, do not require such detailed analysis. Their role was relatively unambiguous. They sought to extirpate the communist influence, root and branch. Formed by ALP conferences, first in New South Wales in 1945 and then in Victoria and South Australia (1946)

and Queensland (1947), the Groups’ major successes came from 1950 onwards. Nevertheless the Chifley years saw them build their organization and influence in most militant unions. The Groupers’ major voice was the Melbourne News Weekly (Freedom until 1946)

controlled by B.A. (Bob) Santamaria who, through ‘The Movement’, led the Catholic Church’s considerable input to the anticommunist campaign in the unions. Because of later events connected with the great ALP ‘splits’ of the 1950s and Santamaria’s subsequent public emergence as a leading right-wing ideologue, labour movement folklore about the Groups was influenced by a strange retrospective alchemy denying them virtually any legitimacy in the pre-split years. Although the Groups had the ALP imprima-

tur, considerable dedication and courage was required in some unions to come out publicly against the majority militant opinion. It

is also important to stress that in the Chifley years relatively few Groupers subscribed to what ALP supporters were later to see as the

more sinister aspects of Movement philosophy. In particular, Groupers did not allow their reflex suspicion of anything advocated by communists to blind them on all industrial issues. In the largest and most divisive disputes when a propaganda war developed, with ALP governments attacking the communist role, the Groupers un-

The unions 57 equivocally sided with their party; nevertheless they clearly saw the ‘justice’ behind most major postwar union claims. ’

Outside the unions, but heavily dependent upon them, existed a legal industry providing professional services in the arbitration and compensation spheres. It was commonly believed that, as well as

being influential within the ALP and staffing many of the legal positions in the burgeoning arbitration industry which came within

Labor’s patronage, some labour lawyers were also keen to gain lucrative union contracts. They provided an important impetus to the Groupers’ drive to oust existing communist leaderships. The actual ‘red shift’ in the union spectrum which occurred in the mid-1940s was evidenced by resolutions passed at the all-Australian trade union congresses of 1945 and 1947 and also by elections to the

executive of the Australasian (Australian from 1947) Council of Trade Unions (ACTU). Nevertheless the practical significance of these events has often been exaggerated. To begin with, we should note that the ACTU did not then enjoy anything like its present-day status. ACTU affiliates accounted for only about one-third of unionists in 1945, although the figure mounted to perhaps 40 per cent by the end of 1949.8 The AWU was not affiliated and had excellent

independent lines of communication with government and employers. Even among the affiliates the stronger unions simply went their own way if their interests clashed with nominal ACTU policy. At the biennial congresses, away from the shop floor and the office desk, delegates could debate lofty expressions of intent and emotional calls for universal brotherhood, along with the more pragmatic statements of union demands and purpose. But, despite a 1945 decision to make all future congress decisions binding on affiliates, any coordination of national strategy between congresses rested with very pacific ACTU officers and any actual deployment of industrial forces

rested almost solely with individual unions, which seldom felt obliged to pursue any aims other than their own immediate ones. The ACTU had no research staff. It appointed its first full-time secretary, A.E. Monk, in 1943. The presidency, held by P.J. Clarey for virtually all of our period, was part-time and re-elective until the 1949 congress when Monk crossed over to take it as a full-time life position. R.R. Broadby, who had been appointed to the temporary post of assistant secretary in 1948, then took over as secretary. The remainder of the executive consisted of two vice-presidents elected by the biennial congress, plus two members appointed by each state

branch, the metropolitan Trades and Labor Councils. Day-to-day business was handled by the secretary and president. Although sometimes challenged by militant groupings on the executive, both Clarey and Monk and the influential full-time officials of the major ACTU state branches, the Melbourne and Sydney Councils, were fairly typical middle-of-the-road ALP trade unionists. They were

58 Division of Labour often torn two ways by their loyalty to their constituents and to the ALP, but their prewar experiences suggested to them that the only sure means of worker advancement was through the agency of secure Labor governments. Generally they were predisposed to avoid conflict and to look for compromise. Direct action was viewed as a last resort and, being personally repelled by communism, they leant strongly towards the Industrial Groups and the Movement. They never felt at ease with the lesson demonstrated clearly to them in the early postwar years that the only way to move the Chifley government was by backing words with considered and concerted industrial action. The essential difference between them and the militants was neatly summarized in the report by communist Ernie Thornton (FIA), of

an exchange at an international conference with Monk’s British equivalent, W. (later Lord) Citrine: ‘Citrine had replied that the ACTU owed allegiance to the Parliamentary Labor Party, to which [Thornton] had replied that he thought the Party owed allegiance to the [Trade Union] Movement’.? Of the two ACTU leaders, Percy Clarey adopted by far the higher public profile. Federal and state secretary of both the Storemen and Packers’ and Food Preservers’ Unions, he became ACTU president in 1943 after years on the informal four-man committee which ran day-to-day affairs in Melbourne. !® Clarey never allowed the fact that

he was crippled to hold him back. There were certain parallels with

the next-but-one president, R.J.L. Hawke. Clarey was a brilliant advocate and a first-class public speaker. A personal friend of Menzies, he was, in addition to his union duties, a president of the Victo-

rian and Federal ALP, leader in the Victorian Upper House and Minister for Labour in the state ALP ministries. Nationally, he was the most widely known of all ‘moderate’ union spokesmen. At the end of 1949 he stepped down from his ACTU post in order to enter federal politics. By contrast, Albert Monk did his best work behind the scenes. A consummate mediator and negotiator, he showed little sparkle in his public performances in which, however, he always avoided taking any extreme stance. He stepped up from his job as clerk at the Melbourne Trades Hall in 1934 to succeed the deceased W.J. Duggan in two posts as Trades Hall Council secretary and as ACTU president. In 1938 he gave up the THC job when appointed as union representative on the Victorian Workers’ Compensation Board. In 1943 he switched from president to become the ACTU’s first full-time secretary after heading T. Wright, his communist opponent, in the ballot. In 1949, he was elected the first full-tume president, holding that position until his retirement twenty years later.

Until the 1949 congress established the ‘moderates’ in a clear majority on the executive, Monk and Clarey combined their con-

The unions 59

trasting but redoubtable talents to baulk the militants within the ACTU and the wider labour movement in a number of ways. The ACTU’s location in Melbourne—despite a 1943 congress decision that it should move to Sydney—meant that their personal weight was most noticeable in Victorian union affairs although, as we will see, one notable success concerned Western Australia. In general

they were prepared to procrastinate, to fudge issues and to bend rules in the moderate cause while using to the full all the natural influence accruing to them as committee chairmen and as intermediaries between government, employers and unions and between warring union factions. The other members of the ‘Emergency Committee’ handling day-to-day affairs were also moderates: J.V. (Vic) Stout, Melbourne THC secretary, and C.A. (Charlie) Crofts, federal secretary of the Gasworkers’ Union, and part-time ACTU secretary from its establishment in 1927 until 1943. Crofts’ status was acknowl-

edged at the 1945 congress when, after their ticket had swept the board in the election, the militants magnanimously allowed Crofts to retain his position on the executive by persuading M. O’Brien (ARU), their lowest placed candidate, to step down in his favour. In 1948, with the knowledge of Clarey’s imminent move into federal politics, the temporary position of assistant secretary was created—and filled by appointment—1in order to give Grouper Broadby ‘a leg up’ at the 1949 congress which was to elect him secretary.!! This congress saw several other heavy defeats for the left-wingers including an overwhelming decision to follow the Anglo-American lead in withdraw-

ing from the communist-influenced World Federation of Trade Unions. Throughout the 1940s the ACTU officers strove with mixed fortunes to establish their influence as the major or even the sole con-

duit between federal government and unions. In this its officers faced two major obstacles—the independence of its federal affiliates and the manipulative tendencies of the federal government. The 1947 congress had strengthened the constitutional authority of congress. It confirmed the 1945 decision removing the necessity

for endorsement of congress resolutions by a majority of state branches. This move was part of the long trend towards a shift in the ACTU power base away from the state branches towards the federal union affiliates. In February 1947, for example, the ACTU created a significant precedent: it called a special union conference to discuss the current wages—hours imbroglio, but for the first time, “unions affliated on a state basis were quite deliberately excluded’.!* An important stimulus to this shift had been the formation by the metal unions in 1943 of the Metal Trades Federation, which Monk interpreted as a threat to ACTU authority. The metal trades award was the national benchmark for conditions and pay rates above the basic wage and the metal industry was becoming

60 Division of Labour

the focus of attention from unions and employers alike. As Pilkington reveals, although representing only 26 per cent of the ACTU’s affiliated membership in 1947, the metal unions received 62 per cent of ACTU invitations to affiliates to attend joint confer-

ences.!3 After the AEU’s display of independence in the great metal trades dispute (see Chapter 7), the 1947 congress made it obligatory for affiliates to notify the executive of pending interstate disputes and gave the executive power to summon union officials concerned. Even so, the militant unions continued to go their own way. The most notorious snub came from the metal unions in 1949 when, without notice, they withdrew the right of the ACTU panel of advocates to act for them in the basic wage case after earlier publicly embarrassing the ACTU by forcing it to lift its own claim to match their demand for £10 per week. In their dealings with the federal government the ACTU leaders

proved to be loyal supporters of the ALP. Relations did become briefly acerbic at the turn of 1946-47 because of Chifley’s wage peg

but, at heart, Monk and Clarey were uneasy in the role of critics. Over the 1940s as a whole the relationship was one-sided, with the government usually making adroit use both of the ACTU officers’ loyalty and their distaste for direct action. The ACTU’s historian believes that the relationship took a key turn in 1944 when coalminers’ wildcat strikes were again causing Curtin great concern: “The ACTU felt obliged to offer some help in getting the miners back to

work. By acting for the first time at the behest of a Labor Prime Minister the ACTU had laid down a precedent for its own role as agent on behalf of the State’.!4 As far as postwar planning was concerned, the government sought union advice and opinion on items of interest or concern to industrial labour, but unions were seldom able to initiate or dominate government decisions. In a few confined areas of industrial policy the clout of individual unions meant that their views could hardly be ignored. Thus, for example, the powerful AEU was able to protect its crafts-

men members’ postwar interests in the sphere of retraining and ‘dilution’ of skill through admission of trainees, by using the supervisory mechanisms it had established originally with the Menzies government. Similarly, the building unions were able to ensure a 50 per cent cut in the retraining programme in their industry.

At the broader level the picture was different. The ACTU, at Chifley’s request, establish a standing committee in February 1944

to consult with his PWR Department—notably concerning the Commonwealth Reconstruction Training Scheme (CRTS), industrial training and manpower and employment surveys. ACTU officers were, however, unsuccessful in their efforts to persuade the government to use its powers to introduce absolute preference for unionists

and to reject any preference for ex-servicemen and women. More

The unions 61 important, the ACTU congresses of 1943 and 1945 elaborated major

policies in the areas of education, retraining and housing, but the ACTU’s historian makes it clear that there was no active role for the ACTU as a prime mover in policy making. As with the earlier question of direct access to decision making on war planning and production, the ACTU’s position was treated as advisory only, and in those areas already determined by Chifley and his specialist advisers. An outstanding example of how the ACTU’s exclusion was made manifest

is found in the work of the Secondary Industries Commission. Set up in October 1943, it was given a brief to review the Commonwealth’s role in War Manufacture, particularly its munitions establishments, and to recommend future policy on industrial development in Australia. Considered either from the point of view of strengthening national defence and securing post-war full employment, or from the support of unions for continued and increased public ownership in industry, the ACTU had a role to play on this body. In fact Chifley manned the Commission with two senior public servants, two public authority executives, an executive from [Australian Iron and Steel Ltd.], and a prominent chartered accountant. Increasingly it came to reflect the Government’s wish to accommodate rather than confront private enterprise, as part of a process of guaranteeing support for its post-war policies. !>

The subsequent general picture in the postwar period itself was one of the union movement advising and monitoring the working of spe-

cific items in the government’s predetermined policy array. The most important programmes from the unions’ viewpoint were probably immigration, training and housing.!© The fact that remarkably little friction arose in the first two of these potentially very sensitive areas can be largely attributed to the continuing very high demand for labour. The housing programme drew some union criticism but, as we shall see, this was relatively muted. The actual announcements of the federal government’s plans met with surprisingly little discussion—let alone criticism. A prime ex-

ample of this was the reception of the full employment White Paper—in the drafting of which the unions had no say. The initial favourable generalities uttered by various union leaders selected for interview by the conservative press were essentially echoed by the left-dominated 1945 ACTU congress which met two weeks later. Even the references to wages were not discussed or queried, despite the implicit call in the White Paper for wage restraint. The only cautionary notes were struck by a handful of delegates who urged at two separate points that the unions should do something more than leave everything to the goodwill of the government. In the debate on the White Paper an amendment was unsuccessfully moved to draw attention to the need for unions to draw up plans for full employment in each industry employing their members. In the debate on the housing situation the original, very detailed, motion calling for

62 Dhtvision of Labour

reorganization of the Commonwealth Housing Commission and insisting on union representation on this and on each of the state commissions was replaced by a defensive amendment voicing general

support for the federal government’s policy and conveying apprehension of possible attacks on the housing programme from outside the labour movement. The congress prevented any further debate by leaving it to the ACTU executive to embody congress’s fairly nebulous ‘decisions’ on post-war policy in a worker’s charter. !7 By the time of the 1947 congress the unions’ experience of the hous-

ing programme made for criticism of the achievement in the intervening two years. In calling for the socialization of the building industry the congress rejected the ‘supine acceptance’ of a contemplated 25 per cent cut in the annual house-building target. Yet both the debate and the detailed congress resolution demonstrated the delegates’ awareness of, and sympathy towards, the federal government’s problems in dealing with the states. At the 1949 congress neither housing nor any other reference to the Reconstruction programme appeared on the agenda paper. Overall then, the union movement applauded and accepted the federal government’s Reconstruction plans. They were seen as a sign of the times, of the recent victories of ‘the little man’ and, together with the full employment White Paper, as a declaration of intent by the government that it would do its best to erect a ‘New Order’ and prevent a rerun of the 1930s. Generally speaking the unions were not too concerned about the details, none of which seemed particularly antagonistic to their interests. But, though mindful of the government’s hopes, unionists, like all other sections of the community, were by no means convinced that the last had been seen of the pre-

war trade cycle and its violent oscillations. Thus in the forefront of their minds were the traditional industrial concerns—the immediate bread-and-butter issues of current conditions of work. The New Order would be good when—and if—it came, but in 1945 it was so much pie in the sky. With the advent of peace and the continuation of a very tight labour market it was the tradition and duty of organized labour to use its collective strength to improve working conditions before the trade cycle and labour market moved once more against wage earners. In doing so, of course, it clashed

directly not just with the employers but also with government policy. As we shall see, the ACTU played an uneasy role in the confronta-

tion with Chifley over wages and hours. Despite his obstruction of

union demands and his disregard of ACTU wishes in the 1947 Arbitration Amendment Act the ACTU officers found it easy to forgive and forget. In June 1947 the government, with Opposition sup-

port, rushed through parliament the Approved Defence Projects Protection Act which revived unhappy civil rights memories of pre-

The unions 63

war conservative amendments to the Crimes Act aimed at union activists. In a classic case of Cold War overkill, in response to a suggested union boycott of the British rocket range at Woomera, the Act provided for fines of up to £500 or twelve months jail for any

person who ‘by speech or writing advocates or encourages the prevention, hindrance, or obstruction of the carrying out of an approved defence project’. The ACTU executive, while expressing concern for Woomera Aborigines, had originally refused to support

a boycott and Monk and Clarey basically ignored the 1947 congress call for ‘immediate repeal’ of this ‘oppressive’ Act.!8 For its part the government had specific use for the ACTU, whose

backing was needed both to support the national production drive and to approve of legislation aimed at closer state supervision of indi-

vidual unions’ internal affairs. After earlier attempts had been stymied by the concurrence of industrial confrontations such as the 1945 steel strike and 1946-47 metal trades dispute, Chifley was at last able to bring employers and ACTU together in a tripartite ‘Better Industrial Relations Conference’. The government’s basic aim was to boost national production and the two ACTU leaders were only too prepared to join with the employers in publicly sponsoring this end. Industrial militance was criticized in a tripartite joint declaration but perhaps the most notable feature of this August 1947 conference was the explicit acceptance and approval bestowed on private enterprise by the ACTU leaders who, only three weeks later, were to preside over a biennial congress which, inter alia, endorsed demands for the nationalization of key industries. !? The Federal Labour Advisory Committee (FLAC) consisting of representatives from the ALP executive, the federal parliamentary party and the ACTU executive, had been created in 1938 for purposes of liaison on industrial issues. Chifley deliberately ignored this ready-made mechanism when deciding on the crucial 1947 amendments to the Arbitration Act. In 1948 it suited his plans to resurrect the committee. Again the ACTU officers conveniently hastened to forget the indignities of the recent past in order to be included formally in the government’s counsels. The government’s aims were achieved when Clarey and Monk agreed to recommend an

investigation into incentive schemes with a view to relieving the unions’ hitherto overwhelming opposition to any extension of payment by results. The ‘moderate’-dominated 1949 congress, although narrowly rejecting the incentive scheme inquiry, in many ways exemplified the

changes that were occurring within the union movement. The balance swung during 1948. At first the militants could prod the ACTU officers into suitable public declamation—as for example after union complaints of ACTU passivity on the question of repressive legislation introduced in Victoria and Queensland.2° In reality

64 Division of Labour the officers remained opposed to direct action and the changing environment made it increasingly easy for them to be honest in their public statements and actions. Every instinct of the southern-based leaders made them inwardly opposed to the dramatic railway strike in Queensland from February to April. The ALP state government’s

challenge to a number of central union principles meant that the ACTU had to lend formal support to the strikers but in private nego-

tiations and in internal, slanted reports there is no doubt where Clarey’s and Monk’s true sympathies lay.2! As the anti-communists’ Star rose in the industrial sky, ACTU officers felt able to reveal their

predilections more clearly. Thus by September 1948 they could openly resolve to ask the Victorian Industrial Groups’ views on suitable amendments to the Arbitration Act.22 In 1949 the divisions in the union movement became still more marked. Although lip-service in the form of public protest was paid to the principles involved, the ACTTU treated with relative equanimity the gaoling for one month on contempt charges of L.J. McPhillips (FIA), a communist member of the ACTU panel of basic wage case advocates. McPhillips’ fault had

been to cast aspersions on the Arbitration Court’s impartiality—a mistake for which a few months earlier the employers’ MTEA had been merely fined.23 The fact that the unions were again submitting such a central issue

as the basic wage to all the potential procrastination of a set-piece arbitration case stemmed from an ACTU executive recommendation. Yet Australian unionists seemed to gain little from the ACTU’s anti-mulitant stance and its patient, conciliatory approach both to industrial issues and to the government in 1948 and 1949. The newly

amended federal arbitration system proved just as legalistic as before, if not more so. The new lay conciliation commissioners operated almost as formally as any of the judges who, in turn, led by W.R. Cater Sir William) Kelly, the status-conscious and conservative Chifley appointee, presented new barriers to speedy hearing of central union claims. Indeed, to the ACTU’s stupefaction, at the end of 1949 the Court went so far as to decide unilaterally to suspend all hearings of the basic wage case until after the federal general election because of Opposition promises to increase child endowment.

Nor did compliance appear to reap many dividends from the federal government. From most points of view the relationship seemed one-sided. On the one hand, the ACTU officers worked to undermine the maritime unions’ diplomatically embarrassing bans on Dutch shipping in support of Indonesian liberation.2* Their attitudes also made it easier for the Chifley government to apply financial pressure to militants by continuing to disallow the payment of unemployment benefits to workers thrown out of work by the action of members of the same union.25 Equally, their stance facilitated the Prime Minister’s refusal even to meet a deputation of metal workers

The unions 65 to discuss the wages question.“° In contrast, in the midst of a barrage of communist attacks on the ACTU’s approach to, and presentation of, the basic wage case, Chifley refused to help deflect the militants’ growing criticism. He rebuffed outright Clarey’s request for federal government support of the ACTU’s claims or for a promise to lift social security payments if the ACTU recast its equal pay claim in accordance with the judges’ suggestions.?’ Nevertheless, the ACTU moderates remained faithful to the end. On the FLAC they not only accepted the arguments on incentive schemes but also offered the union movement’s official imprimatur to the government’s controversial anti-communist decision to allow the Arbitration Court to intervene in internal union officer ballots if the

Industrial Registrar was satisfied with prima facie evidence of malpractice.*® The legislation, which progressed through parliament

at the outset of the 1949 coal strike, was opposed by many noncommunists who genuinely feared the precedent of state ‘interference’ in internal union affairs.*? The 1949 congress, however, narrowly endorsed the proposition as it did, more heavily, the ACTU officers’ role in the coal strike itself in which they backed the federal government against the miners virtually from start to finish. At the state level the relative strength of moderates and militants in the branches of the ACTU varied. The branches received much

more publicity than the ACTU itself, both because of their early involvement in any industrial issue of local importance and because

of the often rumbustious nature of their monthly council delegate meetings. Only a brief outline of the situation in the three eastern mainland states will be offered here since in later chapters most of the discussion will concern them. The situation in the other states will be set out in somewhat greater length, but space forbids any discussion of the sometimes dramatic events in the provincial councils to be found at most non-metropolitan industrial centres.?° The Melbourne Trades Hall Council remained consistently under control of anti-communist delegates whose majority rested upon a

system of representation which favoured small unions disproportionately. Its secretary was Vic Stout who had succeeded Monk in 1938 and who at this stage in his career strongly backed the Grouper forces—as did assistant secretary M.C. (Mick) Jordan. The Groups were initially led on the floor of the Council by ex-communist, D.D. (Dinny) Lovegrove of the Fibrous Plasterers’ Union, who became assistant secretary of the Victorian ALP in 1947. In Sydney the system of representation was also skewed in favour

of the small unions. Possible control of the NSW Labor Council was placed beyond the militants’ reach when their opponents succeeded in having a ceiling of five placed on the size of affiliates’ delegations. Thereafter the right-wingers had the numbers. The Coun-

cil secretary was a ‘moderate’, R.A. (Bob) King, but the leading

66 Division of Labour anti-communist was J.D. (Jim) Kenny of the Glassworkers’ Union. A major force behind the creation of the Industrial Groups in 1945, Kenny became Council president in 1946 and chaired the meeting at which, in controversial circumstances, he declared himself elected unopposed to the assistant secretaryship just vacated by F. Kelly.?! In general the Council worked closely with the ALP which governed the state from 1941 onwards under Premiers W.J. (later Sir William)

McKell (1941-47) and J.J.G. McGirr. The major figure in the liaison between unions and party was J.A. (Jack) Ferguson, the excommunist secretary of the NSW branch of the Australian Railways Union (ARU). Queensland was the one state in which, throughout the 1940s, militants maintained a majority position on the Trades and Labor Council whose secretary, M. (Mick) Healy, was a CPA member. In consequence TLC policy was constantly opposed by the AWU, led by C.G. (Clarrie) Fallon whose political influence was enormous. As Murray wrote, this giant union ‘covered not only such traditional AWU fields as the shearers, cane-cutters, metalliferous miners and

other bush workers but, more than in other states, competed for membership with other unions whose organisation was weak in the sprawling reaches of rural Queensland’.34 The AWU eagerly sup-

ported the Groups and its state president, R.J.J. Bukowski, provided their main driving force. In the 1940s the AWU still allied itself closely to the ALP government which had been in office since 1932 and was led, from March 1946, by E.M. Hanlon. South Australia shared with Tasmania and Western Australia a reputation for relative industrial harmony. It was the only state in the 1940s which was governed continuously by conservatives under T. dater Sir Thomas) Playford. The government’s electoral safety was underwritten both by a ‘Playmander’ which heavily weighted

the rural vote for the House of Assembly and by an antique restricted franchise for the upper house. Employers and government emphasized the tradition of co-operation with union leaders and there seems little doubt that certain unique social factors in the state’s colonial development combined with its particular resource endowment to produce a distinctive brand of union policy.?3 Nevertheless, the postwar years witnessed something of a deviation from type as South Australia was affected by the national surge of employee militancy. The general ‘red shift’ in the union movement was manifest in the militant majority of delegates to the United

Trades and Labor Council of SA. In June 1946 a radical excommunist, IT. (Tom) Garland, was elected UTLC secretary. The militant position was supported on most industrial issues in the first two years or so of peace, although in May 1947 at the final gasp of the gruelling metal trades dispute—in which South Australian engineers

and foundry workers were fully involved—an exceptionally well-

The unions 67 attended council meeting voted 73—72 against the AEU’s decision to make the final extension.3+

The tide began to turn in 1948 when the militants started to lose

some council divisions. The resurgence of the moderates was reflected in the election of their main spokesman, A.B. (Albie) Thompson of the Australasian Society of Engineers (ASE), to the UTLC presidency in February. In the following year the climactic national coal strike became the issue on which the militants were forced into irretrievable retreat. At first the Garland forces were able to muster support for the miners’ claims but, once the strike began and the impact on households and industry was felt locally, the militants were crushed in the council by the emphatic margin of 89 votes

to 41. In the same month Garland was replaced as secretary by a moderate, A.J. Shard.3° During the SA union movement’s militant period in the mid1940s, industrial unrest followed the national pattern. The disputes of late 1946-47 centred on the wages question in the foundries and engineering shops but overlapped with penalty rate issues in the transport and power industries. Thus, during the SA metal trades dispute, gasworkers conducted an independent 42-day sit-in and railway workers struck for 24 hours over shift and penalty rates. Again, during the widespread eastern states unrest over the rostering

of the new 40-hour week (see below, chapter 9), SA railworkers stopped for a further 24 hours on 19 January 1948. Probably the dispute with the biggest public impact involved Ade-

laide tramworkers. Their strike from 31 October to 14 November 1945 contained all the classic elements of disputation immediately after the war and offers several significant cautionary morals to stu-

dents, particularly concerning strike leadership and the rank and file. As elsewhere, the SA transport system had been stretched near to breaking point by wartime exigencies. Staff shortages meant long

hours were the norm. When the current agreement between the tramways union (ATMOEA) and the Municipal Tramways Trust (MTT) expired in April 1945 the initial refusal of the MTT to negotiate a new one bought angry threats of a strike until Commonwealth conciliation commissioner Portus ordered a conference. The result was an agreement described by ‘moderate’ ATMOEA federal president R.R. Broadby as ‘disappointing’, but incorporating some improvements including two extra days annual leave and a wage increase of 3s to 4s per week. The rank and file, at a ‘stormy’ meeting of 1300, rejected Broadby’s advice to accept the offer and decided to

turn to the Arbitration Court. The Court heard evidence that the

number of passengers carried had increased from 53 million in 1940

to 85 million in 1943 while the number of traffic employees had fallen from 930 to 897. Drake-Brockman’s judgement of 24 October gave an increase of 1s a week and three days extra good conduct leave

68 Dhivision of Labour

for traffic men only. Non-traffic workers received nothing. Incensed

ATMOEA members immediately decided to strike from 31

October.

The Advertiser was fearful that the strike might be a long one; ‘a major strike is a novelty for South Australia. It would be a triumph for the State if we could maintain unimpaired. . . our reputation for peace in industry’. It clearly understood that it was wage pegging which blocked the men’s claims. Its conclusion might have been Chifley’s own. Wage pegging was ‘one of our major defences against inflation. To “‘unpeg”’ wages. . . would be to bring. . . swift ruin on the whole country’.?” The editor of the labour movement’s official journal, Workers’ Weekly Herald, encapsulated the totally different response of the workforce which underlay most of the unrest in the first two years of peace. He wrote that organized labour ‘did not expect to be asked, now the war 1s over, to make more sacrifices to win the peace, which they are told can only be won by preventing inflation’. 3°

As the strike commenced ATMOEA sought to negotiate with the MTT—which refused to countenance such an ‘affront’ to the Court against whose decision the men were striking. Conciliation commissioners Rowlands and Portus did not, however, stand on their dignity and a compulsory conference ended with the MTT promising to negotiate provided the strikers returned to work. Broadby and ATMOEA state officials were dismayed to have their recommendation for a return rejected ‘by an overwhelming majority’ at a mass meeting. At a subsequent public meeting in the Botanic Park a member of the audience moved that, ‘the travelling public of Adelaide

supported the tramway men’s demands’ and this was carried unanimously. ??

Federal Labour Minister Holloway now began to seek avenues of intervention and ATMOEA members voted to place the dispute in the hands of the UTLC disputes committee. In spite of the unprecedented length of the strike, The Advertiser remained surprisingly moderate in its comments: It is naturally accounted very odd that a body of trade unionists with such a good reputation should be engaged in the present tragic dispute. . . Some means must be found to ensure the early resumption of the trams in circumstances which will ensure, for the men who run them, a fair consideration of all their legitimate claims.*

Since the MTT refused to confer while the men were still on strike, the disputes committee announced that it would recommend a 24hour halt to all rail and road passenger transport in the metropolitan area from midnight 11 November. On 9 November a compulsory conference, ordered by Judge Drake-Brockman, deadlocked on the question of a guaranteed seven-hour twenty-minute day. The 24-hour

The unions 69 strike went ahead, accompanied by an Advertiser banner headlining it as the biggest in the state’s history. One purely South Australian characteristic of events was the wholehearted support given to the

strikers by the AWU which, in this state alone, was prepared to "support and even promote direct industrial action. To a large degree this reflected the personality of its state secretary, C.R. (Clyde) Cameron, an acknowledged opponent of the federal AWU leaders. Cameron now threatened to throw the weight of the AWU’s 11 000 members behind a general strike—a notion fully supported by a mass meeting of foundry workers. At a lengthy compulsory conference, Drake-Brockman explained that wage-pegging Regulations did not permit a margins increase. On the seven-hour twenty-minute day he said that nothing had happened to change his views expressed in the October award. Broadby now unsuccessfully approached Premier Playford to exert his influence on the MTT. Meanwhile a union conference voted for a 24-hour general strike from midnight on 18

November. When informed of this, Drake-Brockman said he was willing to reconsider the seven-hour twenty-minute claim if the tramworkers resumed work.*! The ATMOEA mass meeting to consider this proposition saw the Victorian media’s favourite bogeyman, communist ARU Secretary J.J. Brown, endeavouring to persuade the ‘moderate’ rank and file to return to work. There was initially widespread hostility to the suggestion that they should be content with achieving only one of their claims, particularly as it could not ‘flow on’ to the unions who had supported them so wholeheartedly. Many felt that to go back now would be ‘ratting’ on their mates. However, Brown eventually pre-

vailed. He said ‘I am with you in your nine demands but if you succeed in your wage increase claim you will be the first union in

Australia to bust the wage pegging regulations’. An interjector shouted that someone had to be first. Brown warned them that they were not fighting the MTT or the Arbitration Court but the federal Labor government. That, he said, was the unfortunate part of it. He also argued that, with the imminent coal shortage due to the current steel strike in New South Wales, the men would be playing into the hands of the employers. The employers would be glad they were on strike if coal were not available. Broadby and the state ATMOEA officials added their weight to Brown’s pleas and, eventually, an ‘overwhelming majority’, voted to return. The next day the trams ran again and Drake-Brockman made Adelaide trammies unique in Australia by awarding them a guaranteed seven-hour twenty-minute day. The union also received the wage increases and the extra annual leave provided in the Trust’s original offer, the former retrospective to 20 May. Thus 1945 ended on a satisfactory note for South Austra-

lia’s industrial labour movement. Tom Garland, then UTLC president, addressed the final ATMOEA meeting. He said that the soli-

70 Division of Labour darity of the tram workers and the support of other unions plus the support of a large section of the general public showed that the trade union movement need have no fears when it launched its all-in struggle for a 40-hour week and a general advance in wages.** Like many other militants, however, he was reckoning without the redoubtable Mr Chifley.

In Tasmania, while the scale was small—for example, in 1945 only four unions had more than 1000 members—the complexities of the labour movement were considerable.*2 Communist union officials were few but, as on the mainland, the state was affected by public transport workers’ unrest over penalty rates and other noticeable disputes occurred in the road transport, coal, retail butchering, and maritime industries.4+ Although, almost invariably, the workers were led by ‘moderate’ officials and, except for the butchers, were striking over legitimate industrial issues, the perennial ALP government frowned on direct action. Disputes on the mainland often drew the public ire and condemnation of Premier R. Cosgrove who was closely associated with the Movement.*> His most noticeable divergence from union opinion came in May 1946 and February 1949. On the first occasion he declared The whole outlook of the Labour movement must be changed. Whereas for the whole of its history organised labour has been engaged in a struggle to secure decent wages and conditions for its members it must now regard this task as accomplished. . . the world now needs production to save it from disaster. . . Labor cannot now logically try to enforce its demands by cessation of work.*

In 1949 he received even wider national media coverage when he

publicly suggested that the 40-hour week had been awarded prematurely.*’ Cosgrove’s statements need to be placed in the context of Tasmania’s long tradition of friction between labour’s industrial and _ political wings. Davis argues that the tendency of dissatisfied unions to withhold funds from the party was an important factor in forcing the ALP to look outside the labour movement for financial support— with the inevitable and ironic result that government policy moved further from the labour tradition. In 1948 Cosgrove was forced to stand down while first a Royal Commission examined, and then a

trial cleared him of, charges of corruption in connection with just such an outside ‘slush-fund’.*8 The ACTU’s official branch was the Hobart Trades Hall Council

which was associated with highly militant resolutions until at least 1949. The THC often criticized the Cosgrove and Chifley governments and supported militant action in other states. A motion supporting Soviet foreign policy and condemning the Western powers was passed as late as October 1948. Another body, the Tasmanian

The unions 71 Trades Union Council (TTUC) was established, with the blessing of the ACTU, with the aims of co-ordinating the island’s geographically fragmented industrial wing and of bringing more effective pres-

sure to bear on the ALP. However, at the very time the TTUC achieved its target of joint annual meetings with the ALP executive and ALP parliamentarians, the balance of power within the union movement was shifting. The turning point came in July 1949 when the Hobart THC supported Chifley’s actions in the great coal dis- __.. pute. From at least this time on, J.H. O’Neill, TTUC secretary and Hobart THC secretary from 1927 to 1967, moved away from his

long-time radical reputation to working closely with the anticommunists. At the 1949 congress he was elected as an ACTU vicepresident. Confirmation of the changing atmosphere came in August 1949 when H.W. Trudgett, TTUC president and Hobart THC president since 1945, failed to secure re-election as Federated Clerks’ Union (FCU) delegate to the THC. Trudgett’s challenge to the conduct of the FCU branch elections was dismissed by Judge Dunphy in one of the first cases under the 1949 amendments to the Commonwealth Arbitration Act designed to ensure ‘clean’ union ballots.*? In Western Australia no independent peak union council existed.

Instead the political and industrial wings of the labour movement were combined in a unique unitary structure within the ALP. In practice, with the ALP in office continuously from 1933, industrial interests were often subordinated to political expediency. If, for example, a union wanted to appeal to other unions for support in an industrial dispute, it had to apply to the disputes committee of the ALP where the Party officials and politicians were usually able to carry the day. If the aggrieved union was one whose members were employed by the Gov-

ernment. . .this produced the absurdity of Government Ministers who were party to a dispute sitting in judgement in the deliberations of their adversary.°°

Thus the WA unions had a relatively pacific tradition and the govern- | ment, in which AWU members predominated, took a very stern line against militants. Whereas much of the postwar conflict in the east-

ern states centred on the divergence of ends between unions and ALP, in the west the party enjoyed a unique dominance and was accustomed to getting its way. It was shaken somewhat in these turbulent years—indeed its loss of office in 1947 probably derived partly from union disilluston—but the militants never assumed anything like their eastern importance. Communists remained numerically insignificant and militant efforts to establish a strong, independent voice for the union movement were thwarted.>! Another significant factor was that more than 80 per cent of WA members of federal unions were working under state awards because of the historic superiority of the state basic wage over the Common-

72 Division of Labour

wealth equivalent. In July 1949 the difference amounted to 4.8 per cent. The view of the WA Arbitration Court—headed by outspoken anti-communist, E.A. Dunphy—seemed to coincide closely with that of the ALP government: “The right to strike has gone: it died when a system of law was introduced which gave those people who

had the right to strike a complete and absolute remedy’.°? The Court’s decisions on conditions other than wages often tended to lag

behind developments in the east. This point—as well as the relative passivity of the WA unions—is clearly demonstrated by the experience of the state’s tram and railworkers. Both on overtme rates and on rosters, tramworkers trailed behind their equivalents in the eastern states, yet despite rank-and-file ‘dissatisfaction’, nothing like the unrest surrounding these issues in other capital cities was manifest in Perth. For example, not until 1956 did tramworkers secure a fiveday roster—a target secured after direct action by easterners in 1947 and 1948.°3

This is not to say that no ripple broke the industrial calm. Indeed the Pilbara pastoral industry witnessed one of Australia’s longest but least known strikes. On 1 May 1946 Aborigines, currently working

for 15 per cent of the Basic Wage plus bare rations and nominal accommodation, struck for a 30s minimum wage, freedom of movement and the right to elect their own representatives. Eventually 25

stations were affected and the authorities conveniently blamed it all on the agitation of a young white radical, Don McLeod. In Perth the strikers’ cause was enthusiastically supported by the CPA and a mixed array of sympathetic liberals. Senator Dorothy Tangney spoke out for the Aborigines but the ALP state government’s hostile stance was endorsed not merely by the AWU but also by the Collie

coalminers. McLeod and black strike leaders, Dooley Binbin and Clancy McKenna, were gaoled and the self-governing strikers’ communities were harassed to the hilt by the Native Affairs Department.

Nevertheless the strike lasted three years before the Department secured a general return to work by falsely promising that the satisfactory wages and conditions negotiated on Mt. Edgar and Limestone stations would be applied throughout the Pilbara. While some gains had been made, another twenty years would pass before black pastoral workers were to receive wage justice.>4

As for the rest of WA workers, the end of the war saw them naturally expectant about the promised new order. The refusal of F.J.S. Wise’s ministry to inaugurate a 40-hour week for government employees was a prominent cause of friction. Workers on the state

payroll, including train drivers, railway maintenance men and police, were conspicuous in their dissatisfaction as were the Collie coalminers over the refusal to work new deposits. A generally muli-

tant note was struck among maritime workers at Fremantle. The major blow-up came when the train drivers’ union struck work for

The unions 73

sixteen days in November 1946 over the long-simmering issue of allegedly unsafe Garratt locomotives already withdrawn from service in Queensland.°° At its peak some 90 000 workers were stood down and severe power and transport restrictions enforced. The government and Arbitration Court took a very hard line against the strik-

ers. Against all the evidence, Wise insinuated in parliament that communistic elements lay behind the strike. In unusual actions, both the union, its executive members and delegates to its triennial conference were charged with instigating an illegal strike. Dunphy used deregistration proceedings to threaten the train drivers’ president, A.R. Davies, with arrest and warned him that any suggestion of collaboration with another union to force the issue would amount to conspiracy under the criminal code and draw three years hard

labour for those involved. The union was deregistered and, after initially withholding penalties in the hopes of a union backdown, the full bench unanimously imposed the maximum penalty of £100 on the union and £10 on each member of its executive committee. In the conservative-dominated Legislative Council, a motion to amend the Act to ensure a secret ballot of train drivers on the Garratt issue was withdrawn after a veteran Liberal had the prescience to realize that ‘a secret ballot might support the union’s general committee and in

effect this would allow the Government, Parliament, Arbitration Court and the people of Western Australia. . . to be dictated to by the union’.>°© Settlement of the dispute came not through the partisan State Court but through the offices of the chairman of the federal

Reference Board established during the war for the Collie miners (see below, p. 252), whose union had been among those offering support to the strikers. The events of the Garratt strike convinced the train drivers, the miners and the Fremantle lumpers that a council of trade unions independent of the ALP was essential. It is important to note that the three unions did not have a communist full-time official between them. The problems faced by the few WA communist union officials as the ALP moved to exclude them from attending meetings handling union matters within the traditional integrated structure were

never more than a minor consideration for the tri-union group. A series of conferences followed and a total of fifteen unions joined the new Council of Trade Unions (WACTU) in 1947.57

A further indication of dissatisfaction with the ALP among the unions was provided during the state election campaign when almost half the affiliated unions did not contribute to the ALP election fund

and some others donated deliberately insulting amounts. For their part, ALP leaders felt that the dislocation of the Garratt strike had

contributed to the electoral swing which displaced the Wise government.°® The party’s response to the WACTU was to establish

a new Trade Unions Industrial Council (TUIC) within the ALP to

74 Division of Labour

advise its state executive on industrial matters. Simultaneously the new conservative government, the mass media and the Arbitration Court heightened their attacks on militants in general and communists in particular, To cite only some of the tactics used, the Carpenters’ organiser, Maurie Lachberg, was fined because some of his members stopped work; the Bootmakers were denied improved margins by the Arbitration Court because their case was presented by a communist secretary; and the vice-president of the Railway Employees was removed from office solely on the grounds that he was a communist. [Justice] Dunphy. . . supported this last action on the

grounds that a communist could not be ‘a fit and proper person to hold executive office in a union’, and accused communist trade union leaders generally of defrauding their members. Communists were banned from holding office in a number of unions.°?

The major blow to the WACTU came, however, from Clarey and Monk who ensured that the decision of the 1947 ACTU congress to recognize the WACTU as its Western Australian branch was never

implemented. The ACTU officers feared the increase in militant numbers on the interstate executive which this move would entail but, as Macintyre reports, ‘Even by the standards of intensive conflict that prevailed at this time, this was an extraordinary piece of chicanery’.©° The two ACTU men waited fourteen months after the congress before travelling west. When they did so, their itinerary

was arranged in consultation with the state ALP which, in contravention of the 1947 Congress decision, was eventually selected by

Monk and Clarey to be the state branch of the ACTU. At the 1949 ACTU congress the new ‘moderate’ majority retrospectively supported this decision. The final blow to the status of the WACTU came when Dunphy refused to let it appear before the Court in the state basic wage hearings. In October 1949 the diminished WACTU was wound up. The state was not to have an independent Trades and Labour Council until 1963.

CHAPTER FIVE

PRIVATE-SECTOR EMPLOYERS

From the point of view of most private employers, the 1940s was a dangerous decade. The war produced a federal Labor government armed with extraordinary powers and backed by majority public sentiment. The prewar record of private enterprise and of conservative governments endeavouring to sustain it contrasted miserably with the full employment flowing from government intrusion into every sector of the economy. The democratic political imperative of peacetime full employment, supported intellectually by the ‘Keyne-

sian revolution’, demanded continued government intervention. Moreover, the unity of the great war against fascism combined with the widespread rejection of the old prewar order to give the left wing of politics unprecedented popular appeal. Employers were keenly aware of workforce attitudes and feared the worst. Only at the very end of the decade did the political tide turn—thanks largely to the Cold War. Right up to the general election of 1949, most employers

were on the political defensive. Industrially, the picture was the same. While the meat, steel, coal and metal industries all provided important instances of employer aggression, the overall emphasis was on defence. Labour shortage gave employees and their unions considerable bargaining power which would have wrested concessions much sooner, had it not been for the combination of government obstruction and institutional impediments thrown up by the arbitration tribunals. Certain employer policies were predictable and unchanging. Despite frequent claims that their associations were non-political, employers closely supported the conservative side of politics, particularly the new Liberal Party. They denounced ‘socialistic’ controls and government ‘interference’ with the economy and business. They endeavoured to yield as slowly as possible to demands for improved

wages, hours and other conditions of work. In addition to such

76 Division of Labour Pavlovian reflexes, at least four other interrelated but more considered employer responses to their generally hostile environment may be observed: (a) employers improved their cohesion and joint organization; (b) they ended their traditional hostility to involvement in the federal arbitration system and came instead to see the Court as an essential bastion of defence against the on-rush of market forces rep-

resented by union bargaining power; (c) employers consciously sought to improve their public relations expertise in order to influence public opinion in their favour in all facets of the central social

and political debate; (d) finally, employers moved a little with the popular tide. Influenced by overseas trends many sought to improve human relations within their firms. Others stepped on to the path of corporatism and sought to liaise and negotiate with ‘moderate’ union leaders. Some displayed sympathy and concern with the problems of

certain key sections of the workforce such as craftsmen. Through such realistic compromise it was felt, by progressive employers at least, that the dangerous radical element could be isolated from the stable core of the workforce. As was the case with the unions, Australian employers were far from being monolithic in outlook and policy. Varying and conflicting sectional interests and the underlying intrinsic independence of individual firms have always created problems both for employer associations and for moves to ensure that employers presented a common front on industrial matters. To traditional ideological d1visions on the tariff there had, over the years, been grafted organizational jealousies and suspicions between the employers’ peak councils.

No consistent pattern fits the policy and operation of the several hundred employer associations. Hagan offers the most succinct outline: The multiplicity of organizations to which employers belonged in the thirties and forties had functions which can be broadly categorized as trade, industrial, and political. Some organizations specialized in only one of these functions, but sometimes they involved themselves in two or even all of them. Thus an organization mainly concerned with regulating trade practices might appear for its members before an industrial tribunal, or put their views to a government or a political party. At State level, there were three organizations which offered membership not only to individual firms, but to trade associations. These were the Chambers of Manufactures, the Chambers of Commerce, and the Employers’ Federations. The last of these drew members from the other two groups. Not all employers’ associations were affiliated with any one of these; some of them belonged to more than one, and the pattern of affiliation varied from State to State.!

Each of these three organizations had established a federal councul. These usually met every year but were seriously debilitated by

Private-sector employers 77

tensions between the states, particularly those arising from the rival-

ry between the two major states and from the fears of the minor states that they be swept along by the interests of the big two. As a result, the federal organizations enjoyed no real powers, and decision-making rested at the state level. In addition it must be emphasized that larger firms often preferred to handle their own industrial work, while in certain sectors single-industry associations like the MTEA were more important than either the Chambers or the Federations. The Federations, whose raison d’étre was industrial relations, were always anxious that employers unite to present a common front to trade unions. In South and Western Australia relatively clear boundaries of responsibility had been drawn early in the century between

the two chambers and the employers’ federation, with the last handling all industrial relations matters. In the two major states, however, the Chambers had refused to cede such authority to the Federation. Jurisdictional rivalries were aggravated by broad policy disagreements: most notably, the chambers of manufactures (CM) and employers’ federations (EF) fully supported higher tariffs in the 1930s while the chambers of commerce, allied to the Producers’ Advisory Council, the Graziers’ and the Farmers and Settlers’ Associa-

tions, bitterly opposed them. On the industrial relations front, the NSWCM favoured uniform wage costs determined by a central arbitral authority but its fellow CMs favoured each state setting its own wage levels. The big associations had been brought together since the 1920s on an ad hoc basis for the major wages and hours cases.

This relationship was formalized a little by the emergence of the ‘Interstate Conference of Employers’. This included all major asso-

clations and met irregularly through the 1930s to discuss federal matters. A 1937 proposal to establish a permanent committee met short shrift from the state associations. The origins of the Interstate Conference rested in a united campaign to abolish the federal arbitration system but the almost total Opposition among employer groups to the Commonwealth Court began to slacken in the 1930s. A leader here was the MTEA which began to realize some of the advantages of centralization as a result of Judge Beeby’s initiatives in the first consolidated metal trades award of 1930.2 By 1939 the NSWEF, VEF and NSWCM were in agreement on the Court determining hours as well as wages. Although the MTEA was often a pace-setter and the EFs the major advocate of national co-ordination, there can be no doubt that the flagships of the employers’ associations were the chambers of manu-

factures. Their dominant political and industrial roles were maintained throughout the 1940s when all federal governments gave precedence to their federal organization, the Associated Chambers of Manufactures of Australia (ACMA) when seeking consultation or

78 Dhivision of Labour

co-operation with employers. ACMA proved the major obstacle to the peak national council consistently proposed by the employers’ federations. The war, however, impelled greater cohesion. Government intrusion and control, particularly the threat of the ALP and its ‘socialis-

tic’ aims, caused many employers to hasten to the shelter of the wagon train. Associations reported a marked rise in membership. New employers’ federations were founded in Tasmania, the Northern Territory and the ACT. The need for unified presentations in the 1940 basic wage case induced the Interstate Conference to form a ‘consultative and co-ordinating committee’ to manage the case. This committee and the hours and- basic wage ‘steering committees’ formed in 1946 and 1947 were the lineal precursors of present employer national organization. Although playing an important role in these committees and participating in other joint employer ventures, ACMA was always reluctant to concede any independence of action. When, in 1941, the employers’ federations’ federal body joined with the Associated Chambers of Commerce of Australia (ACCA) and the

federal councils of the Graziers, Retailers and Fire and Accident Underwriters to form a joint secretariat in Canberra, ACMA and the MTEA stayed aloof and made their own joint arrangement. Plowman feels that the major reason for ACMA’s stance throughout the 1940s was ‘its traditional insecurity concerning other organisations’ designs concerning tariff protection’. A lesser factor was the annual rotation of both ACMA and state chamber of manufactures office bearers which greatly diluted the impact of consistent advocacy by the Australian Council of Employers’ Federations (ACEF).+

In the strategic construction and metal industries, employers moved closer together. By 1946 five states had ‘Building Industry Congresses’ which ‘maintained an ideological offensive on press and radio as relentless as that of any other section of private capital’.> In September 1943 the NSW and Queensland branches of the MTEA

joined with the iron and steel section of the VCM and the Metal Industries Association of South Australia to form the Australian Metal Industries Association (AMIA). The retrospective reasons given for its establishment were the unique wartime conditions and

the fact that the metal unions were ‘under the domination of the Communist Party and there were threats of a new social order and the abolition of the Arbitration system’. The AMIJA’s formation, however, resulted in little more than the stimulation of friendly relations between the state organizations. As for the communist threat, we will later consider that question in detail. Suffice it here to say that employers at times found it a useful means of camouflage. For example in 1942 the MTEA opposed an ACTU proposal for joint workshop committees largely because it feared erosion of ‘management prerogative’. This basic point was bolstered by claiming that

Private-sector employers 79

the support for joint committees came from the ‘militant’ unions and

that the leaders of ‘the trade unions proper’ were not enthusiastic about the idea at all. The major unenthusiastic ‘proper’ union was, in fact, the AEU and one of the most fervent supporters of joint committees was the communist-led FIA. Yet it is hard to point to a more militant metal union than the AEU during the war nor to less militant leadership than the FIA after the invasion of the USSR. Throughout the war employers failed to give credit to the communists for their devotion to the war effort and continued to blame them for virtually all industrial friction.’

In 1945 Queensland employers moved to close ranks. The QEF arranged a meeting of 80 organizations which resulted in the QEF, by virtue of constitutional reform, becoming the state’s peak council. After the war, however, as the worst employer fears gradually subsided, some old centrifugal forces reasserted themselves. The

QEF experienced difficulty in getting associations to accept its leadership.® At the federal level, friction between ACCA and ACEF over control of the Canberra secretariat led to ACEF’s withdrawal in

1949. As some compensation for this the employers’ federations, along with the other leading associations, were becoming better able to co-ordinate policy not only in ‘test cases’ but also for their members’ routine industrial relations requirements. In August 1947 the employer federation secretaries met to discuss co-ordination. Their recommendations were immediately considered by ACEF’s executive and this established the future pattern. Combined with a reorganization which gave employer federation office bearers a greater role on the ACEF executive, this step “changed the character of that Executive from one of entrepreneurs with an interest and amateur status in industrial relations to one in which the Federations’ full-time professional industrial personnel had an important input in shaping ACEF policy and direction’.? The VEF was contracted to provide a

national industrial service and although friction between the states erupted over the cost and location of the service, “1t proved [a] lasting

legacy. . .and provided the nucleus for future national employer industrial co-ordination’.!° In the 1940s the arbitration problems irking employers no longer concerned prewar overlap between federal and state tribunals. Government wartime regulation specifically gave the former superiority over the latter. In the 1940s the overlap was between the Commonwealth Court, to whose conservative precedents the employers now sought to cling, and the special tribunals established to facilitate dis-

pute settlement in key sectors of the economy. The maritime, stevedoring and coal tribunals were alike criticized for their ‘appeasement’ of labour but employers’ greatest rage and fear centred on the Women’s Employment Board (WEB), the operation of which confimed their deepest suspicions of federal government bias.

80 Division of Labour

From the outset the WEB implied increased wage costs—for ‘flow-ons’ to other female occupations could be expected to follow ‘anomalies’ established in the WEB’s industries as surely as night follows day. ACMA refused even to nominate an employers’ repre-

sentative for the WEB. When Minister Ward, in response, appointed Ellen Cashman, a public servant and an ex-union official, as ‘special employers’ representative’, the Canberra secretariat of ACEF, ACCA et al. withdrew its co-operation. Henceforward employers completely obstructed the Board and helped ensure its dissolution. After the full bench had in May 1945 ruled in the employers’ favour on female rates (see p. 14) the government introduced Regulations in August which increased female rates in the industries concerned to 75 per cent of the male. Employers continued to fear an extension to other occupations, although in fact not until 1950 was the 75 per cent level set for all women. While neither the aspirations of women were met nor the fears of male unionists assuaged by these events, employers saw such government ad hocery as both sinister and arbitrary. The 1944 ‘powers’ referendum and 1946 referendum proposals (see p. 37) drew united

employer opposition, and funds and other resources were fed into the ‘No’ campaigns.!! One of employers’ greatest fears concerned Labor reform of the Arbitration Court. The fact that communists

advocated direct negotiations encouraged their alarmism. They greatly exaggerated the radical content of the 1947 Act. Employer spokesmen emphasized the integrity and impartiality of the bench and painted alarming pictures of the likelihood of biased commissioners, appointed from union ranks, wrecking the ‘uniformity and consistency’ built up by the Court over the years.!4 Fears that trusty state tribunals would be overborne by the Court added to the general pessimism. !3 As will be seen in Chapter 8, the commissioners proved more Catholic than the Pope and employers found little to criticize in

their cautious approach to dispute settlement. Further, by making the Arbitration Court a superior court of record, the Chifley Act gave

the bench contempt powers which were to prove the employers’ major weapon against full employment market forces for the next twenty years. A major employer response to the ‘New Order’ environment was to try and improve their public relations. Individual firms and employers’ associations clearly understood the low esteem 1n which private enterprise was currently held. Among senior management in the steel industry in 1943, ‘The general opinion is that the BHP is not well regarded by the public generally or by its employees but most [BHP] officers [questioned] think that this state of affairs is due to misrepresentations and our comparative silence’.!+ Given that steel executives were ‘only children’ in this respect,!> the company turned for the first time to a public relations specialist to improve its image.

Private-sector employers 81

At the same time Norman Rydge revealed in his influential business magazine that If I were asked to debate the proposition that state ownership is preferable to the system of private enterprise I would prefer to argue on the side of state ownership if I wished to take the less difficult side in the debate. It is so very

easy to put forward powerful compelling reasons which would promise

so very much more to the community than is possible under private enterprise. !®

At the height of the immediate postwar union drive for better conditions, the editor of another employer journal lamented the ‘severe misunderstanding in public opinion as to the position of employers [because of] insistent undisputed propaganda of extremists and communists. . . The insidious viewpoint gaining currency that employers are exploiters must be combatted’.!’ Among employer associations ACMA led the way back. In 1942 it discussed ways ‘to combat the growing tendency towards socialism

in Australia’!8 with the MTEA, VEF, the Melbourne Chamber of Commerce and later with ACEF and ACCA. A joint directorate was favoured by the VCM but eventually the NSWCM view that ACMA should remain unencumbered by other employer organizations won

the day. Thus the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA), governed by a committee of six ACMA officials, was launched in August 1942. IPA objectives were (1) Loyalty to King and Constitutional Government and upholding of Democratic Principles; (2) To win the war; (3) Freedom of speech, press, religion and enterprise;

(4) Sound Government, sound finance, social security, and national development; (5) Maintenance of the Commonwealth Arbitration Court system; (6) (a) To establish a Business, Economic and Political Research Organization; (b) To adopt all means available for the education and guidance of the people. !?

The IPA executive was widely believed also to be ‘an important col-

lector of funds for the anti-labour political cause’.2° Certainly its Victorian and NSW branches were two of the eighteen groupings which, under R.G. Menzies’ chairmanship, founded the Liberal Party of Australia in December 1944. In later years membership of the IPA’s governing body overlapped with the councils of several employer organizations. It was particularly prominent in the campaign against Chifley’s bank nationalization proposals.+!

From its foundation IPA published and distributed tracts and pamphlets presenting the case for private enterprise. In 1947 the Victorian IPA began publishing a regular Review. Most famous of its

82 Division of Labour

publications were Looking Forward.** In this classic booklet the Victorian IPA in 1944 set out the private sector’s view of postwar requirements in reasoned and moderate terms. Essentially, the worst deficiencies of the prewar laissez-faire system were noted and the case was argued ‘for a socially responsible form of capitalism, committed

to full employment and state responsibility for maintaining a high and stable level of investment’.23 The role of the state, however, was

to be as small as was compatible with the maintenance of full employment through co-ordination of public and private investment programmes. Enterprise must be encouraged by lower taxation. A reasonable minimum of economic security should be guaranteed to all citizens: “The full Beveridge-type social insurance scheme was recommended, along with profit sharing schemes where practicable,

two weeks paid holidays, housing provided by larger industries, company superannuation and welfare schemes to supplement state provision and large-scale expansion of educational facilities.’2+

The pamphlet strongly supported incentive schemes but saw equal pay for women as inimical to home and family. It also argued

that trade unions needed to be made more democratic; joint work councils with limited consultative powers should be established to encourage co-operation and higher productivity; the power of the Commonwealth Arbitration Court should be extended to enable it to declare a common rule and to deal with intra-state disputes; industrial discipline should be reinforced by ending wartime restrictions on employers’ powers of dismissal and by sanctions within the social security system. A single national peak council for employers was also advocated. Hay has modified the left-wing view that IPA was ‘the mainspring

of a ruling-class mobilization which determined the shape of the post-war world’. After tracing the domestic and overseas origins of the IPA policy on social reconstruction his analysis downplays both its role in formulating business policy and influencing government decisions. Nevertheless Hay acknowledges the impact of IPA’s ‘skilful and persistent propaganda’ and notes that after the war ‘regular consultation between the IPA and public servants and government became common’.?° In 1944 ACEF too turned its attention to public relations.2© After the referendum—in which ACEF contributed financially to the Australian Constitutional League spearheading the ‘No’ campaign— it established a permanent public relations committee. This committee

concerned itself with the arbitration debate in 1945. In 1946 the urgency of the same topic persuaded ACEF to appoint its first PR

officer, S. Howard, at the beginning of 1947. Meanwhile, under the aegis of IPA, discussions had been going on since March 1946 between associations interested in organizing a joint central bureau. In 1947 the state affiliates of the Canberra secretariat established such a

Private-sector employers 83

bureau which soon became known as the Industrial and Economic Research Service. Located in Sydney and headed by Howard, its official functions were (1) To present through all possible channels in Metropolitan, Country and Suburban press and Radio News Sessions, a positive case for free enterprise. (2) To combat communism and socialist propaganda being circulated in Australia. (3) To present through the avenues available factual materials of particular importance to subscribing members. (4) To conduct research and report on important trends in economic and social affairs, taxation and industrial matters.

The Research Service performed valuable work for the employer cause, including compilation of statistical ‘proof’ of communist instrumentality in causing strikes.2’ Its activities during the 1948 referendum were particularly warmly appreciated but its subsequent refusal to tailor a survey commissioned by ACEF in connection with

the imminent basic wage case caused much heartburn and led to eventual ACEF withdrawal of support. Throughout the 1940s employers, through public relations specialists, through the privately owned mass media, through parliamen-

tary mouthpieces and through various industrial and association journals and business magazines, maintained a constant barrage of comment and opinion supporting their side of the industrial relations debate. Their short-run tactical viewpoints are best revealed in the business journals—addressed as they were to fellow employers and hence less likely to be affected by window-dressing for public consumption. The views expressed ranged across the conservative spectrum from, say, the backwoods attitudes expressed in the mining and shipping journal, The Harbour to the relatively sophisticated and moderate Rydge’s. Employers’ expectations concerning the future may, for convenience, be divided into three categories: economic, political and in-

dustrial. On the economic front it was generally accepted that, as after World War I, peace would, in the short run, usher in a boom time for civilian producers.28 The Commonwealth government was consequently urged to boost the supply of labour through immigration programmes and extensive retraining schemes.*? The longer

view was more uncertain and employers, despite their reluctant acceptance of the need for government co-ordination of investment plans to ensure full employment,?° shared the community view that something like the prewar trade cycle would eventually reassert its authority.?! In the first two postwar years labour was viewed as by far the biggest economic problem but in 1948 the emphasis began to swing towards inflation and the possibility that 1t might spark a de-

84 Division of Labour

pression via the mechanism of pessimistic expectations.7* As the giant USA economy appeared to pause, business opinion divided between those fearing the worst and those seeking to ‘talk up’ the

economy. On the political front, employers called for ALP governments to

represent the whole community and not just industrial labour.*4 Socialism and the destruction of ‘free enterprise’ was their main fear.3> Bank nationalization was opposed with an almost religious fervour.*© In the immediate postwar years the continuance of government controls and the powers referenda were prime targets for attack?” but in some business quarters a significant strand of realism was apparent. Rydge’s, for example, saw the need to dismantle controls slowly as the economy changed over to meeting civilian demand, and occasionally spokesmen were prepared to compliment the federal government on certain limited aspects of its economic or industrial policies.?®

The majority fears of ALP bias spilled over into industrial issues. When Labor governments weren’t seen as biased they were usually accused of weakness or ‘appeasement’ in dealing with unions. Employers were aware of public sympathy for strikers?’ and at the peak of the 1946—47 union offensive against the wage-pegging Regulations they were prepared to admit that federal government policy was the major bulwark against wage increases. They did so, however, not in order to praise Chifley, but in an effort to defend their public image.*° From the earliest discussions of postwar reconstruction, employer spokesmen, while accepting the political imperative of full employment, were uneasy about its implications for industrial discipline. When a major international recession seemed to threaten in 1949,

the advocacy of Bank of NSW adviser, Professor T. Hytten, of a national policy accepting an unemployment rate of between six and

eight per cent appealed at least to the employer side of many businessmen.*! The actual existence, however, of very tight Jabour

markets and the general political mood forced a number of employers to imitate overseas business trends and begin to think seriously about improving ‘human relations’ and ‘teamwork’ within their organizations.** By thus adjusting to the strongly flowing mar-

ket tides, firms could hope to achieve three ends: the impact of labour’s bargaining power might be softened; productivity might be improved; the breeding ground for communists and other militants might be diminished.

Although ‘exercising the minds and attention of Australian businessmen as never before’,*3 the improvement of human relations in the firm was by no means universal. One contributor to Rydge’s observed that “The principles [of personnel management] are simple

yet effective and the reason why they are not universally practiced are, I am afraid, allied again to that old story of lack of managerial foresight and the desire to do things “‘the old way’’’.*+4 Thus appeals

Private-sector employers 85

- for better personnel practices, although directed to employers’ selfinterest, often fell on stony ground. Coal proprietors and Queensland meat processors paid scant heed to such notions. Another notable example concerned BHP, the nation’s largest firm. The head of its Port Kembla steelworks, Cecil Hoskins, was converted to the human relations school and spoke publicly in its support.*° Lengthy internal debate within BHP, however, saw his new-fangled ideas completely routed by more traditional autocratic views of chief executive Essington Lewis, chairman H.G. Darling and others (see Chapter 6). Equally, such industrial realists as the metal trades leaders, while conceding the virtues of a softer intra-firm approach to employees, did not allow it to prevent them from launching aggressive industrial action where they calculated it would achieve results. In their leading ranks were the MTEA and Cecil McKay, president of the VCM and head of the famous Sunshine harvester works who, according to the ALP’s John Cain, ‘has been looking for industrial fight all his life, as did his father before him’.*° Whatever their industrial posture, all employer spokesmen were sternly anti-communist. There can be little doubt that they really believed their own propaganda. The widespread employer inability to appreciate the CPA’s win-the-war policy 1s indicative of their paranoiac blind spot where dreaded communism was concerned. Employer rhetoric about the communist menace was possibly matched only in drama and violent exaggeration by the CPA leaders themselves, who usually drew incongruously in their own utterances from the international revolutionary vocabulary. Occasional realism shone through*’” but the general flavour may be conveyed by an excerpt from the run-of-the-mill address of president H. Grose, to ACCA’s 1948 annual conference: Communist agitators, avowing allegiance only to a foreign power, have been permitted to seize control of the industrial unions, to precipitate strikes for their own seditious ends without any object of improving the workers’ con-

ditions. The industrial anarchy holding up the nation’s progress must be arrested. The time has long passed for Government action. Traitorous Communists must be ousted from control of the Trade Union movement and from every section of the community. There is adequate power in the Constitution and in the Crimes Act to remove this ‘fifth column’ and to place it where it can do no harm. It is significant that the basic industries of coal, iron, steel, shipping and transport generally, have been the spearhead of the Communist’s [sic] attacks against the nation. We have seen the dastardly work of this foreign revolutionary body in the recently subjugated countries of Europe. It can, and will, happen here, if the Government continues to neglect its elementary duty and to treat Commun-

ism as a political organisation. The Australian worker is the best in the world, but parasitical Communistic technique [sic] 1s using the traditional solidarity of the worker and mateship for its own nefarious ends and to spread distress, despair and chaos as a breeding ground for its revolutionary teachings.*®

86 Division of Labour Some employers maintained a generally undifferentiated approach to local unions, as for example in this piece from The Harbour: The only place where the law does not now take its course these days is in the federal sphere and in this union ridden land of lawlessness and looting called New South Wales where the Chifleys and the McGirrs hold office to do the bidding of the bosses who whip them into line as occasion needs.*?

For others, however, their hostility to the ‘reds’ did have the advantage of causing them to attempt to distinguish between the communists, allegedly fermenting and leading most industrial disputes, and

other unionists who were apparently being misled by the red demagogues or who were actually opposed to them. Barton Pope, SACM president, offered a not untypical view. The Australian workman was, and stl is an excellent chap. . . . The core of the Country is still sound, but the present restlessness of the Australian workman plays into the hands of the disruptionist. . .Communist tactics are clear. They would induce a hell of inflation, with the pound purchasing less and less until the people may be inclined to experiment with their doc-

trines....

Probably a substantial improvement could be effected if the Communist

leaders were removed from positions in which they can dominate the unions.°°

Employers urged greater participation in union activities by their workers,>! and supported all arguments for greater government regulation of internal union affairs. High on many employers’ list was a demand that pre-strike rank-and-file ballots be made compulsory. Ironically, in Queensland where such legislation existed, employer doubts about its efficacy mounted in the late 1940s as ballots constantly revealed overwhelming rank-and-file support for strike action. By February 1950, Blackmur reports, the QEF was in ‘complete opposition’ to the idea. In its place were floated proposals to remove from striking unions the civil law immunity granted in that state and to make workers’ annual leave entitlements conditional on

pacific industrial behaviour.°* As we shall see in Chapter 11, the latter proposition had, in 1948, become a serious cause of unrest in the NSW coal industry. All employer organizations seemed to support the growing call that the CPA be outlawed>? and, where possible, they gave aid to anti-communists within the unions. In Queensland, Employers helped the cause of the [ALP] industrial groups by providing them with financial assistance, by distributing anti-communist propaganda in the workplace and by encouraging their employees to vote for grouper candidates in trade union elections. Employer organisations kept their member companies informed of the dates of various union elections and provided details of relevant industrial group tickets.*4

Pnivate-sector employers 87

South Australia had a long tradition of conciliation between cap1tal and labour. After the first wave of spontaneous unrest mmediately after the war had died down, South Australia employers did their best to cultivate a co-operative atmosphere. In 1948, for example, for

the first time ever, the SACM invited the President of the United Trades and Labor Council to attend its annual dinner. ‘Moderate’ Albie Thompson accepted the invitation and contributed to an evening of speech-making which stressed harmony and teamwork in industry.°> At this dinner it was decided that a cricket match should be played between the SACM and the UTLC. The match, won by the unionists, was played in January 1949 and the whole affair was seen by all parties as highly symbolic of the good industrial relations

in South Australia. The umpires were Premier Tom Playford and Mick O’Halloran, acting Leader of the ALP Opposition, with Sir Don Bradman relieving. The Lord Mayor of Adelaide said during his speech at the match, I was also in Sydney recently and the papers in the eastern states were very enthusiastic about this match. There is an element that does not agree with it. They call it symbolic cricket; they don’t know what that means. Russia does not play cricket; the British Empire does. (Applause)*°

While South Australian—and Tasmanian>’—employers lauded local harmony, other spokesmen could occasionally perceive justice in certain employee claims. Rydge’s supported a rise in the real basic

wage—even suggesting that the 7s interim increase of December 1946 could be ‘aborbed’ from profits.°? In other examples, both the effects on real income of wages being pegged to the artificially stabilized ‘C Series’ cost of living index and the erosion of margins for skill drew sympathy from employers.°? Amid universal employer denunciation of the 40-hour week, Sir Frank Beaurepaire in 1949 was prepared to acknowledge a 3 per cent gain in the production rate in the

tyre industry.°° Employer organizations at the federal level also sought out the ‘moderates’ among the union leadership. In particular they hoped for co-operation in improving productivity. Production and productivity drives were major items on the employers’ post-war agenda: like many ALP supporters,°! businessmen saw them crude-

ly aS compensation for increased labour costs flowing from the various improvements in postwar conditions of employment. Employers placed great emphasis on incentive wage schemes which also might lessen industrial unrest as individual workers concentrated on higher wage packets.°* Incentive schemes might also lessen interfirm competition for labour which, although continually denounced by employer associations,®* began to extend over-award payments—

hitherto limited to skilled occupations—further down the wages pyramid.

The 1947 national tripartite conference on industrial peace,

88 Division of Labour although strongly promoted by Chifley, arose from employer initiatives. It was seen as an important opportunity to gain support from the ACTU’s moderate leadership of Monk and Clarey.® At this conference ACMA led with the business case. In addition to incentive schemes, this centred around the importance of free enterprise and

the profit motive, the need for nationally co-ordinated wages and conditions, the need for management training and, “The decisive removal of Communism from our midst in all its aspects and activities (i.e. eradication)’.®©

There was little here with which either the ACTU officers or Chifley disagreed. The joint declaration signed by Chifley, Monk and ACMA president Commander L. Robinson reaffirmed all the verities held dear among employers, including the sanctity of private enterprise, the urgent need to lift production and the disavowal of ‘unauthorized’ strikes. It took three ACTU congresses before afhliated unions accepted an incentive scheme investigation but exper}ence of continued full employment and the erosion of pre-war industrial memories meant that eventually the 1927 ban on the extension of schemes was lifted.®

CHAPTER SIX

THE OPENING SALVOS: NSW STEEL AND QUEENSLAND MEAT

Some major myths about postwar industrial relations began to take shape virtually within days of Japan’s surrender. By mid-1946 many unionists were convinced that they had witnessed the launching in NSW and Queensland of a premeditated employer offensive aimed

at turning back the industrial clock to 1939. The principal firms

involved were the nation’s largest, BHP, and three powerful overseas-owned companies in the meat export sector. As against this, conservatives in politics and in the media were joined by the AWU, many in the ALP and a growing number of moderate union leaders in asserting that the very same industrial events had been caused by

devious and cynical communist manipulation of misguided and malleable workers.

In reality, BHP had endeavoured to protect, and the meat companies to restore, precious ‘managerial prerogatives’ while simultaneously the unions, responding to their aggressive rank and file, were moving forward to render their own post-war accounts to the employers. BHP’s essentially reactive moves were so provocative that they initially rallied the whole NSW labour movement—apart from the AWU—behind the steelworkers. Because the mounting union crusade threatened to destabilize his economic policy, Chifley

withheld support despite BHP’s challenge to fundamental union principle. His stance split labour. In Queensland, where the meat companies were positively thirsting for a showdown, the state ALP government was equally antipathetic to direct union action. Both NSW and Queensland arbitrators also strongly disapproved of union tactics and seemed less anxious to settle the disputes than to reassert their authority over the workforce. In both disputes the most insistently visible militants were the communists but in neither case were they doing more than reacting to unfolding events. Nevertheless, in

both states, their prominent role in these strikes not only fed the

90 Division of Labour media’s incessant anti-communist propaganda but also gave a crucial impetus to the formation of ALP Industrial Groups.

On 22 September 1945 fewer than a score of employees stopped work at the coke ovens at the Australian Iron and Steel Ltd (AIS) plant in Port Kembla.! Such were the ramifications that, by the time they returned to work on 7 January, 1946, probably more than two million working days had been lost directly and indirectly in the dispute which seemed truly to represent ‘the biggest industrial upheaval in Australia since 1917’. On the employers’ side, the small number of firms in the steel refining and steel products industries in 1945 was dominated by BHP. In the Depression it had taken over its rival steel producer, AIS, while through shareholdings and energetic leadership it exercised considerable influence on the major associated

firms in the steel products industry such as Stewarts and Lloyds, Lysaght Bros, Commonwealth Steel and Rylands Bros. The BHP—

and AIS—approach to industrial relations had traditionally been tough and unyielding, opposing the emergence of strong unions at their respective steelworks. Even the unions representing the minority of skilled men in the industry endured a very rough ride. The experience of the great majority of unskilled production steelworkers

was immeasurably worse in the high unemployment era before World War II. At various times BHP-—AIS used lockouts, shutdowns, strike breakers, company unions, blacklists, victimization, provocation and deregistration proceedings to assert control over conditions of work and to block union progress. Only fellow coal proprietors seemed to challenge BHP’s reputation as the nation’s

most unpopular employer. ‘

While the unionists vainly strove to introduce some element of the

principle of seniority to promotions and redundancy, the company was introducing the concept of.‘operative staff’ which was to poison still further the industry’s lamentable industrial relations. In return for being designated ‘staff’, joined to a none too liberal provident

fund and given continuity of employment, selected production workers resigned from the membership of their respective unions. They were not offered more pay or better working conditions. Originally, if they rejected the offer they were dismissed. The company introduced the system as a safeguard against damage to valuable plant which might be caused by sudden withdrawals of labour and too rapid cooling. In effect, however, this ploy involved the creation of a core of production workers who, as members of ‘staff’, would remain at work during any industrial dispute, thus acting as effective strike breakers. In the depths of the Depression the Newcastle and Port Kembla branches of the production workers’ FIA virtually collapsed.

In the upturn of the trade cycle, steelworkers sought some im-

The opening salvos 91

provement in their conditions. Aided by trends in the metal trades and by improving organization, FIA members were able to mount some limited offensives. The commencement of World War II saw the bargaining pendulum begin to swing towards labour. The workforce became increasingly unionized in the boom conditions; but BHP remained determined to stand firm and, 1n the early days at least, to discriminate where possible against communists.? Neither management nor labour paid much heed to the change in FIA communist officials’ attitude to the war effort after the invasion of the USSR. The major confrontations occurred in 1942 and 1943. On the first occasion the Curtin federal government was sufficiently concerned by interruptions to production to appoint a special conciliation commissioner, A. Blakeley, to investigate labour relations at AIS. His report rejected an FIA suggestion to withdraw the steel industry from the jurisdiction of the NSW Industrial Commission but for the rest it represented a severe criticism of both the ‘operative

staff’ system and the personnel policies of AIS general manager, Cecil Hoskins. The second major wartime blow-up occurred at Newcastle where

the company decided that, rather than suffer continued minor disruptions to production it should bring matters to a head. Inter alia it took legal advice from R.G. Menzies on how to put the union in the wrong under the emergency Regulations.* The issue chosen was one

concerning seniority and the use of an ‘operative staff’ man in a single blast furnace and BHP seized the opportunity to escalate the dispute. The company refused to obey the NSW Industrial Com-

mission’s order to end the lockout, whereupon Curtin used his government’s wartime powers to force BHP to reopen its works. The Commission ordered BHP to pay its workers their four days lost wages and its hearings demonstrated publicly the premeditated nature of the company’s action. As steel output continued to fall from its early wartime peak, both sides turned their thoughts towards the problems likely to face them in an uncertain postwar world. For a brief moment it seemed possible that there might be a turning aside from the well-worn path of destructive antagonism. Quite spontaneously a leader on either side separately advanced within his own camp the proposition that coOperation might replace confrontation. On labour’s side the FIA’s top official, Ernie Thornton, in 1944 was persuaded by the general

win-the-war unity evident among virtually all economic interest groups that the path to working-class progress lay through continued industrial co-operation after the war. This assessment, originating from the USA communist leader Earl Browder, was the subject of much debate among Western communist parties. Eventually the verdict was given against it and by mid-1945 Thornton had accepted the international communist line. Thornton’s views—which were couched in terms of the need for a

92 Division of Labour détente in all industries—were widely publicized at the time. In con-

trast, knowledge of the parallel move on the employer’s side was confined to BHP’s top personnel. The man involved was always re-

garded with the deepest suspicion by labour and in 1945 he was considered by many, including federal ministers, to be the agent provocateur who actually caused the explosion in the steel industry. In 1943 Cecil Hoskins came to feel—for reasons not dissimilar to those

affecting Thornton—that the time had come to change completely the relationship between company and employees. He endeavoured, therefore, to persuade BHP’s other senior executives of the need to work closely with the unions and their leaders. After extensive intracompany debate, including two major internal conferences in 1944, his views were rejected by chief executive Essington Lewis and the BHP directors. As a result AIS’s preliminary attempts to improve plant liaison with officials of the FIA and other unions were halted. Nevertheless, Hoskins remained appreciative of the unions’ view-

point and, where possible, continued to push for the adoption of more conciliatory labour policies within the company. The key to BHP executives’ approach to labour issues was ‘management prerogative’. They took what was virtually an ideological stance on this question—not an inch of ground or precedent could be yielded. Cost, or loss of profit, did not seem to enter the balance at all. At the tactical level in the 1940s, BHP management found that operation within the arbitration system best suited their ends. True to form, the company always presented an unyielding and negative

front to union claims for improvements in wages and other work conditions. The company would never indulge in meaningful direct bargaining with unions. Its industrial officers would always meet union officials and listen politely to any associated demands—but in the end the delegation would be told that all such matters could only

be determined by the arbitration tribunals. Before those tribunals the company’s battery of top-class lawyers fought dangerous precedent tooth and nail. As the bargaining pendulum swung increasingly towards labour in the war years so, too, mounted the frustration of the metal unions in their dealings with BHP.

Although confident that they, rather than the unions, knew and served the best interests of steelworkers, the company executives were aware of the increasing restiveness of their wartime workforce and also of the poor image of the company among the public at large.

Uneasily, and without much conviction, the Board approached a public relations consultant—but it was some considerable time before this had much effect. Basically the company leaders mistakenly believed that their workforce problems rested on the twin facts that (a) many of the ‘best’ employees were serving in the armed forces while

(b) the ability of management to ‘hire and fire’ as it wished was thwarted by the emergency manpower Regulations.

The opening salvos 93 On the unions’ side of the fence the FIA organized two main categories of employees: (a) unskilled and semi-skilled steelworkers; (b) labourers, tradesmen’s assistants and process workers in the metal

manufacturing industries. It was among the weakest of unions, being affected greatly by endemic unskilled unemployment prior to 1941. Its poverty and weakness engendered a vicious circle of inefficient and unco-ordinated administration. It maintained its existence essentially through the cover provided by its registration under the federal and state arbitration acts and by riding where possible on the coat tails of skilled metal workers. The FIA often sought, vainly, to amalgamate with more prosperous kindred unions. There was a strong tradition of radicalism among FIA officials. This began with the election of anarcho-syndicalist and socialist officers during World War I, two of whom became foundation members of the CPA in 1920. In the 1930s there emerged a new generation of politically radical officials who were at the helm in the 1940s when the industrial tide moved in their members’ direction. By 1945

the FIA had become the nation’s most obviously ‘communistcontrolled’ union. Between 1938 and 1944 communist majorities were elected to the relevant controlling bodies in all branches in the

four mainland eastern states. From 1939 onwards they began to restructure the union along ‘democratic centralist’ lines which by 1944 explicitly focussed power in the hands of the federal executive. Generally speaking, this reorganization was accepted by the majority of FIA rank-and-file activists as auguring a new era of efficiency and

national co-ordination of effort within the union. Here and there, however, there were pockets of resistance to the loss of local auton-

omy. By far the most significant of these was among the Sydney shipbuilding and repair workers located in the waterfront suburb of Balmain. Thus by the time of the 1945 steel stoppage the ‘Balmain dispute’—the key internal battle for power in the FIA—was well under way. This struggle between the federal officers and the dissident members of the Balmain branch was to play an important role in the eventual defeat of communist officials in the early 1950s. The Balmain episode was extremely complicated and was by no means rooted simply in anti-communism, but one important divisive element in the early stages was the FIA communists’ efforts to prevent

wartime strikes. Given the unpopularity of this tactic, there may have been an above-average determination in the FIA at the end of the war to restore the communist image of being among the van of industrial militants. In addition there can be little doubt that the FIA leaders—along with many rank and filers—were ‘feeling their oats’ in the heady atmosphere of the mid-1940s. There were two strands to this. One concerned the feeling common among all left-wingers that they were

riding the tide of history. FIA men were no exception and the

94 Division of Labour union’s weekly newspaper, Labor News, conveys the view vividly. More generally, the FIA was revelling in its new-found stability and increased public stature—both of which derived from the unprecedented demand for unskilled labour. In April 1944, general secretary Thornton declared, ‘I want to stress our prestige. I have in the past had the experience of trying to worm my way through to see people in the days when we had very little prestige and the experience now of ringing the highest government officials and seeing them jump into action’.° While still essentially a junior partner in the main

campaigns in the craft-led metal trades, the FIA officials often seemed to enjoy the occasions on which they needed to flex their new industrial muscle. The FIA’s enlarged membership came not just from the growing

unionization of the expanding wartime workforce. It also derived from the FIA’s continued—but now more successful—pursuit of amalgamation with unions in associated occupations. Wartime amalgamation discussions were undertaken with sixteen other organiza-

tions and were successful with four, the Victorian [ron Foundries Employees’ Union, the NSW Wire Workers’ Union, the Arms, Explosives and Munition Workers’ Union and the Federated Artificial Fertilisers and Chemical Workers’ Union. The last two were of the greatest, though differing, significance.

The Munitions Workers had experienced mushroom growth in the war economy, and amalgamation resulted 1n at least a doubling

of FIA nominal membership to perhaps 100 000 in mid-1943. Although the number of munition worker members declined rapidly as the domestic war economy turned down, the sheer numbers in-

volved in this amalgamation captured public and employer attention, and gave FIA officials a cockiness which sometimes bordered on arrogance. Conservatives such as Menzies came to see the FIA as a cause of the ‘rising tide of industrial lawlessness’.© The old, weak, rag-tag FIA had been largely ignored by the media and condescended to by the rest of the labour movement. In the 1940s the FIA became a major bogeyman to the overwhelmingly conservative

press and a topic of growing concern to right-wingers in the ALP and in trades halls around the country. In both these last respects the ability, energy and verve of Ernie Thornton, general secretary between 1936 and 1950, was an impor-

tant factor. It was Thornton who undertook the main liaison and negotiation with wartime government and industry, who made the major public speeches and who turned the telling phrase on both the

platform and in print. In modern jargon he was a media ‘natural’ who captured the headlines ahead of many more powerful but more

retiring or nondescript industrial figures. The FIA and Thornton were definitely the objects which the NSW media most loved to hate.

The amalgamation with the munition workers led to one paper de-

The opening salvos 95 scribing the FIA as a ‘colossus which threatens to bestride Australia’ and certainly from about this time on it is difficult to find instances when the FIA received anything approaching a ‘fair go’ in the Sydney press.

People operating within the labour movement generally knew better than to believe press reports; nevertheless an anti-FIA resent-

ment was spreading in many labour quarters. The resentment— which was hardly lessened by the boosting of Thornton’s public image in the FIA press in a manner at times redolent of overseas ‘per-

sonality cults—rested on one or both of two notions: fear of the new energetic FIA’s membership poaching and fear of communism. After a trip overseas Thornton entertained his friends with an amusing story about the alleged attempt of the United States Electrical Workers’ Union to organise all workers under electric light, but his own union in its drive for a larger membership was accused of trying to organise everyone in any way associated with iron-workers—even ‘the parson who married their mem-

bers’ according to one irate Transport Workers’ official. The Transport Workers’, the Rubber Workers’ and the Agricultural Implement Makers’ were all subject to pressure from the FIA, and the Transport Workers’ lost a number of its members.’

On the eve of the steel strike, the FIA was discussing the need to bring the automobile and plastic industries within its ambit. The FIA was a natural target of attention for anti-communists and the Balmain dispute proved something of a turning point. A small group of munition workers opposing amalgamation with the FIA were ardently supported and an anti-communist group was formed in the FIA’s Newcastle branch—although at the time of the steel dispute it constituted a small minority of members. An important component of the anti-communist alliance was the nation’s largest union, the AWU. In addition to any ideological basis for opposition, the AWU, as the organizer of unskilled workers in virtually all sectors of the economy, often clashed with the FIA on prosaic jurisdictional grounds. The AWU, encouraged by BHP, originally sought to organize steelworkers and in 1937 had opposed FIA reregistration in the NSW system. Whyalla was also the scene of much conflict, while a bitter arbitration struggle went on for five years at the Port Kembla

plants of Metal Manufactures Ltd and Electrolytic Refining and Smelting. In the 1940s employers certainly preferred the AWU to the FIA wherever possible and it was a jurisdictional dispute between the two in 1945 that helped trigger the steel strike. The chemical industry expanded considerably during the war and

the chemical workers’ union hitherto operating in Victoria and South Australia moved into NSW along with the major producer, Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI). When a merger agreement was reached with the FIA in 1943, jurisdictional disputation with the

96 Division of Labour AWU heightened. The culmination was a walkout by FIA chemical workers when two plants were inspected by a NSW Industrial Commission judge in connection with a log of claims submitted by the AWU, which had only a handful of members employed there. ‘There was some justification for FIA claims that BHP, which jointly owned a Newcastle plant with ICI, favoured the AWU and its move to avoid a federal award. Equally, the NSW Commission displayed considerable inflexibility—not to say bias—in its approach and eventual decision that the walkout of 150 chemical workers was serious enough to warrant deregistration of all 18 000 FIA members covered by state awards. Nevertheless the facts clearly are that the FIA was given every chance of backing down and avoiding deregistration by a tactical apology for its members’ actions. The FIA’s relationship with the arbitration systems at the time of the 1945 steel strike was woven from at least three main strands.

First, there was the friction arising out of legal interpretations of FIA rules in connection with the Balmain dispute and with the attempts to amalgamate with the munitions and chemical workers’ organizations. In this area the support given to the dissidents was felt by the FIA to rest in the anti-communist predilections of both the state and federal arbitrators and to contrast significantly with the treatment of appeals against alleged autocracy and corruption in the rival, but right-wing, AWU. Second, there was the element of hostility to the arbitration process arising ‘naturally’ from the fact that for some years the FIA had been on the offensive in the steel industry and the metal trades, and the FIA rank and file and their officials viewed with :mpatience and a growing resentment the slow and considered pace with which the tribunals’ decisions responded to market forces. Last, the FIA was far more disgruntled and pessimistic about the NSW tribunal than it was about the federal system. Apart

from trying to persuade the 1942 Blakeley inquiry to establish a special steel tribunal in 1942, the union had also unsuccessfully attempted to gain a steel award from the Commonwealth Arbitration Court. Much of its discontent with the NSW Commission focussed on the steel arbitrator himself, Mr Justice Cantor. Controversy had surrounded Cantor virtually since his appointment in 1927 and only

the tory Legislative Council had foiled attempts by the Lang and McKell governments to oust him (and other judges) from the Commission. The transcripts and judgements of Cantor’s cases convey two main impressions. The first 1s of a degree of paternalism combined with lofty abstraction from the grime and emotion of the shop floor. Second, Cantor was very much a lawyer’s arbitrator, one con-

cerned with precedent and legal technicalities. He was not influenced by the ‘industrial relations’ consequences of his decision. In

these circumstances the party which knows the law best will win. And in the steel industry there can be no doubt that this meant BHP.

The opening salvos 97 Back in the 1920s and 1930s there were relatively few or minor ‘industrial relations’ reactions possible after Cantor had reached such a ‘legal’ decision, 1.e., the weak FIA basically had to like it or lump it. This was no longer true in the 1940s. The ‘Parker affair’, which triggered off the massive 1945 dispute, reads in many ways like a business school case study in how not to conduct industrial relations. It revolved around the question of how dirty jobs should be dished out around the generally noxious coke ovens. BHP-—AIS saw it as a question of managerial prerogative. The union, for which Parker was a job delegate, considered that seniority

should determine allocation. While the ovens dispute still merely simmered the FIA’s deregistration came into effect and the company

refused to meet the FIA on this or any other matter. When Parker was eventually dismissed and his fellow oven workers walked out, the company replaced them with ‘operative staff’. The dispute spread rapidly, process by process, through the plant when management insisted on using operative staff output even while the product

of union labour was still available. The company further ensured the involvement of all its south coast subsidiary metal product plants

and coal mines by refusing a union request to switch their power supplies from the now ‘black’ AIS plant to the state grid. The company subsequently refused outright to negotiate with the Illawarra TLC. The specific rights and the wrongs of the Parker case were soon swamped by the issue of the FIA’s deregistration and the refusal of BHP to deal with the union or its officials. This point was recognized by all observers, including Santamaria’s weekly. There was nothing whatsoever illegal in negotiating with a deregistered union. The FIA was still a legal organization registered under the NSW Trade Union Act, with the Commonwealth Arbitration Court and with arbitration

systems in other states; deregistration simply meant it could not appear before or gain awards from the NSW commission. BHP had

in the past negotiated with NSW unions outside the auspices of the state arbitration system—notably the metal miners at Broken Hill. Thus the circumstantial evidence seemed to point to a sinister plot by BHP. The 1943 episode was a recent example of a planned

attack on growing union power. It now seemed also within the bounds of possibility that BHP was seeking a closure of its plants in order to facilitate retooling and/or reorganization for peacetime production. In reality BHP executives were essentially reacting to what they took to be the deliberate implementation of a new policy of direct bargaining by the union. BHP, like other employers, had often seen

the threat of deregistration as a useful ploy against recalcitrant unions. (Indeed at the time the NSW Commission took the initiative in the chemical workers’ case, one of BHP’s subsidiary Lysaght’s

98 Division of Labour plants was endeavouring to halt FIA members’ disruption of produc-

tion by making application for the union’s deregistration.) But to have a union actually relishing the prospect of operation outside the system was an alarming proposition. BHP had used the arbitration system well and the notion of moving into a dynamic collective bargaining system in a full employment economy was not appealing.

Hence in the fourteen days before the deregistration order took effect, BHP’s NSW management had quickly to decide how to handle the new situation. The leading role was played by the Newcastle steelworks manage-

ment, which felt that from the start the FIA should be shown the error of its ways by company executives refusing to deal with its officials. Informal discussions with executives of other BHP companies in the Newcastle area produced agreement on this policy. AIS and other south coast subsidiaries were now contacted by phone and agreed to fall into line. Finally, BHP’s head office in Melbourne was informed of the decision on 13 September. The letter conveying the information was couched in terms of the necessity to defend arbitration. No immediate repercussions were expected from the NSW ex-

ecutives’ decision but it was recognized that ‘eventually’ serious trouble might be expected with the FIA. Two points are of significance for the ‘BHP plot’ theory. BHP subsidiaries in New South Wales, such as the Commonwealth Steel Co., which operated under federal arbitration awards, continued to recognize and deal with the FIA—as did BHP itself in South Australia. Second, the letter of 13 September clearly reveals that the timing, site and selection of the issue was to be left entirely to the union. Far from coolly setting in train plans based on sophisticated multi-factoral analysis, the company and its component plants in 1945 seemed appallingly bereft of a

long view of labour relations. Figuratively speaking, a line was drawn on the ground and when labour crossed it then battle was joined, no matter the cost or the consequences.

The Parker affair, which sparked off the chain reaction was, through company eyes, all about one of the most keenly contested areas of prerogative, that of workers’ seniority rights. To allow the coke oven men their way in Parker’s case would mean the establishment of a very clear and dangerous precedent. Moreover, there was present in the Parker case a coincidental but crucial element whose importance was underestimated by contemporary observers. This is the fact that, for the first time since the rapid growth in union bargaining power, the company had the legal freedom to ‘hire and fire’ as

it chose: quite coincidentally, on 12 September, the federal government had relaxed the wartime manpower Regulations in this direction. Given the acute shortage of labour there was no question of AIS immediately setting out to purge its workforce of dissidents—and in fact Parker was not initially classed as such. Rather it was a case of

The opening salvos 99 AIS management having this important prerogative restored to them and, in their eyes, having eventually to use it in the face of repeated ‘indiscipline’ by Parker. AIS executives felt they acted with fairness

and restraint towards Parker. He was given three chances—in the process of which his colleagues greatly worsened AIS’s labour supply problems through overtime bans—before the ultimate sanction was regretfully but legally and logically imposed. AIS management was fatalistic regarding the escalation of the dispute over Parker because of the BHP group’s quite separate decision on FIA recognition: there was no possibility of management backing down from its clearly formulated position. Equally, it was management’s clear prerogative to use its staff and to direct the plant’s intermediate output as and how it wished. No compromise was imag-

inable on this crucial point. When all but the operative staff had left the plant the effort to confine the dispute through the unions’ offer to substitute ‘white’ power for ‘black’ was seen as a totally unacceptable attempt to interfere in the way the company ran its operations. When the [Illawarra TLC approached AIS to negotiate a settlement it had to be rebuffed—for company policy was clear: all work issues must be settled by arbitration and not by direct negotiations. The calm fatalism of company executives at Port Kembla as the in-

dustrial world crashed around them has few parallels. Once the boundaries of the dispute had been explosively defined, AIS management sat back behind their thicket of ‘principles’ and waited for the 6000 strikers to come to their senses. A bald statement of the causes of the dispute as AIS management saw them was issued in the local press. Thereafter there was virtual silence from the company. It maintained its limited production rates as best it could—and there is no evidence of any advantageous retooling or reorganization taking place in the absence of the non-staff workforce.

An examination of how, five weeks later, the dispute spread to Newcastle provides further evidence of both the company’s mis--. judgement of the key moods of its own workforce and an indication

of just how high could be the costs of standing rigidly behind the sanctity of management prerogative. The company in 1945 saw the main union threat to its operations as stemming from the increasing aggression of the coalminers. By October 1945 company coal stocks were falling as consumption exceeded weekly supply. With a general coal stoppage always a possibility the Newcastle management made

an estimate of the amount of coal that would be required in such circumstances ‘to close down the plant and maintain the three batteries of coke ovens at safe temperature’.2 The conclusion was that to maintain requisite stocks, steel production should be cut by 40 per cent. The plant management prided themselves on minimizing the number of men to be laid off, and drew the line at 362—or approximately 5 per cent of the Newcastle workforce. So far so good. But in

100 Division of Labour implementing its decision the Newcastle management displayed sur-

prising ignorance of the fundamental requirements of either good labour relations or good PR. Just as at Port Kembla, the company found itself unable either to stop or get off the escalator at any of the three levels of the burgeoning dispute because of its inflexibility concerning anything that it defined as management prerogative.

On 28 October BHP’s Newcastle works manager, K. Butler, made a fairly bald announcement that, due to a shortage of coal, a battery of by-product coke ovens would be closed.? The trouble began when it was discovered that BHP were ignoring seniority principles in laying off 109 coke oven workers. Some of those dismissed had

Over twenty years service with the company. Nothing could have been better planned to cause an immediate and angry response from the Newcastle workers. Yet, incredible as it may seem, company records indicate not a calculated move to spread the dispute, but rather an automatic exercise of much cherished ‘management prerogative’ in what were the first Newcastle layoffs since the relaxation of the manpower Regulations. One of the ‘senior’ men dismissed, for example, was a bookie’s runner with a very poor recent work record. Once the decisions were made there was never any question for BHP

of turning back, although private regrets were expressed that a World War I serviceman was inadvertently included among those dismissed. The company now found itself again trapped on the escalator for, after 500 open hearth workers called a stop-work meeting, attempts at negotiations broke down when the company stood by its decision not to meet with any FIA official. The third and ultimate stage of dispute followed automatically from the company’s insistence on utilizing the other management prerogative—the use of operative staff in the strikers’ place. As in Port Kembla this ensured the spread of the dispute to every corner of the plant and into associated

industries. By 6 November an estimated 7000 were out, including .1000 Rylands workers who refused to use BHP power, plus seamen on the ore ships at the BHP wharf who objected to staff labour on the

ore grabs. This effectively blocked all other BHP shipping. Members of the operative staff and others still working at BHP were now provided with police escorts. As at AIS the fourteen other unions involved refused to meet BHP officials in the absence of the FIA. Throughout the remainder of the dispute BHP stood fast, presenting a stern, unyielding face to the public and adding greatly to its image of imperviousness. During the strike BHP officials made hardly any direct public comment, although the press did its best to argue their case. Yet there is no doubt that its executives were surprised by the scale of events—particularly the spread of the dispute at Newcastle and its unification with the south coast stoppage. Nor did they expect that their actions at Port Kembla and Newcastle and their refusal to negotiate with the FIA would eventually bring about

The opening salvos 101

that total stoppage of coal production which they had always feared. When it happened, they apportioned sole responsibility to the Communist Party. Company records also belie allegations that it deliberately closed the works to undertake repairs and plant renovation on the cheap. In reality it experienced difficulty in performing requisite

maintenance work during the stoppage. Indeed the company was prepared to reopen the Newcastle plant as soon as the coal situation improved and this was made clear within days of the original layoffs. One internal estimate suggests that the strike cost the company £1.8 million (approximately $41.4 million in 1987 prices). So far beyond expectations did the dispute go that, ‘for the first time in 25 years’.!° Essington Lewis was eventually prepared to negotiate directly with government ministers and ACTU leaders.

On the FIA’s side there is no doubt that it was completely taken aback by events. It, too, sadly lacked any strategists among its executive officers. In September 1945 excited ad hocery ruled. When the issue of deregistration arose—largely as a result of spontaneous rank-and-file action in what was to the FIA a minor industry—the

union’s leaders abandoned arbitration without much apparent thought or consultation. Secretary Thornton departed for a longplanned trip to Europe, leaving no tactical blueprint to follow. Instead the FIA appeared ready to play future industrial relations by ear. There is no evidence that its leaders made any effort to assess the likely response of their members’ major employer to the most impor-

tant development in industrial relations in the history of the steel

industry. The BHP group’s actual reaction came as a surprise. Nevertheless, carried along by the ‘tide of history’ euphoria and confident that an issue as fundamental as recognition of the union itself could be expected to range the whole labour movement behind the

FIA, its officials turned readily and confidently to parry what they interpreted as the premeditated attack of the steel company. What they did not anticipate was the opposition of the federal government. This stemmed from justifiable fears that this popular dispute might prove the launching pad for an unstoppable drive for a national 40-hour week, the demand for which had been at the top of labour’s agenda since the Depression. Curtin had promised a 40hour week in his 1937 policy speech and had co-moved the relevant 1943 ALP conference resolution. The argument, explicitly accepted by Curtin, had long been that the Commonwealth parliament could, under the external affairs power in the Constitution, legislate to ratify the 1935 ILO hours convention. The emergency powers acquired under the National Security Act now offered another route to

the objective. Chifley, however, had no intention of moving. If pressed by the unions or by left-wingers such as Eddie Ward he talked of constitutional barriers and likely High Court vetoes. The Sydney Sun was closer to the truth. ‘Chifley believes that to grant a

102 Division of Labour universal 40-hour week now would cause unemployment, wreck the carefully built up prices stabilisation structure and plunge the nation into inflationary chaos’.!! When the Port Kembla dispute erupted, unco-ordinated attempts had already begun to implement the shorter week. Some gains had

been notched up during the war by the traditional pacesetters. In coalmining the shorter week had been extended to surface workers and in October 1944 printers, backed by journalists, had conducted successful strikes against the Sydney newspaper proprietors who speedily conceded 40 hours. In July 1945 the New South Wales commercial printers made their move. They decided overwhelmingly to inaugurate a 40-hour week by ceasing all Saturday work. The Printing and Allied Trades Employers’ Federation responded with mass dismissals and a move to deregister the unions. The recommendations of the federal and state executives of the Printing Industry Em-

ployees’ Union of Australia (PIEUA) that the rank and file back down were rejected at three consecutive mass meetings. The PIEUA executive fought to keep the dispute under its control, fearing that, if the NSW Labor Council took over, a general strike in commercial printing would ensue because of the eagerness of other unions on the hours issue. !4

Some 3000 printers had been out for seven weeks when Parker was dismissed but a stoppage over hours at the Bunnerong Power House, Sydney, between 2 September and 22 October, attracted far more attention in the metropolitan press than even the steel strike. This power dispute, with roots dating back to 1943, contains many salutary lessons for the ‘red conspiracy’ school of industrial relations. Matters were generally exacerbated by the ham-fisted autocracy of the Sydney County Council’s general manager but for their part the

strikers were at various times denounced by their left-wing union

leaders, by the Industrial Commission and by the NSW Labor Council. At one time the Labor Council president, for example, saw ‘sinister influences’ behind the strikers, including an unholy alliance between the Lang party, the Trotskyites and anonymous vested interests who all aimed to wreck the labour movement by bringing on a 1917 general strike situation. The Sydney Morning Herald was puzzled by the strike because ‘known Communists’ had

deplored it, but its writer consoled himself with the thought that perhaps they were backing it in secret.!3

Within this general setting of industrial turbulence the great majority of labour opinion rallied around the central steel strike issue of employer recognition of the FIA. The stance of Hamilton Knight,

the NSW Minister for Labour and Industry, was representative of the ALP. The refusal of the company to meet the representative of the Ironworkers Union is in my opinion untenable. The ironworkers are still a registered

The opening salvos 103 trade union and they have rights and privileges under the law. The fact that they are deregistered under the Industrial Arbitration Act deprives them only of their right to go before the court. . . How can there be peace and harmony in an industry if either side takes the view that it will not recognize the elected representatives of the other side. !4

A grim sense of déja vu predominated among most unions, as AIS’s actions were viewed as part of an employer plan to revert to prewar conditions. By the nature of a number of disputes at present in operation there appears to be no doubt that the employers of labour are picking the time and place in an endeavour to break down the industrial organisation and the strength of the Unions that have been built up by the workers during the war years, and if successful is only a forerunner to what their post-war policy is to be.!>

On 24 September the Illawarra TLC decided to ask the Chifley and McKell governments to help bring about a conference of all parties and called for a reopening of the 1942 Blakeley inquiry into AIS industrial relations. The first mass meeting of strikers drew up settlement terms which, in addition to Parker’s reinstatement, recognition of the FIA and no victimization, called for a meeting with the AIS board of directors and management within seven days of resumption to discuss the claims of the nine-union Metal Trades Federation (MTF) which was simultaneously endeavouring to persuade the federal government to legislate for a standard 40-hour week. On

20 October the NSW Labor Council’s disputes committee convened a conference of all unions involved at AIS which formally endorsed the dispute. Trades and Labor Councils in other states declared their support. The MTF now drew up and served on BHP-— AIS a fourteen-point list of demands including a 40-hour week, wage

increases, union preference, new grievance procedure and much more besides. Two weeks earlier the arbitration-minded NSW government had referred the matter of Parker’s dismissal to the Industrial Commission and Mr Justice Cantor was there conducting leisurely hearings. By now calls were being made from several quarters for stronger action to produce a shorter week, since ACTU negotiations were

making no headway. On 16 October, for example, H. Wells, the miners’ communist president, called for an amalgamation of the Bunnerong, Port Kembla and commercial printers’ disputes into a co-ordinated demand by the whole union movement for a 40-hour week. This seemed to fit neatly with the backing given to the idea of state-wide 24-hour stoppages in support of the shorter week by G.

Anderson, President of the NSW Labor Council and prominent

ALP member. Most attention and agitation was centred around the Bunnerong dispute. Notable outward similarities to the steel dispute include workers’ objections to interpretations of Cantor and the Industrial

104 Division of Labour Commission, vociferous demands for federal government intervention and categoric refusals from Chifley. By mid-October the Labor Council was fully behind the Bunnerong strikers, whose dispute was causing severe power shortages and the displacement of an estimated 150000 workers. The McKell state government was gravely embarrassed by the dispute, the NSW Industrial Commission was claiming that the wage-pegging regulations prevented it from granting a 40-

hour week and Chifley was coming under severe criticism from unionists of all shades of opinion. Nevertheless, the Prime Minister was still publicly refusing to intervene 24 hours before he performed the requisite U-turn. The main factors persuading him to change his stance were the Labor Council’s threat to consider a one-day general stoppage on the 40 hours issue plus the declared intention of coalminers and transport workers fully to support the strikers. Chifley headed off the explosion by at long last invoking the national security Regulations. The power men returned to work on condition that a federal judge inquire into hours at Bunnerong. Chifley avoided the broader issue by declaring that in the next parliamentary session the

Commonwealth Arbitration Act might be amended to allow the Court to introduce a 40-hour week. The Opposition and the press attacked Chifley’s intervention as weakening the state Industrial Commission, but J.A. Beasley, Minister for Defence, defended the Prime Minister, saying ‘An important factor in the problem was the retention of the Economic Regulations in their present form. These regulations were designed to stabilise the financial structure and maintain the purchasing power of the pound. . . Mr Chifley did not concede anything’.!© Militants tended to agree with Beasley’s interpretation. Communist T. (Tom) Wright put their viewpoint cogent-

ly when he argued that the Labor Council’s decision to end the Bunnerong dispute ...Meant abandoning a strong tactical position when on the verge of obtaining a great victory of 40 hours a week. . . I think Mr Chifley is a good

Prime Minister, but, like most Labor men, he is also a good capitalist. I think it is as clear as daylight that the Labor Governments are fighting against the introduction of a 40 hour week. I think Mr Chifley bluffed and hoodwinked the Labor Council representatives when he was on the verge of defeat. The Council should have demanded the repeal of the National Security (Economic) Regulations before they agreed to a settlement of the Bunnerong dispute. !’

Little more was subsequently heard of the plan to interlock the main

NSW industrial disputes into a 40-hour-week campaign, even though the less publicized commercial printers stayed out for another month. On 19 November they voted to return to work to allow the Arbitration Court to hear their 40 hours claim, which it could do promptly because the 1942 commercial printing case had granted the union leave of reserve on the matter of hours.

The opening salvos 105 In the second stage of the steel dispute, moderate unionists began to fear the electoral consequences of the damage which the lengthy dispute was wreaking on the economy and thus applied pressure on the striking unions to bring about a return to work. As against this the militants began to lose patience with Chifley’s refusal to take a stand on such a fundamental issue as union recognition and came to see an extension of the strike as the only way of persuading him to intervene and bring about an end to the dispute. Thus the original

unity of support for the strikers broke down. Increasingly, those who felt that the strikers and the FIA should back down argued that the Communist Party was using the dispute for its own sinister ends.

Throughout the increased wrangling the strikers themselves remained quite solid. After the extension to Newcastle a black ban was observed by all unions but pleas mounted for intervention by the Prime Minister a la BHP 1943 or Bunnerong 1945. On 7 November, however, Chifley

made it quite clear that he did not propose to imitate Curtin’s intervention in the 1943 dispute. Simultaneously the right-wingers on

the NSW Labor Council began to call for the FIA to apply for reregistration. A conference between Hamilton Knight and BHP representatives was unproductive so Knight made representations on the 15th to federal minister Holloway who publicly described the employers’ refusal to meet the FIA as ‘reactionary’ and ‘indefensible’. Premier McKell then formally wrote to Chifley asking him to ‘give early consideration’ to the striking unions’ request for a confer-

ence and conveyed Knight’s opinion that BHP was ‘in error’ for refusing to meet the FIA. On 18 November, BHP announced that it now had enough coal to resume normal operations at Newcastle, and laid-off workers were to be reinstated. The strikers, however, voted next day not to return until the Port Kembla dispute was settled. The Newcastle ‘reopen-

ing’ provided a public relations bonus to the anti-union press. To some unionists among the many who believed that BHP had brought about the Newcastle extension in order to crush steel unionism, the reopening represented a clear victory which should be grasped immediately. To opponents of the stoppage the BHP move appeared to sweep away completely the cause of the Newcastle dispute, i.e., the breaching of seniority principles in the open hearth department. The AWU had denounced the FIA communists from the start and now called on the Labor Council to direct an immediate resumption of work. Simultaneously, Chifley reiterated that he had no intention of intervening, “the men’s case is in the hands of the NSW Labor Council and the matter is one for the State Arbitration Court’.!® On 22 November the Labor Council voted, after bitter debate, by 123 to 98 not to endorse a transport ban on all plants involved and to recom-

mend that the FIA apply for reregistration. This gave important

106 Division of Labour

moral support to the anti-communists who now began to emerge publicly in slightly larger numbers in Newcastle. At an unruly mass meeting of 2000 strikers on 23 November the AWU, supported by local AEU officials, claimed that communists had engineered the dispute in order to discredit the Labor governments, called for a secret ballot on whether to return to work and demanded that the FIA seek

reregistration. In response the strike leaders emphasized that the Labor Council had not asked for a return to work and argued that FIA reregistration was useless without some assurance that they would not be faced with ‘judges who are biased and in the employers’ favour’.!? Meanwhile on the coalfields nine northern miners’ lodges decided to stop work in sympathy with the steelmen. Simultaneously a demarcation issue between miners and stationary

engine drivers of the Federated Engine Drivers’ and Firemen’s Association of Australasia (FEDFA) reached flashpoint and closed three mines. On 26 November the Prime Minister made an important speech to

| the federal ALP conference in Melbourne. He revealed that he did not intend to implement the decision of the 1943 federal conference to legislate for a 40-hour week within six months of the war’s end, nor to increase the basic wage by Regulation, nor to end the wage peg.2° On that very day, however, the coalminers’ northern board of management issued an ultimatum. If the Prime Minister did not intervene in the steel dispute within 48 hours then it would seek to set

in motion the relevant procedural machinery within the Miners’ Federation to call aggregate meetings of members to discuss a general coal strike. The key factor in its decision was the financial drain of

the present partial stoppage. Simultaneously the FEDFA demarcation dispute worsened and the FEDFA held a 24-hour coalfield stoppage on the 27th. A meeting of seamen in Sydney called for Chifley’s intervention

and requested their union executive to consider ways of further assisting the steelworkers—1including a general stoppage. A 24-hour strike of Sydney members of the NSW Building Trades Group was

set for the 30th and one by NSW FIA members outside the steel industry for 4 December. On 29 November, the day on which the Commonwealth Court began hearing the commercial printers’ 40hour case, Clarey made it known that the ACTU was prepared to handle the steel dispute if the Labor Council so desired. In doing so he attacked the militants as being ‘surprisingly uncooperative’ and declared that ‘some peculiar things were taking place. . . a challenge which it must accept had been thrown out to the ACTU’.#!

The ALP conference made only a partial response to Chifley’s speech. On the wages issue it merely called for government support of a basic wage increase at an Arbitration Court inquiry but on the question of hours it categorically reiterated the 1943 resolution.

The opening salvos 107

When standing orders were suspended to discuss the steel strike, a motion was carried unanimously supporting the Labor Council and attacking the possible coal extension. Jack Ferguson’s views were representative. ‘I am not a Red baiter, but I declare that the Communists have changed their line and are issuing Labor with a challenge which we must accept to save the Government from being dragged down’.24 Among the unions Ferguson’s NSW ARU branch backed his stand by declaring that railwaymen would not become

involved in any shipping dispute unless directed by the Labor Council. Instead they would handle the movement of any essential commodities diverted to land routes. In contrast to this the northern district miners decided on a 24-hour stoppage to support the demand for federal government intervention. The western district miners called aggregate meetings with the object of recommending a general strike. The seamen’s federal executive issued a statement deplor-

ing Chifley’s inactivity and what it saw as the anti-communist smokescreen. On 30 November, while all fifty-two northern pits stopped work, a six-and-a-half-hour meeting of the miners’ central council decided

to recommend to mass meetings in all NSW fields on 3 December that all coal production in the state cease from that time and that the council be empowered to extend the stoppage to all pits in Australia on 5 December if considered necessary. The federal executive of the Seamen’s Union also decided to withdraw its members on 3 Decem-

ber from all ships carrying NSW coal and steelworks products. In retaliation the executive of the Labor Council’s land transport group decided to recommend affiliates to stop all forms of transport in the coalfields and to refuse to handle goods in any industry which temporarily employed coal strikers. In Newcastle a mass meeting of 400 AEU members unanimously supported the JLabor Council stand

and called for an approach to BHP management ‘to ascertain the company’s terms of resumption’. The ALP conference ended with the press forecasting an Australia-wide campaign against the communists. The NSW branch certainly moved speedily along this path with the Hunter electorate council feeling that, since apathy of the ‘genuine unionist’ was the root cause of the problem, ‘It was decided to urge that sub-branches of the ALP be organised in industries. State branches will be asked to support the move’ .?? The split within and between unions widened daily. In Victoria a mass meeting of ARU members differed from Ferguson by calling for full support of the steelworkers and intervention by Chifley. By vigorously supporting the FIA, the AEU’s federal, Sydney and Port Kembla echelons contradicted its Newcastle branches. The NSW Blacksmiths’ Society was similarly divided. The AFULE lent its support to the suspension of transport in the coal areas but the TWU denounced the idea. The FEDFA state executive arranged mass

108 Division of Labour meetings in order to consider recommendations for a general strike in the coalfields.

On Sunday, 2 December, the ACTU took over ‘control’ of the strike and Clarey appealed to miners and seamen to reject an extension arguing that ‘another 1917 general strike resulting from divided leadership would be even more disastrous than the result of the 1917 trouble itself’. For its part, the NSW Liberal Party foresaw ‘revolution, anarchy and bloodshed’.2+ On 3 December the miners and seamen decided to extend the stoppage, followed next day by FEDFA

men on the northern field. The impact was immediate. The state government imposed power restrictions more severe than anything known during the Bunnerong dispute, throwing idle an estimated 300 000 workers.

At long last, eleven weeks after Parker’s dismissal, serious negotiations aimed at ending the steel dispute began. Chifley instigated them because of the fuel crisis. The basic settlement terms thrashed out after a series of meetings and telephone calls, and finally accepted by all parties on 14 December, were as follows: (a) Parker to appeal to the NSW Industrial Commission against Cantor’s decision; (b) the FIA to apply to the Commission for reregistration; (c) in the meantime BHP-AIS to recognize FIA shop delegates among its employees; (d) no victimization of strikers; (e€) when normal production rates were achieved the company would meet officials from all registered steel unions for the purpose of discussing matters suggested by the unions. During the negotiations BHP enjoyed the best position. The fact that the company was anxious to end this costly dispute 1s indicated by Essington Lewis’ unprecedented preparedness to negotiate with ACTU representatives and government ministers. Nevertheless the company’s hand was greatly strengthened by awareness of the public disagreements within the labour movement. This was particularly so on the key issue of recognition of the FIA. All Lewis had to do was stand pat. The main ground yielded by BHP, apart from appearing to agree to negotiate seriously with all registered steel unions after resumption, was (a) it agreed to re-employ F.S. Ward, an FIA delegate in the open hearth at Newcastle who had led an intimidatory campaign against members of BHP’s operative staff; (b) it agreed to take back as production workers forty-three members of the operative staff who had joined the strikers; (c) it dropped its attempt to join to the general settlement a separate dispute at Lysaght’s plant at Chiswick. On the other side of the bargaining table the ACTU negotiators (Clarey, Anderson and Kelly), enjoyed neither the same dedication to their brief nor the same independence and autonomy of action. Clarey and Kelly were now privately concerned only to get the strikers back to work. Yet the ACTU full executive, to which they had to

The opening salvos 109 report, would not at first accept BHP’s refusal to meet FIA officials pending reregistration. It insisted instead on one last unsuccessful effort to persuade the Prime Minister to throw his weight behind this basic union principle.*° As for the striking unions, the key to FIA policy by this stage was financial. It had never been a rich union. Its mushroom wartime growth gave an illusion of financial power but in

per capita terms its resources were scanty. In absolute terms its funds were reduced both by the decline of membership due to the great fall in the munitions workforce and also by the untimely purchase of a new Sydney headquarters. In these circumstances the FIA’s

fate rested clearly in the hands of the stronger partners who had so recently made the FIA’s cause their own. While maintaining as bold a front as possible the FIA leaders soon came to realize that, short of federal government support, they would have to agree to reregister with the NSW Industrial Commission and settle for a recognition of their shop delegates in the meantime. The press and the FIA’s other Opponents presented their eventual acceptance of this as a shattering defeat. In fact while a long way from its heady abandon immediately after deregistration, the FIA’s decision was not nearly such an about-

face as its enemies suggested. As early as 1 November an FIA spokesman made it clear that the union would ‘seriously consider’ reregistering if cases were heard more speedily. On 3 December, before the actual extension to the coalfields, the Newcastle branch declared its conditional support for reregistration. When the union agreed to apply for reregistration it did so after assurances that no employer or union would oppose its application*® and, most significantly, in the belief that BHP was prepared, at long last, to negotiate with it and other unions outside the Industrial Commission. The most important of the FIA’s allies, the miners’ union, had finally thrown its whole weight into the dispute because of the drain on its funds from the ongoing original partial stoppage. One glance at the miners’ history during the war and their officials’ inability to ‘control’ the rank and file is sufficient to render absurd the notion that the rank-and-file miners were mere communist pawns in the

steel strike. Most miners had a genuine sympathy for the steel-

workers. Their leaders were a mixture of ALP and CPA members. It is abundantly clear that the latter had absolutely no intention of using the strike in an endeavour to bring down the ALP state and federal governments. In the negotiations within the ACTU executive and with the Prime Minister, Wells, backed by E.V. Elliott of the seamen’s union, eventually accepted the concessions offered to the steelworkers by BHP as the best available short of creating a truly major rift in the union movement. With the other union leaders they read great significance into BHP’s apparent agreement at last to negotiate important conditions of work with the steelworkers’ union. In addition neither miners nor seamen acted purely out of

110 Division of Labour altruism and pity for the steelmen. As part of the general settlement the miners obtained definite promises concerning NSW and federal government plans for the coal industry while the seamen received assurances that their pay would not suffer through withdrawal of their war risk bonus. The remaining parties to the settlkement negotiations were the NSW and federal governments. The role of the former during the dispute was relatively straightforward. From the first it had sought to end the dispute but had hamstrung itself by refusing to sidestep the Industrial Commission. It had criticized BHP for its refusal to

recognize the FIA but refused to take any action to aid its union supporters. Instead, once its own fairly feeble attempts at mediation

had failed, it had sought federal intervention and was content to follow Chifley’s lead.

The true motives of the Chifley government were obscured from most observers. From the beginning, the dispute involved a key sector of the economy, it centred around the most basic labour issue of union recognition and originally enjoyed the backing of all sectors of

the labour movement save the AWU and the most rabid anticommunists. Yet widespread and constant pleas for federal interven-

tion were ignored by a Labor government until the fuel crisis put some 500000 jobs in danger*’” and, when it did become involved and

brought the parties together in negotiations, it exerted most of its pressure on the unions rather than on the steel monopoly. It is not completely surprising that most people outside the striking unions resolved the paradox with some version of the theory that Chifley was reacting to a wicked communist plot. Although even Santamaria’s Freedom agreed that the CPA did not want a general strike and did not plan FIA deregistration?® there is no doubt that the twists in CPA policy in the preceding decade had aroused great suspicion in ALP ranks unconnected with ideological anti-communism. In the

1943 election, for example, the ALP had indulged in quite fierce partisan attacks on the CPA despite the latter’s devotion to both the war effort and the return of the Curtin government.

What is more surprising is that the communists themselves seemed to settle for a mainly political motivation for the Chifley gov-

ernment’s attitude. Wells, for example, claimed that ‘Chifley told him he would have intervened if he had not been told to keep out while the dispute was fought out in the movement’.?? This fits in with the CPA view that ‘the right wing clique controlling the NSW Labor Council. . .composed of rabid, redbaiting representatives of the AWU bureaucracy and political ‘‘Catholic Action”. . . told the Federal Government not to intervene, treacherous advice which the Federal Government unwisely accepted’.?° Despite their much vaunted analytic prowess the communist leaders proved seldom able to grasp the primacy and thrust of Chifley’s economic policy. In con-

The opening salvos II]

trast some employer spokesmen clearly understood where their interests lay during the steel dispute and applauded the Prime Minister’s containment of the union break-out.?!

When the arguing and haggling between the parties had finally ended and all the loose ends were neatly wrapped into a settlement formula, only two tasks remained. First, the approval of the various negotiators’ constituents had to be obtained. In the case of Lewis and the governments, this was no problem at all. The BHP directors and ALP politicians were quite satisfied. The miners and the seamen

voted to return, although no coal would enter the steel plants nor BHP cargoes be handled until the steelworkers went back. FEDFA coalfield members agreed to return after receiving government assur-

ances concerning their demarcation problem. The steelworkers, however, belied all press propaganda about a humiliating capitulation by remaining out for over three weeks longer. At well attended

mass meetings they accepted the important gain represented by BHP’s apparent agreement to negotiate directly with the unions after resumption. They decided, however, not to return to work until the company agreed to treat with all their chosen officials. This meant no resumption until the FIA reregistration was complete. Further, the

Port Kembla strikers resolved to stay out until Parker was reinstated. The second task was 1n essence the simple formality of having the Industrial Commission rubber-stamp the legal aspects of the settlement formula. Yet while formality came easily to the NSW arbitration machinery of the day, anything simple presented problems. The

Commission had proved most unhelpful in bringing an end to the dispute; indeed the dispute was settled despite the Commission’s efforts rather than because of them. The main problem centred around the fact that no one in state government or arbitration circles was either able or prepared to go over the head of Cantor, the established steel arbitrator. For his part, Cantor stood on his dignity and by the very letter of the law. Seldom did he seem interested in conciliating between the parties. He convened conferences at various times but these all proved useless because he refused to allow FIA representation. The timing of some of these conferences was criticized by the strikers who felt that at least twice they were deliberate-

ly designed to nip in the bud the proposed intervention of other potential conciliators such as Knight, Senator Ashley (Minister for Supply and Shipping) and Coal Commissioner N. Mighell. Cantor refused even to make a request to the company to meet the FIA. The

judge seemed ignorant or careless of the possible inflammatory effects of his utterances. In refusing (with Mr Justice Kinsella) FIA

representation in an application concerning two metal workers’ awards filed before deregistration, Cantor believed ‘that the AWU, which was a registered union, was better qualified to present the

112 Division of Labour metal workers’ case than the FIA which, being deregistered was not competent to appear before the Commission’ .*2

The ambiguity of the judge’s role is best demonstrated in his consideration of the state government’s referral to him of Parker’s dismissal. He began hearing the matter on 5 October. The government’s counsel argued strongly for Parker’s reinstatement but Cantor was impressed neither by the government’s sense of urgency nor by the ominous developments in the dispute which were occurring outside the courtroom—including the extension to Newcastle. Despite parliamentary criticism, the nine days of hearings were spread over three weeks and the judgement was not presented for a further

fortnight. During the hearings Cantor made it clear that he would not be influenced by the industrial ramifications of the issue. His was a narrowly legalistic approach. He would not, for example, allow the FIA’s P. McHenry to talk of the effects of deregistration on the dispute. All that concerned him was whether AIS was justified in dismissing Parker. In his judgement he came down completely on the side of the company. Coming from a man involved in arbitration all his working life the judgement revealed what can only charitably be

described as astonishing naivety concerning the crude realities of industrial relations. Despite the industry’s history of seniority controversies and the crucial significance of the company’s refusal to discuss the matter with FIA officials, Cantor remarked, It is fantastic to believe that a dispute such as the one that occurred on the 15th and again on the 22nd September should be fought out on the job, work being held up in the meantime. An employee who is unwilling to obey the reasonable orders of his employer may elect to leave his employment, and if he should be dismissed for his refusal it does not lie in his mouth to complain.*?

The steel dispute was, of course, settled by negotiations between the parties concerned. The settlement included the reinstatement of Parker and this obviously necessitated the Commission giving its legal sanction to the deal. Usually in such cases some window-dressing is required so that the tribunal’s face is preserved before incurious

outsiders. Privately, the bench admitted reality by endeavouring confidentially ‘in chambers’ to have AIS re-employ Parker ‘tempo-

rarily’ during the hearings. The judges (Ferguson, Kinsella and Taylor) were furiously embarrassed when their approach was leaked to the press—almost certainly through an FIA source. Yet whatever

its private embarrassment, the Commission’s public image was greatly aided by BHP. The company’s executives knew, of course, that Parker had to be reinstated, but because they viewed arbitration as the sole arena for the determination of working conditions, they were anxious not to allow any dangerous, loose precedents to be

established in the reinstatement case. Hence they rejected the bench’s suggestion and formally opposed Parker to the bitter end.

The opening salvos 113 In their eventual findings the judges first went through the solemn and intricate ritual of explaining in purely legal terms exactly why

and how they were hearing the appeal against Cantor’s decision. This involved a grave examination of relevant statutes and case-law precedents. No mention was yet made of the stark industrial realities

behind the solemn courtroom ritual. After this requisite preamble the bench reinterpreted the evidence presented to Cantor and found that a ‘proper case’ had been made out for the bench’s intervention on behalf of Parker. Having strained at the gnat the Bench now swallowed the camel. On the twentieth page of a twenty-one-page judgement the Bench referred to the fact that Parker’s dismissal had resulted in a large and costly strike. At this point the previous ponderous concern for legal trivia disappeared as the Bench hastened to reinterpret events with breath-taking audacity but with paradoxically scant regard for legal

facts. While admitting that BHP ‘is not to be absolved from criticism’ the judges laid most of the blame for the dispute at the feet of the FIA. In doing so they claimed (a) that the FIA was not deregistered at the time of Parker’s dismissal and (b) that the strike was illegal. Despite all the crowded drama of the preceding three months Parker’s reinstatement was, in the judges’ categoric opinion, unconnected with the strike and its settlement. “The reinstatement of Mr

Parker has now been achieved, not through the strike, but by the order of this Commission, and this order could have been obtained by Mr Parker without the loss of employment or wages by him or by any of his fellow employees’ .?+ This calculated misinterpretation of fact was disseminated by the daily press with nary a blush. For failing to comply with the bench’s ex post facto reinterpretation of events Parker was granted no retrospectivity of pay with his reinstatement.

The other rubber stamp which the strike settlement terms required from the Commission was on the FIA’s application for re-

registration. The Commission, of course, strongly resented the challenge to its prestige which the FIA’s attitude to arbitration represented. It was further upset by the leaking of its suggestion that Parker be re-employed by AIS. The last straw came when the FIA,

in the person of McHenry, refused to approach the bench in the requisite spirit. Instead McHenry broke the arbitration practitioners’ code by treating the hearing as the farce it undoubtedly was and by refusing to offer the usual solemn expressions of regret for past

misdemeanours and promises to behave better in the future. Left without a feather with which to fly, the Bench refused reregistration. For a moment the industrial world stopped spinning. Wiser counsels then prevailed and the FIA executive made the tactical concession of

providing the emperor with new clothes by offering the standard, meaningless assurances. These were gratefully accepted by the Com-

mission at a special Saturday morning hearing, two days after McHenry’s outburst. The daily press was left to point to the impor-

114 Division of Labour

tant victory of the ‘due processes’ of arbitration over the sinister communist conspiracy.>°

The impact on the public of all this window-dressing is hard to assess. We can be confident that at the outset of the strike a majority of public opinion supported the steelworkers. The dispute was initially posed by virtually all labour spokesmen in terms of an assault by the nation’s most powerful employer on the fundamental principle of recognition of its employees’ trade union. For their part, BHP executives made relatively little effort to explain their views and actions. Consequently clear analogies were drawn with the employers’ offensive of 1928-30. In the communities most severely affected by

the dispute—the steel centres—it seems clear that support for the strikers was maintained right to the bitter end. Evidence for this view includes the liberal response to fund-raising activities; the turn-

out and response to public meetings, processions and picnics; the attitudes of civic bodies; the moderate tone of local ALP spokesmen even after the major swing in the official ALP attitude towards the strike leaders; and the many instances of businessmen, professionals, local traders and farmers offering their services or produce free to strikers. The generally united community spirit was remarked on by all leading participants and was aided by the strikers’ happy sense of public relations which included, for example, sending squads of steelmen to repair storm-damaged homes. Emotions in the close-knit

steel towns sometimes boiled over and straight-out physical intimidation was brought to bear on BHP’s ‘operative staff’ in addition to ‘tin kettling’ and various forms of boycott. Further away from the steel centres the picture 1s less clear, particularly after the swing in the ALP’s public attitudes. It seems highly likely that the neighbouring mining communities maintained an uninterrupted solidarity with the steelmen. In the metropolitan area it is difficult to be certain of the effects of the ALP official change of

stance. The ALP leaders were definitely anxious to sway public opinion behind them and the strike leaders were trenchant in their angry assertions that the authorities deliberately imposed punitive, over-excessive domestic power restrictions as a weapon to lessen the popularity of the strike. Yet it is unlikely that public opinion was as potentially volatile as the strike leaders feared. On the one hand the public was used to dislocations in power and other wartime services. On the other it seems that, where possible, the citizenry ignored the restrictions. The Bulletin lamented this and ‘the practically total lack of any display of public spirit, in reaction to the Communist strikes’

and pondered gloomily whether the Australian character was deteriorating under the same climatic influences as had, it claimed, led to Aboriginal ‘decadence’ .3¢

So work was resumed again in the steel industry with all parties confident that their separate stands had been totally vindicated. BHP

The opening salvos 115 had preserved intact key management prerogatives while warding off

a communist-inspired onslaught against the arbitration system. ‘Moderate’ unionists felt they had fended off a dangerous threat to the ALP governments. The ‘militants’ were sure they had held the line against the employers’ first crucial move in a planned campaign to smash the unions. The communists were additionally pleased that for ‘the first time. . . our Party has appeared before the Australian people as the leader of a strike of the very first magnitude’.?” For anti-communists the strike had both revealed the enemy 1n its true colours and had given a considerable boost to the infant Industrial

Groups. Whereas most ALP unionists had previously seen the Groups as mere propaganda bases in the unions, a widespread cry now went up for concerted action by the Groups against the communist ‘grip’ on all too many unions. Within the steel centres themselves the return to work seemed to go more smoothly at Port Kembla than at Newcastle. For BHP the shortage of coal remained the number one imponderable but the steel giant continued to demonstrate its single-mindedness 1n several ways. It refused to give way on the ever-contentious seniority issue and, despite considerable union agitation and a private appeal for clemency from Chifley, it sacked F.S. Ward, the truculent FIA delegate who was found guilty of assaulting a ‘staff’ operative after the resumption of work. It also refused to comply with union and government understanding of the spirit of the settlement terms. When union officials arrived to discuss their claims they found that instead of meeting top company executives capable of undertaking meaningful bargaining they were faced as in the past with industrial officers unable to make any independent offers or decisions. Despite union

anger and threats, and requests for co-operation by Chifley and Holloway, the company successfully continued with its delaying tactics for months. After further unsuccessful conferences the friction

increased until FIA members voted by secret ballot to withdraw from Cantor’s steel award in mid-1947. The Commission then intervened and the eventual outcome was a new, improved, interim steel

award from which Cantor dissented. Nevertheless, steelworkers were still annoyed about delays in finalizing the award two whole years after the end of the 1945 dispute. Over the succeeding years the unions continued to find BHP the toughest of nuts to crack. For example, while offering a sizeable proportion of its employees a pro-

duction bonus, the company flatly refused to pay the over-award payments which became commonplace in other industries as the tight postwar labour market continued. In this stance it was aided by the fact that the FIA was increasingly distracted by internal factionfighting while the steelworkers’ bargaining strength was diluted by

the growing influx of non-English-speaking immigrants into the industry.

116 Division of Labour Table 7 Number of working days lost annually per employee in industrial disputes, by state, 1939-502

NSW Vic. Qld SA WA Tas. Australia

1939 0.60 0.06 0.01 0.01 0.13 n.a. 0.27 1940 n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a. 194] 1.02 0.24 0.21 0.11 0.01 n.a. 0.50 1942 0.42 0.06 0.01 0.06 0.08 —b 0.20 1943 1.02 0.14 0.24 0.12 0.36 —} 0.52 1944 n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a. 1945 2.29 0.09 0.85 0.18 0.29 0.11 1.11 1946 0.84 0.84 2.33 0.17 0.54 0.11 0.89 1947 0.99 0.52 0.11 0.21 0.04 0.08 0.60 1948 0.67 0.24 2.63 0.15 0.05 0.01 0.71 1949 1.01 0.09 0.57 0.14 0.18 0.39 0.55 1950 0.63 1.68 0.22 0.58 0.04 0.11 0.81

4 Official dispute statistics do not include estimates of days lost as an indirect consequence of disputes. Hence the apparently greater impact of the 1945 steel dispute than the 1949 coal stoppage >’ Annual loss The conference between the parties ordered by Hanlon speedily broke down. As power and transport services dwindled, the language of the media and other opponents of the strike grew ever more extreme. Their violent images centred on communist malevolence, bloodshed and revolution. With the employers adamant that they would only accept award conditions, the AMIEU moderates on the state executive made a decisive move. They successfully resolved to ask the government to order a return to work, with labour being supplied according to past

* practice. In particular, they feared the outcome of the postal ballot for, despite the determination expressed at AMIEU mass meetings, they were convinced that after three months a sizeable proportion of members had had enough. Publication of this fact in the ballot might produce a rout and disintegration of the AMIEU. After a bitter debate on 5 July the disputes committee, by 11 votes to 8, refused to accept this ‘betrayal’. Its views were now irrelevant,

The opening salvos 123

for Hanlon seized the opportunity that evening to cancel the ballot and to issue an order for a return to work on 12 July on the terms of existing awards, except that labour would be engaged in accordance with pre-strike practice. All matters in dispute would be subject to negotiations between the parties with any disagreements to be referred to the Court. Although the government would not admit it, the ballot was abandoned because the Industrial Registrar found

that the number of ballot papers issued far exceeded AMIEU membership.*© A major propaganda campaign was launched to en-

sure that the meatworkers obeyed the government. Hanlon, the media and the Catholic hierarchy charged that the meatworkers had been used as pawns in a terrifying communist power play to wreck arbitration, democracy and the Australian way of life. On 8 July the AEU, ETU, FEDFA, FCU and TWU told the disputes committee

that they would comply with the order, thus ensuring that the AMIEU, miners and wharfies must follow suit. This inevitability was accepted two days later at a stormy AMIEU mass meeting at which

militants and moderates accused each other of bringing in outside supporters. The ALP official version of events was accepted as Dixon and Kearney now publicly blasted the communist influence in the strike and the majority present drowned out the militants’ efforts to respond. The employers were angry that Hanlon had ordered that labour be re-engaged through the union. They instructed all works managers that discussions with AMIEU officials be limited to this topic and undertaken away from the works. After the return employers strove

to avoid any return to non-award practices, dismissing offending workers. The QMCC continued the struggle to wrest labour supply control from the AMIEU, notably by destroying the seasonal senior-

ity principle. Employment was refused to certain nominated AMIEU members, a maximum of two union representatives were recognized at each plant and the QMCC played on the hip-pocket

nerve in trying to persuade the rank and file to turn away from militant leadership. The employers supported the ‘loyal’ non-union-

ists and their new organizations while continuing strenuously to oppose AMIEU reregistration and the restoration of its preference clauses. Although the ‘scab’ union at Lake’s Creek failed to gain registration, it and the Bacon Factory Employees’ Union (BFEUV), registered in August 1946, one month before the AMIEU reregis-

tered, presented the latter with its biggest post-strike problems. Indeed the BFEU gradually gained ascendancy in the bacon sector. As expected, the Murrarie wrongful dismissal cases were rejected by the Court. Neumann’s efforts to persuade the AMIEU’s interstate branches to help regain lost coverage by agreeing to apply for a " federal award fell on unsympathetic ears.*” The AMIEU’s method of

regaining pre-strike conditions was on-the-job action, which

124 Division of Labour achieved rapid success in the ever-militant northern district. Yet the

dispute left lasting scars within the union. In the branch elections held soon after the return to work, 74 per cent of members voted and all retiring officers were returned*® but acrimony flared whenever the moderates and militants met.

The strike induced two major responses from the Queensland government: it amended the state Arbitration Act and, following the NSW ALP, it established Industrial Groups. The 1946 ‘meat dispute’ amendments ‘involved a major extension by the state of its influence over the internal affairs of trade unions’.*? The power

to control the timing and conduct of secret ballots to authorize strikes was explicitly handed to the Industrial Court, which was given greater flexibility in deregistration matters and heavy sanctions against union misdemeamours. The amendments also gave the Court more discretion by relaxing the previous mandatory require-

- ment to reinstate employees dismissed for union activity. Parties to a dispute were required to report it immediately but the requirement that the Court equally promptly hear and determine disputes was withdrawn in 1947 after ‘strong pressure’ from its president.

The Queensland ALP had hitherto resisted pressure from the AWU and the Movement to establish Groups but the meat dispute convinced its leadership that not merely were the communists prepared to take direct action, but that many non-communists were also ‘prepared to challenge the sacred policy of industrial peace’. On 8 July 1946, the party decided to create an official Industrial Group structure in Queensland trade unions. The role of the Groups was to prevent any deviation from the Labor party’s policy of industrial peace. It was the challenge to industrial peace, rather than the issue of Communism per se, which explains the ALP decision to establish Industrial Groups in the trade unions. °°

The AMIEU, WWE and AFULE were the first targets. At the 1946 AMIEU elections militant officials were unsuccessfully opposed by an ALP Industrial Group, prominent in which was W. Thornton,

subsequently Movement organizer in Queensland. In 1949 the Grouper ticket for the state executive was successful, narrowly defeating all militants save Neumann, and remaining in control until 1953.°! The Groups had little electoral success in the Queensland

WWF. In the AFULE T. Kissick, the communist president who had urged support for the strikers, was narrowly defeated in 1946 but regained office at the end of 1947—just in time for perhaps the most traumatic strike in Queensland’s history.

CHAPTER SEVEN

HOURS AND WAGES: THE ‘40 YEARS’ CASE AND THE MARGINS WAR

The end of the divisive steel dispute allowed union energies, outside Queensland, to focus again on presentation of their basic agenda of postwar claims. Naturally, employers fought a doughty rearguard action, marked by some sharp tactical sallies of their own. Yet the struggle resolved itself essentially into one between the unions and

the federal government. Throughout the first two years of peace, Ben Chifley conducted a masterful containing campaign. Knowing full well the distaste of moderate union officials for direct action, he deployed all his skills of persuasion and delay. He was aided by the conservative predilections of the federal arbitrators but even more so

by the failure of the unions, militants included, to appreciate the strength of his resolve. While transport disputes over penalty rates and rosters helped induce a minor concession on the basic wage in December 1946, wage pegging was ended in mid-1947 only after a metal trades lockout-cum-strike had threatened to bring Victoria to a standstill. The key union was the militant AEU, but even its singleminded leaders for long underestimated the determination of Mr Chifley. As the AEU reluctantly extended the dispute, ACTU and other moderates withdrew support and, as in the steel and meat dis-

putes, charges that communists were responsible for the turmoil were widely broadcast. The alternative route of arbitration, followed by the ACTU at the behest of Chifley, delayed inauguration of the 40-hour week until 1948.

In all negotiations during 1945 Chifley had refused to yield on the central wages and hours issues or on demands for better child endowment and lower tax.! The wartime extension of the income tax threshold was now being seen as the ‘greatest imposition the workers

had ever known and Mr Chifley had only tried to pull the wool

126 Division of Labour over workers’ eyes’.* Even Clarey argued that “We in Australia [are] the heaviest taxed workers in the World’.? Only on annual leave had progress been made—thanks to the NSW government’s 1944 legislation extending it from one week to two for those under state awards. This initiative had flowed on to the federal awards of the pace-setting metal workers and printers by December 1945. On the central issues the ACTU congress had united in warning, ‘Unless something was

done industrial trouble was inevitable and only loyalty to a Labor Government had prevented it up to now’.* When the immediate postwar explosion centred around the steel strike failed to move Chifley, the ACTU executive threatened that, if suitable government action on the 40-hour week was not forthcoming six months after VJ day, i.e. in February 1946, it would then consider direct action.° When the deadline expired, one month after the steelmen returned, Chifley met with the ACTU executive and deflected it from its purpose. Chifley had long been adamant that, apart from the supposed constitutional impediments, government ‘interference’ with what were seen as the traditional functions of the Arbitration Court ‘might alienate the sympathies of the middle-class section upon whom the Government depended for its political existence’.© Apparently by playing on the loyalty-to-ALP theme he persuaded the full ACTU executive not to take any direct action but to apply to the Court for a 40-hour week.’ In return he promised to lend government support to the union arguments. The printers’ case (see p. 104) was held up to allow a general hours case to be presented to the full court and simultaneously Chifley amended the Regulations to allow the Court to review the basic wage. The ACTU, anxious to keep the two issues separate and anyway expecting a speedy hearing, decided to concentrate first on the 40-hours case. The ACTU executive might not have been so amenable had it read Chifley’s recent Cabinet memo concerning the economic impact of the ACTU hours and wages claims: in it he argued strongly that the wages and hours issues were completely inseparable.®

The ACTU moderates, as usual, were uneasy about direct action—‘A 24 Hour [national] stoppage was considered, but it was thought this might lead to a General Strike which would probably get out of hand’.? In the Melbourne Trades Hall Council debate on the ACTU decision there was considerable disenchantment with the government. Even moderate Dinny Lovegrove clearly saw that the 40 hour issue had become an economic question on which the Commonwealth Government would not make a decision even if it was clothed in the necessary Constitutional Powers. Reference to the White Paper on full employment disclosed that the Government’s presentation of the question was definitely similar to the presentation of the various chambers of manufactures which posed the issue as one of more goods and less leisure or less goods and more leisure. !°

The ‘40 years’ case and the margins war 127

He called for all ALP governments to grant a 40-hour week to their

own employees and his Fibrous Plasterers’ Union supported a motion at the Victorian ALP conference calling for legislation to inaugurate the shorter week.!! The ALP federal executive also registered support for shorter hours, an increased basic wage, reductions in tax on lower incomes and a lifting of wage Regulations. !4 Hearings in the 40 hours case eventually began on 22 May 1946 but, instead of finishing within the expected six to eight weeks, the hearings dragged on and on amid increasing recriminations within

the union movement and growing anger with the Chifley government, despite its intervention with the five state Labor governments to support the unions’ case. Indeed, while the weighty government presentations allowed the governments to appear to be living up to their promises, their interventions added to the length of this monster arbitration case in which 224 witnesses were called. The employers with their eighty-six witnesses had every reason to spin out proceedings—and they continually sought to stall by drawing the basic wage issue into the hours case. Yet the fifty-two unions did not help matters—they presented a loose and sometimes repetitive case

through seventy-seven witnesses, and allowed virtually any union official to make an appearance in court. Illness and retirement of judges further slowed proceedings.

The mounting frustration of union members boiled over into direct action in a wide variety of industries, although such bans and stoppages were usually intertwined with the unions’ simultaneous attempts to improve wage rates. At the insistence of the federal ALP executive, union leaders, including communists, tried to prevent any major explosion during the federal election campaign in September 1946. Immediately after this, however, a series of transport strikes forced Chifley to make important concessions, but by then the Vic-

torian metal trades were emerging as the decisive arena and the AEU as the main protagonist. !3 Until 1968 part of a million-strong British union, the AEU was, in 1946, six years away from its Australian centenary. Dominated by

tradesmen, it had a unique structure renowned for its democratic checks and balances against executive autocracy. It rested on an atomistic residential structure of 202 branches, sixty of them in Vic-

toria, forty-nine in Melbourne. Until the ALP ‘split’ of the 1950s AEU members in Melbourne revealed a sophistication rare in the union world by simultaneously electing from the same constituency both communist and anti-communist full-time officials. The AEU

was particularly proud of its tradition, and its members had very long memories. In its post-war wages campaign the AEU aimed for a restoration of the relative margin for skill incorporated in Higgin’s

historic Harvester judgment of 1907, awarded to the AEU in 1921 but retracted in 1922 by Mr Justice Powers. The aggressiveness and

128 Division of Labour

strength of the AEU post-Depression counter-attack on employers

was such that a confrontation in 1938 with the Commonwealth

Arbitration Court, during which the AEU was deregistered, finally ended with a humiliating retreat by Judge Beeby at the instigation of the chief judge, Dethridge, and the Lyons federal government. During the war the AEU ruthlessly pursued its campaign to preserve and

improve engineers’ conditions of work independently of other unions. The combination of the AEU’s single-mindedness and bargaining power often meant that kindred unions were left floundering in its wake, attempting perforce to gain similar rights, and there

was a tinge of bitterness surrounding the AEU members’ nicknames, ‘Gentlemen Jims’ or ‘the Tin Gods’. Before the invasion of the USSR, communists criticized the AEU

for co-operating too readily with the Menzies government’s war effort, whereas after July 1941 they were to criticize the AEU for not putting its full weight behind the national armaments drive. In fact, of course, the AEU remained consistent in its aims and actions and continued to be responsible for the majority of time lost in industrial disputes in the metal trades. When the war ended the AEU was completely unrestrained in its pursuit of its members’ material

advancement. From the mid-1930s on it attracted and bred militants, some of whom saw the CPA as the best vehicle for their political aspirations—particularly when Allied victory allowed the CPA to revert to an aggressive industrial policy more in keeping with the AEU approach. However, communists numbered only six of the

thirty-three members of the AEU Melbourne district committee which contreiled the 1946—47 dispute. The twenty-seven noncommunists included such men as J.E. Burke, F.P. Twomey and W.H. White, who were leading anti-communists within the union. The Victorian full-time officials consisted of six ALP men, led by secretary A.E. Fair, and three communists. The AEU rule book placed considerable power in the hands of the federal executive located in Sydney. This Commonwealth Council was closely involved from the outset in the 1946—47 dispute in Victoria because of its federal ramifications, but it followed AEU tradition by usually adopting the policies urged on it by the district committee members on the spot. In 1946 two of the five council members were Victorians, and in many ways they were the most outstanding officials in the AEU. First and foremost came the chairman, J.A. Cranwell. One of the most able and dedicated officers the union

ever had, Joe Cranwell had led the AEU in its post-Depression offensive, and in 1946 was ACTU vice-president. A former president of the NSW ALP branch, his single-minded devotion to the AEU caused him to bruise many corns within the labour movement during his twenty-three years continuous service on the Commonwealth Council, but in the process he earned the respect of partisans

The ‘40 years’ case and the margins war 129

of right and left as a man of integrity whose only true politics were

to consider his union ‘first, last and always’. Backing Cranwell throughout the Victorian dispute and, because of his political complexion, usually given more publicity in the press, was E.J. (Red Ted’) Rowe from Ballarat who, in 1943, had become the first communist elected to AEU federal office. An ebullient personality and a gifted orator, Rowe proved the prefect foil for the cooler, pragmatic Cranwell. The three remaining council members were all ALP men. Secretary J.H. Carney was a leader of the new ALP Industrial Group formed within the AEU in Sydney. During 1945 the AEU followed no particular plan of campaign on

the wages front. Its leaders were too busy, both ensuring that no threat was posed to its members by the government’s plans for returned servicemen, and negotiating safeguards for engineers after the withdrawal of the Regulations governing the ‘dilution’ of skilled occupations through the admission of adult trainees during the wartime emergency. AEU officials approved of spontaneous rank-and-

file action—particularly since it maintained pressure on Judge O’ Mara of the federal Arbitration Court who in December varied the metal trades award. By early 1946, however, the maximum concessions possible within the Regulations seemed to have been gained, and the hours issue was in the hands of the Arbitration Court. Consequently an AEU interstate conference at the end of April decided to step up pressure on the government to abandon the wage peg and,

if this failed, to take direct industrial action. As soon as it became clear that Chifley was not prepared to budge, the AEU moves began. As was traditional in the AEU, the timing of the campaign was left to

each individual district committee. The Sydney AEU members moved first, and by the end of July they had set in motion the broad tactics which other southern centres were to follow. Their demand for a 20s wage increase for all members was accompanied by a ban on all overtime in excess of four hours per week. Employers, including government, were informed that, if no satisfactory response followed

within a month, all overtime would be banned. If necessary, after another month a stop-work meeting would be called to consider further action. A few firms acceded to the AEU demands immediately, but in the vast majority of Sydney engineering firms stage two, the total overtime ban, began at the end of August. At this point the AEU made

its first moves to ensure formal support from kindred unions by successfully applying to the Metal Trades Federation (MTF) for endorsement of its campaign. During September some other metal unions followed the MTF’s proposals by imitating the AEU campaign. But though the employers were increasingly feeling the pinch, only about 20 per cent were as yet prepared to concede 20s. Instead they optimistically offered substantial wage increases in the

130 Division of Labour

form of incentive schemes—the béte noire of craft unions. Also in September the other main AEU districts began their campaigns. At the same time the federal election campaign was being fought out. Menzies promised drastic taxation cuts, an extension of child endowment and an early lifting of wage-pegging regulations and other wartime controls. Chifley offered only to ease wage pegging and taxes as the general economic situation permitted. Given Menzies’ other policies, including that of making industrial stoppages illegal and prosecuting offenders, his tax and wage promises failed to attract many unionist votes, and the election of 28 September ended

in a decisive ALP victory. In one important respect, however, the electorate dealt a major blow to union hopes: it rejected a referendum proposal to grant the Commonwealth powers to make laws reg-

ulating the conditions of industrial employment. The short-run prospect of Chifley legislating for the introduction of a 40-hour week

and increased wage rates seems remote in hindsight, but the hope was there and helped keep the lid on industrial unrest over hours and

wages immediately prior to the election. Given the disappointing outcome to the referendum, moderate unionists and most press observers realized that the only possible means of preventing an ex-

: plosion was for Chifley to make speedy concessions. To emphasize this fact, nine days after the election in which the ALP lost only five seats including two to labourite independents, Melbourne experienced the first combined rail and tram stoppage in its history (Chapter 9). Yet the very next day, with the press speculating about a general strike, Chifley chose to disregard the storm signals, and asserted that wage pegging must be retained after the expiry of the National Security Act on 31 December. Urgent talks between the ACTU (including Cranwell) and the Prime Minister began on 14 October, the day which saw a 24-hour transport stoppage in Sydney and the implementation by the Melbourne AEU of a complete overtime ban. Discussion ranged over a wide variety of topics, but on the burning issues Chifley would not yield. He listened dutifully as the delegation contrasted the delays in the 40-hours hearings with the speed of the 1931 wage cuts, and he once again promised to consider ways of expediting proceedings. He responded to ACTU pleas and warnings on wage pegging by politely offering to put the unions’ case before the new Cabinet when it met in November, while making it perfectly clear that he intended to stick by his election policy. He categorically rejected the delegation’s call for an increased basic wage by legislation, to be followed by a new referendum if proved unconstitutional. He confirmed that a proposed basic wage committee, the notion of which he had reluctantly accepted in May, could have only a limited advisory capacity. Next day the third step in the AEU’s Sydney campaign was taken. The 6500 members who attended the first 24-hour stop-work meet-

The ‘40 years’ case and the margins war 131

ing at the Leichhardt stadium decided to intensify the campaign by giving the district committee power to call more stoppages. On 17 _October coalminers at thirteen NSW pits ceased work, and a water-

front dispute began which immobilized the port of Sydney for a week. On 21] October the South Australian railways stopped for 24 hours and a general transport strike began in Victoria. On 22 October the Victorian MTF recommended that its affiliates follow the AEU in totally banning overtime. On the same day employees began resigning from major Melbourne foundries, and by the end of the week 1600 had withdrawn from 98 shops. Union leaders pleaded with Chifley ‘to make decisions along Labor lines’.!+ Altogether, there seemed considerable truth in Jack Lang’s claims that Chifley was backing the workers into a general strike. It was the Victorian transport stoppage (Chapter 9) which induced the Prime Minister to act. ALP Premier John Cain was merely one of many who bluntly laid the cause of the trouble at the wage-pegging door. On 23 October Chifley paid an unexpected visit—which he claimed had nothing whatsoever to do with the stoppage—to Melbourne, and called employers’ representatives from four states to a conference on ‘peace in industry’. These discussions were followed

by Chifley’s hard bargaining with the ACTU executive which brought agreement that the unions would accept simultaneous hear-

ings of hours and wages. In return the Court would (a) declare its acceptance in principle of a 40-hour week (b) conduct speedy hearings into an interim basic wage case which would end with an increase of between 10s and 15s. The hours case would then resume to determine when the economy would be ready for the shorter week. When

it concluded, a full-scale basic wage inquiry would commence. On 30 October, as the transport strike ended, the Court duly endorsed the 40-hours principle and next day the Commonwealth moved to restore to the list the 1940 basic wage inquiry, adjourned in 1941. Chifley, however, refused to acknowledge publicly that any deal had

been reached. Chief judge Drake-Brockman, who was privately furious at being presented with a fait accompli, also poured scorn on

the notion that the Court’s decisions had anything to do with the transport strike. His anger did, however, cause a two-week adjournment of the wage hearings. !° To some it must have seemed that relative industrial peace was in the offing. In fact two separate currents of metal trades unrest were

soon to cross, with explosive consequences. One of these was the AEU’s methodical campaign, which even in the heat of the transport strike was seen by knowledgeable observers to pose a deadlier threat to Chifley’s wage policy and industrial peace than did the transport

workers. The second source of combustion was in the foundries, where since January 1946 the highly skilled, conservative members of the small Moulders’ Union, backed by their FIA assistants, had

132 Division of Labour

been conducting a campaign for wage increases in this strategic sector of the metal trades. In July the parties had seemed to be heading for a showdown when the members of the ironfounders’ section of the Victorian Chamber of Manufactures (VCM) served one weeks notice on 3300 foundry workers in retaliation for wholesale ‘resigna-

tions’ at two large foundries. Negotiations had averted an actual lockout, and when wage discussions broke down, Clarey, in his role

of state Minister for Labour, had sought to have the dispute considered on a federal basis. His federal equivalent, Holloway, had referred the matter to the Arbitration Court. Employees had returned

to work while Judge O’Mara began hearing a case to ascertain if wage increases were possible within the framework of the wartime Regulations. O’Mara’s decision, eight days before the federal election, that the unions had failed to establish a prima facie case, final-

ly closed the door to the possibility of margins increases without changes in the Regulations.

In the foundries, when fresh negotiations between the parties broke down, resignations recommenced on 4 October and the stage

was set for the long-threatened direct trial of industrial strength. Thus the ACTU had no sooner begun to realize that, at least as far as Judge Drake-Brockman was concerned, the deal ending the transport dispute had not guaranteed separate 40-hours and basic wage

hearings than Victoria was faced with a potential shutdown of its engineering plants. On 1 November 700 metal employer members of the VCM met and voted by a large majority to lock out an estimated 100 000 employees if the striking foundry workers did not return by 6 November and the AEU overtime bans were not lifted. In a strange reversal of roles, the FIA distributed a letter at the meeting appealing to employers not to act precipitately and to refrain from supporting the lockout proposals. On the 6th one week’s notice was served to engineering employees. Next day in a maiden speech which silenced the new federal parliament, Jack Lang made some telling points. He

depicted the government as ‘haunted by. . . the bogy of inflation’ and consequently unwilling to aid its major supporters in their justifiable search for improved conditions. It refused to give the shorter

week to its own employees and diverted other workers into the ‘confidence trick’ of cumbersome arbitration proceedings further shackled by the wage Regulations. !© A great many employers drew back from the brink when the dead-

line expired at midnight on 13 November 1946, and in total the doors were initially closed on only some 20 000 employees, including approximately 2000 AEU members. With the advantage of hindsight it is clear that the employers’ lockout tactic was a mistake. It hardened the rank-and-file unionists’ attitudes in a manner impossible if the stoppage had begun as a strike, and for the remainder of the long

The ‘40 years’ case and the margins war 133

dispute the AEU and its supporters gained enormous psychological

and public relations advantages from the fact that the employers initiated the stoppage. The employers countered by pointing to the earlier foundry strikes, but even after 20 January 1947, when the dispute had very definitely become a strike, their original wicked-

ness was still denounced, even in quarters such as News Weekly which basically opposed AEU actions. As in the steel strike, many unionists saw the lockout as a plot designed deliberately to ‘smash’ unionism. The lockout circumstances certainly made harder the traditional task of the AEU’s Commonwealth Council during a dispute—which

was to moderate the heat generated among members and district officials engaged in the actual struggle, and to keep in mind the wider interests and goals of the federal union. During the prologue to the dispute, there had always been AEU members who, disdaining planned, methodical campaigns, had called for more immediate action on a wider array of demands. Hereafter Cranwell and Rowe, both of whom were painted in the reddest of hues in the press, were under constant pressure to extend the dispute more rapidly and extensively than they thought advisable. The first moves to widen the dispute, however, came from the employers’ side, even before the Melbourne deadline was reached. The likelihood of new lockouts by metal employers in Sydney and Adelaide was enough to persuade the Arbitration Court that it should hear arguments for an interim basic wage increase as a matter of urgency. The Court’s announcement was made on the eve of the Melbourne lockout, and four days before 1100 foundry workers were locked out in Adelaide. While approving the Court’s decision, a mass meeting of the AEU rank and file in

Melbourne still unanimously decided on 17 November that the locked-out members should not return to work until they were granted a 20s wage increase. On 18 November the Court announced that the interim basic wage case would commence on 25 November, would be limited to a mere nine days, and the Court’s decision would be known before Christmas. On 23 November Drake-Brockman indicated that the existence of the NSA Regulations left him with no alternative but to reject as illegal the recent agreement on weekend overtime rates in the Victo-

rian railways. Unless Chifley acted soon another general transport strike seemed likely. Over the weekend, Clarey and the ACTU conferred anxiously with Holloway. Another item on their agenda was the imminent extension of the metal trades dispute to Sydney arising out of a lockout beginning on 24 October at the large waterfront firm, Mort’s Dock Engineering Company. When compulsory conferences broke down, waterfront members of the MTEA served dismissal notices. When the lockout at sixty-two shops began on 27

134 Division of Labour

November the ACTU appealed to the Prime Minister to make an early public announcement of Cabinet’s plans for modification of the Regulations. Immediately after the lockout, AEU waterfront members decided to stay out until the employers conceded the 20s increase; for its part

the MTEA urged unaffected members not to employ new hands in any of the locked-out occupations. It also investigated whether they were prepared to participate in a complete metal trades lockout. Full order books meant a poor response to these moves, and by the first week in December the waterfront employers were prepared to end

the lockout. The AEU stand prevented this, and appeals by the MTEA for employees to return in the New Year were almost completely ignored. The dispute lasted until May 1947 but its settlement hinged on developments in Victoria. The same applied to the lockout in the Adelaide foundries, which dragged on for the same length of time.

In Melbourne, the initial meeting of locked-out AEU members had unanimously endorsed the first extension of the dispute to some

1500 maintenance men who had been retained in the locked-out

shops on the advice of the VCM. The intolerable position into which Chifley was forcing the ‘moderates’ was revealed when on 1 Decem-

ber Monk publicly attacked the Prime Minister declaring that he would be responsible for ‘untold industrial disturbance’ if he did not modify the wage-pegging Regulations. He considered that Chifley

had a ‘fetish’ on the question, and that there was no logic in his views.!’ At the same time, Harold Holt, the shadow industrial relations spokesman, attacked the government on the inequity of tying the basic wage to an artificially manipulated consumer price index. Within the labour movement all factions united to demand that the government act. On 4 December, as an estimated 80000 workers were affected by

a 24-hour stoppage by 1000 FEDFA members, Chifley finally announced that the Regulations would be suitably amended on 14 December. This statement was greeted with great relief by all unionists, and Clarey hailed it as the first step towards the settlement of many current industrial disputes. However, declaration of intent was no solution in itself, as was emphasized by the commencement of a national gas workers’ strike on 6 December, the breakdown of negotiations on the metal trades dispute in Sydney four days later, and a 24-hour stoppage of 20000 waterside workers the day after that. All parties waited with interest to see the details of Chifley’s concession.

The prospects of industrial peace were dealt a severe blow on 13 December when the Arbitration Court asserted its independence by ignoring the government—ACT U deal and granting only a 7s interim basic wage increase. Thus the atmosphere was scarcely auspicious

The ‘40 years’ case and the margins war 135 when next day Chifley unveiled the long-awaited Regulation amendments which, he said, allowed margins to be increased in two ways. First, wage-fixing bodies might, at their discretion, authorize an increase providing the resulting total wage did not exceed the sum of

four elements: the current basic wage, the marginal rate in force at the outbreak of war, a percentage of that marginal rate equal to the

percentage rise in the cost of living since that date, and a fixed amount of 3s per week. A few rapid calculations caused union leaders to dismiss this formula as useless. The AEU, for example, found

that it would mean that increases would be limited to 4s 6d for a fitter and 2s for a process worker—both amounts before tax and expected to fall in real terms because the government had adjusted price ceilings to offset the basic wage rise. The FIA calculated that unskilled foundry workers would actually suffer a 9d cut in their wages.

The alternative route to margins increases seemed more promising. Provided the chief judge agreed, said Chifley, there would be no legal limit to the amount which could be awarded by wage-fixing bodies. While the unions had no reason to expect particular sympathy from the Court—witness the reception of their arguments on the

interrm basic wage—they were generally prepared to give this amendment a trial. AEU members in Adelaide, for example, decided to lift their overtime ban, in the belief that the way was now clear to approach the Court with their demand for a 20s increase. The unions’ sense of outrage can be imagined, therefore, when within a few days their legal advisers informed them that the amendment did not allow what Chifley had said it allowed. Monk was one of the first to de-

nounce the Prime Minister, and the chorus of denunciation intensified when Judge Foster agreed with learned counsel that the alterations to the Regulations appeared to be ‘illusory’. Chifley rebuked his critics, including, it seemed, his Cabinet colleague, Holloway, and announced further amendments which, he claimed, clarified the situation. The unions continued to think otherwise. Thus, in Victoria, no matter what their private feelings might be,

the moderates on the THC disputes committee could hardly push hard for a return to work as the union world rang with rhetoric on

the infamy of the employers’ attempts to smash the unions, the parsimony of the Arbitration Court and the treachery of Chifley. One matter connected with the dispute did, however, arouse divisions within the THC, and helped mark the stoppage in some minds as a creature of the Left. This was the decision by the ARU to accede to a request by the FIA, supported by the AEU, to place a black ban

on the harvester works of H.V. McKay Massey Harris Pty Ltd at Sunshine because of the performance by foremen of work normally undertaken by locked-out FIA men. Since, however, such bans had first to be endorsed by the disputes committee, the executive took

136 Division of Labour

the opportunity to inflict a sharp rebuke on their communist arch-

enemy, J.J. Brown of the ARU. The THC meeting at which the ARU was forced to back down was wild and abrasive, ending in fisticuffs outside the chamber.

In the first months of the dispute the AEU was content during negotiations to keep separate the twin causes of the Melbourne lockout. The AEU was not used to fighting joint battles, and traditional-

ly preferred to maintain independence of action. The employers, too, originally divided the two issues while negotiating. That this was a mere bargaining ploy became clear when the foundry workers, with both Chifley’s declaration of intent and the prospect of a size-

able interim basic wage increase in mind, decided to return on 9 December on terms which kept their options open. The VCM, determined to saddle the more dangerous AEU campaign with both the

relatively weaker bargaining power of the FIA and the relatively weaker determination of most other metal union leaders, refused to reopen the foundries when the employees turned up for work. This further damaged the employers’ public image and caused a minority of VCM members to argue for a reopening of all metal plants so that

the onus for the dispute could be placed on the AEU’s refusal to resume. A small number of establishments did reopen, but the majority of the employers rested their hope on the Arbitration Court, where, after Chifley’s announcement of 14 December, Judge Foster listed the matter for hearing at the FIA’s request. By the time the case began, the ambiguities of the Regulation amendments had become apparent and, after employers had made it quite clear that the AEU claim was now the true issue in the dispute, Judge Foster adjourned the FIA application. With a continuous trickle of firms agreeing to pay the AEU’s 20s, the VCM had to end the lockout: it decided to reopen the gates on 20 January 1947 but FIA members joined the AEU in refusing to return without some definite concessions on their wage claim. Elsewhere, gas workers returned after a six-week stoppage in the three mainland southern states which had eventually deprived Melbourne of all gas supplies. This dispute came to centre around the claim for double rates for Sunday work which had been speedily conceded in Tasma-

nia. It brought forth unprecedented rank-and-file militance, sit-in tactics and great embarrassment to the Victorian and NSW ALP governments. Moderate Charlie Crofts led the strikers and attacked an alleged ‘sell-out’ by the two ALP premiers, particularly McKell who helped persuade the NSW men to return by appearing to promise nationalization of the industry. !8

On 19 January, union frustration with the 40-hour week delays boiled over, and the ACTU announced a boycott of the basic wage inquiry because of Drake-Brockman’s insistence that it be heard together with the 40 hours case. The ACTU now had new reasons

The ‘40 years’ case and the margins war 137 for being displeased with the Chifley government because of the snub

offered by the formation of a four-man ALP industrial committee to advise the government about suitable amendments to the Arbitration Act. On 23 January an ACTU delegation, including Cranwell, met Chifley to press its views on arbitration amendments, wage pegging and the basic wage—40 hours tie-up. When little satisfaction was obtained, the ACTU executive decided that the time for strong measures had at last arrived. Consequently, it successfully

proposed to a conference of seventy-six federal unions that a first-ever national strike take place on May Day, from whence the 40-hour week was to be unilaterally implemented. In a declaration of its ‘immediate policy’ the ACTU executive trenchantly summarized the unions’ frustrating postwar experience.!° Disappointment with the Chifley government was sharpened by the NSW government’s decision in an election year to legislate the introduction of 40 hours for employees working under state awards from 1 July. The bill also overcame the potentially explosive implica-

tions of Mr Justice Cantor’s decision that the hours agreement finally reached at Bunnerong was illegal.2° A further sign of how the workforce mood was affecting even the most peaceful union leaders was provided by the AWU. After two years of ruthless suppression of Queensland shearers’ unrest, the AWU leadership reluctantly en-

dorsed their unauthorized action and instructed all its Queensland members not to work more than 40 hours after 15 March.2! Nevertheless the moderates’ true ambivalence was revealed by Monk’s original opposition on the ACTU executive to a successful motion (9-5) requesting complete rescission of the wage-pegging Regulation: ‘We know we cannot get the complete lifting of Regulations at present which would favour the strong Unions. If we persist with the resolution, it will justify the Government refusing to deal with the ACTU’.22

By this time, too, things were warming up in the metal trades dispute. During January the AEU federal executive incurred considerable wrath from locked-out members as it calmly accepted the decision of the other metal unions (except the FIA) to return to work at the end of the Victorian lockout, and delayed approval of an extension until after a meeting of the MTF on 29 January had endorsed such an intensification of the dispute. The extension, when it came at midnight on 7 February, involved 7000 more AEU members, but was still not the total withdrawal of all AEU labour which the more eager spirits wanted. Government enterprises were exempted, as were those private employers already paying the 20s. Two days later the ACTU executive met, endorsed MTF policy and established an ACTU disputes committee. Hitherto any union likely to be affected by a dispute had been entitled to representation on such a committee. Cranwell, however, persuaded the ACTU to limit membership

138 Division of Labour in this case to the ACTU executive and the metal unions and made it

clear that in the last analysis the AEU would remain master of its own destiny. To emphasize this point the next mass meeting (11 February), while thanking the ACTU for its backing, stated categorically that AEU members would return to work only if they considered the terms to be satisfactory. Hopes for a settlement now shifted to the Arbitration Court. In an attempt to cool the industrial climate, Drake-Brockman had, on 5 February, publicly declared his belief that Chifley’s amendments to the regulations allowed him, as acting chief judge, to authorize an inquiry into margins. The VCM immediately referred the dispute to

the Court. AEU leaders were interested to know what the Court

could offer—but not so interested that they would agree to a return to work while hearings were conducted. Conciliation commissioner Mooney decided to break precedent and conduct hearings while the men were still out. His proposed settlement terms, announced on 25 February, offered 9s extra to all metal workers earning margins of 27s and over, 7s to those receiving margins between 20s and 26s, and 5s to all other classifications. The AEU, FIA and ACTU rejected Mooney’s proposals as completely inadequate. Meanwhile Chifley met a parliamentary no-confidence motion by claiming that general unrest over the basic wage and hours could not be blamed on the wage peg and by declaring his firm belief ‘that there are some people, be they communists, near communists, or otherwise, who are determined to destroy. . . the Arbitration Court’.?3 Typically, AEU members had sought an extension of the dispute as soon as the two weeks grace granted to employers by the mass meeting of 11 February expired. The district committee had already declared black work undertaken in government establishments for private employers. Agreements 1n the newspaper and brewing industries had been renewed on favourable terms while, after separate negotiations, the Automobile Chamber of Commerce had only failed at the very last moment to concede the AEU claim. It was felt that one last push might be all that was required. Thus the union’s Commonwealth council again made itself unpopular as it held back from approving an extension to power and transport maintenance men while it endeavoured to gain the prior endorsement of other metal unions. Had Victoria had a tory government there is little doubt that the AEU would have succeeded—but the fact that the proposed withdrawals endangered the Cain ministry made an all-important difference. Thus by the time the ACTU six-man negotiating team, including Cranwell and Rowe, met the employers on 13 March the latter were well aware of ‘the heartening split in union circles’. As a result, although a minority of employers wanted to offer settlement terms

which would lift the Mooney formula by 4s in each of the three

The ‘40 years’ case and the margins war 139

categories and thus, with the interim basic wage increase, give the representative tradesman, the fitter, a 20s total rise, the VCM refused to go beyond the Mooney terms. Employer solidarity was encouraged by a levy of 2.5 per cent of their February payroll voluntarily contributed by other VCM members to firms directly involved in the dispute. The AEU leaders later claimed that the metal employers did not take part in the discussion, but that ‘the clothing manufacturers and biscuit makers were the ones that monopolised the discussions and were loud in their advice. . . ’. 24 On 18 March Mooney, knowing of the weakening of the unions’ resolve, incorporated his °9—7—5’ formula in an order varying the award. On the 19th

the MTF publicly split when a motion endorsing an AEU extension was defeated by six to three, with only the FEDFA supporting the AEU and FIA. Further, four of the six unions opposing an extension also urged acceptance of the Mooney award—although on three earlier occasions they had voted for resolutions which rejected the formula as inadequate. In Sydney, too, the union ranks had split, with the NSW Labor Council, amid stormy scenes, ordering a return to work of metal workers in engineering shops on the waterfront where, concurrently, the waterside workers were involved in a two-week stoppage (Chapter 8). The Sydney AEU refused to comply, and the FIA and FEDFA also stayed out. In Melbourne the employers, feeling that things were going their way, ignored feelers put out by Cranwell and Rowe for another meeting. Given the fact that not one of Melbourne’s forty-nine AEU branches favoured acceptance of the Mooney award, it was inevitable that Cranwell and Rowe would have to agree with

the district committee’s unanimous decision to go ahead with the withdrawal of 3000 members employed in the metropolitan power and transport industries on 22 March. When the THC met it was still simmering from the previous week’s heated debate over the official ACTU report of the settlement of the gas dispute. The militant THC delegates now saw further evidence of ACTU weakness in the decision to call off the 1 May national stoppage it had proposed in February because a High Court decision allowed Judges Foster and Sugerman to outvote Drake-Brockman and hear the 40-hours case

separately before considering the basic wage. Clarey, Monk and their allies in the ACTU’s state branches had never relished direct action. Chifley’s announcement at the end of February that from 1 July pensions would rise and income tax would be cut on average by 25 percent had further weakened their resolve.?° In the metal trades debate Clarey deplored the way the AEU had chosen to use ACTU machinery only so long as it suited its purposes.

In opposition, the FIA’s fiery Victorian secretary, Bert Flanagan, bitterly attacked the idea that unions which had not one member on strike should have the ‘audacity’ to tell the strikers to accept the

140 Division of Labour Mooney award. He also alleged that the rank-and-file meetings held in certain unions to discuss an extension were packed, ‘whether by

Catholic Action or Protestant Action he did not know, but those

people came for the express purpose of smashing the dispute (Uproar)’.2© The meeting ended without reaching any decision.

When the AEU men withdrew as planned two days later, they were accompanied by engineering tradesmen members of the ARU, gas workers’ and tramways’ unions, and crane-driver members of the FEDFA. As the extension cut back transport services and power

supplies, both the Cain and Chifley ministries began to take what Cranwell sardonically termed ‘a lively interest’ in the dispute. Cain regretted AEU members’ ‘slavish adherence to Communist leaders’ and also threatened to resign. On 24 March an estimated 7000 AEU members assembled at the West Melbourne stadium. Their officials urged them to ignore press propaganda about communist control, to recall the basic reasons for the dispute and to remember the success of the October transport stoppage, the final strands of which were,

all unions hoped, currently being tied up in an Arbitration Court decision on weekend overtime rates. Members, in turn, questioned closely the tactics and policies of their district and federal leaders. In particular, they wanted to know why AEU staff members were not being withdrawn, why employers already paying 20s were exempt

from the strike, and why the AEU had fallen out with the ACTU. Eventually, the meeting endorsed the leaders’ actions, condemned Cain and instructed its leaders to consider an early extension to the Yallourn power complex if no new developments occurred. In all, the unity and sense of purpose at this meeting made a big impression on observers, and appears to have influenced THC delegates considerably when their adjourned discussions resumed in the usual hectic atmosphere on 27 March. A gag motion moved by the right was defeated 100 to 88, although the meeting again adjourned without reaching any decision on the extension. News Weekly’s rebuke (26 March) to the AEU is representative of many right-wingers’ views at this stage: The strike of the A.E.U. men began with much merit as to the justice of their claims. Many of their leaders who are far from being communistic were determined to push these claims to the end. . . It is doubly unfortunate that some of these good people have still failed to realise that they are being used as tools.

A ‘creeping paralysis’ of the transport industry now set in. First the public bus service discontinued and suburban trains were cut drastically; then Yallourn fuel was reduced by 75 per cent. On 31 March AEU leaders met with Cain and P.J. Kennelly, MLC, the powerful ALP machine politician. Both agreed that AEU wages were too low but claimed that the Arbitration Court was the only

The ‘40 years’ case and the margins war 141

source of increases. That evening the district committee decided to ask the Commonwealth Council to approve a withdrawal of all ap-

prentice members from the Newport power house, where their maintenance work was keeping power supply fairly normal. On 1 April the dispute was referred back to the Arbitration Court, where Mooney adjourned the case until after Easter. By the time the hearing resumed, significant developments had occurred which pushed the metal trades off the front page for a few days and, in some eyes at least, vindicated the AEU’s stand.

On 31 March the full court presented its long-awaited decision on weekend penalty rates. This case, in which the Gas Employees’ Union, ARU, AEU and FEDFA represented the interests of all unions, was expected to implement the last gains from the settlements which had ended the October transport stoppage and the December—January gas strike. Instead, the Court found that the Regulations prevented it from granting increased weekend penalty rates to any other than shift workers. This decision, which offered the immediate prospect of fresh industrial outbreaks, was naturally greeted with a howl of union protests. Two distinct notes could be detected in the chorus. Above the anguished cries of the moderates could be heard the triumphant ‘I told you so’s of the direct actionists. Of the latter, none were so insistent as Cranwell and Rowe as they turned their new ammunition on the ACTU and, more tellingly, on J.H. Carney and H.A. Fountain, the two Sydney members of the AEU federal executive who had come out in support of the ACTU and arbitration. If the penalty rate decision proved nothing else, it clearly showed that the Court still did not have the legal power to award a sizeable margins increase.

The threats of further unrest—and, it was alleged,?’ the likely effect on imminent general elections in New South Wales and Queensland—at last forced Chifley to retract his public interpretation of the December amendments of the Regulations and to put beyond any legal doubt the Court’s powers in the sphere of wage fixing. After meetings with Cain and the arbitration judges, Chifley announced amendments which gave federal and state industrial authorities the power to alter rates of pay 1n any type of case, provided the chief judge had first certified that an alteration was not opposed

to the national interest. It now remained to be seen whether the metal trades parties could be brought into Court again to test the new amendments.

Holloway made the first effort by taking the dispute out of Mooney’s hands and referring it to the full court. The latter, while stating that it could do nothing formally until work resumed, declared support for the AEU suggestion of a conference. The ACTU also endorsed the idea, but the employers refused to confer if wage increases were to be the topic under discussion. On 11] April, there-

142 Division of Labour

fore, AEU apprentices and AEU members of staff below the classification of sub-foreman withdrew on schedule from the Newport power house. This action was endorsed and paralleled by the ARU

and FEDFA and condemned by the ACTU. By midnight on 14 April all suburban trains had ceased running, country train services were cut by 50 per cent and all electricity supplies were rationed. On

15 April gas supplies were severely restricted and tram services heavily cut. Despite this display of strength and public declarations

of confidence, AEU leaders were privately concerned about the eventual outcome—particularly since the employers still refused to confer on wage rates. Contributing to their worries were reports that

Ernie Thornton had told the FIA’s national conference that the

Victorian dispute had gone on too long, that union tactics had failed and that the strike should be brought to a speedy end. Kennelly flew to Sydney to help the NSW Labor Council moderates apply press-

ure to the Sydney members of the AEU federal executive. At the crucial AEU council meeting, however, Queenslander W.J. Porter sided with Cranwell and Rowe against Fountain and Carney. Summonses to show cause why they should not be deregistered were served on the AEU, FIA and VCM on 17 April, and the Court

decided to deal first with the AEU on 21 April. By then builders’ labourers were on strike at Yallourn, a printers’ strike was keeping the dailies down to skeleton size, pickets had prevented private buses from operating in the city, and the Lord Mayor of Melbourne had declared, “The fight is on. Let us have a showdown’. In Canberra, Opposition members had called for the freezing of AEU funds and the prosecution of Cranwell and their communist béte noire, J.J.

Brown, for contempt of court. In Western Australia the shortage of Victorian agricultural machinery and spare parts was creating particular concern. It was also revealed that Australia’s unemployment figures had reached a record low of 11004, with only 1001 in Victoria. Before and during the deregistration case the AEU again unsuccessfully sought a conference with the employers, while country branches urged an extension to provincial railway depots. On 23 April, a special meeting of the AEU Commonwealth Council was called to discuss the situation. Victorians Fair, C.E. Mundy (ALP) and C.M. Southwell (CPA) attended. Later in the day the AEU officials heard of the Court’s decision to deregister the AEU in fourteen days’ time. Presented with a fait accompli, Fountain and Carney withdrew their opposition, and this time it was unanimously decided to carry out any measure necessary for a successful conclusion to the strike. The AEU’s last £25000 of Commonwealth bonds were sold and the British headquarters approached for assistance. The Victorian drama now entered its final stage.

The decision to deregister was described as ‘regrettable’ by

The ‘40 years’ case and the margins war 143 Clarey, who argued that the Court’s function was to conciliate as well as to arbitrate. The AEU’s Melbourne district committee went much further, and expressed its ‘bitter resentment’ at the Court’s ‘partisan attitude’ in adjourning proceedings against the VCM until an unspecified later date. The committee then decided to ask country railway members to withdraw their labour on 29 April if the employers still

refused to meet in conference. In Canberra the Opposition pressed again for stern action. In Victoria the House of Assembly debated a no-confidence motion moved by the Opposition which, while arguing that somehow a state government could impose a secret ballot in a federal dispute, had no answer to the question of what to do if, as was inevitable, a majority voted in favour of continuing the strike. Speakers from both sides admitted that engineers’ wages were too low and that Drake-Brockman should unbend a little.

On 25 April the ACTU attacked the AEU for its unilateral decision to extend to the country, and vaguely threatened disaffiliation. An ACTU executive meeting was set for 28 April in Sydney, but Cranwell announced that neither he nor Rowe could afford to leave Melbourne. Cranwell publicly scoffed at the ideas of communist con-

trol of the AEU or a shortage of food, dismissed Cain as a ‘typical politician’ and said ACTU disaffiliation would save the AEU £800 in fees. He also claimed the AEU was ready for an indefinite fight and

had £9 million in Britain to support the strikers: “We win, or we don’t work’. The employers for their part, ignored AEU and ACTU appeals for a conference. The withdrawal of AEU country railway members went ahead according to plan at midnight, 28 April. In Sydney the ACTU executive summoned Carney and Porter before it, but all they could do was to relay the AEU council’s unanimous decision of 23 April. After much discussion the executive carried by eight votes to four a lengthy motion which ‘advised’ the AEU and FIA and supporting unions to take their claams—which for the engineers were ‘unassailable’—to the Arbitration Court. To allow

the arbitration machinery to function, the ACTU ‘directed’ the unions to arrange a return to work by 7 May. The AEU leaders dismissed the motion as a reactionary betrayal of the union’s struggle, which they had expected as soon as it became known that the ACTU leaders were too frightened of rank-and-file opinion to hold their meeting in Melbourne. The Melbourne district committee then decided to withdraw all remaining staff and apprentice members from metropolitan power

houses and the railways at midnight on 2 May and called on the NSW and South Australian AEU districts to extend the dispute. It continued to demand that employers meet it in conference, and put out feelers regarding a suitable independent arbitrator. The Victorian Opposition parties prophesied that ‘complete chaos and blood-

shed will be seen in the streets of Melbourne next week’, and

144 Division of Labour

accused the government of ‘sitting by, watching and allowing the country to become engaged in civil war’ instead of enrolling special police to fight the ‘communist curs’ who led the strike. Ex-Premier A.A. Dunstan saw the anti-Labor parties’ fight as being ‘for the retention of our democratic system of the Australian standard of life,

and of the right of every man and woman to worship in his or her way’.*® The federal Opposition also used violent images. H. Beale claimed citizens were ‘arming themselves against lawbreakers’.?? E.J. Harrison asserted that the federal government was ‘prepared to allow Victoria to drift into a state of anarchy, possibly leading to revolution and bloodshed, before the strike is over. . . The situation in Melbourne today is the prelude to revolution’ .?°

Menzies, who tended to sympathize with tradesmen’s wages plight,3! now also conjured visions of doom. He prophesied that the

AEU’s extension of the dispute to essential services would see Melbourne plunged not only into crime and famine but also probably into the most desolating pestilences. . . [The government should] intervene to defend the community against starvation, darkness, disorder and disease. . . If there is no law against industrial and civil war, then any government must organise emergency services. It must call for volunteers to man those services, and it must protect the volunteers. . .1t must smash the strike by direct action itself. 32

In fact a breakthrough in the war of nerves was at hand. On 30 April Judge Drake-Brockman declared that granting the AEU’s demand for 20s ‘would greatly jeopardise the Australian economy’ but that he was ‘open to be convinced that the. . . Mooney award is be-

low what is reasonably safe’. At the time the significance of the judge’s unbending was not immediately recognized and AEU sympathizers tended to denounce his ‘pre-judging’ of the 20s claim. The

next day it became clear just how much progress had been made when Drake-Brockman agreed to the AEU’s demand to call a conference before a return to work. Elaborate face-saving procedures were followed for the benefit of everyone except the AEU. First, the Court made it clear that it was only acting on the specific request of Premier Cain (and, some argued, Prime Minister Chifley). Second, it wasn’t really a joint conference as the AEU had long wanted—but rather a (potential) series of conferences. To begin with the unions would talk to Drake-Brockman—and the AEU must ‘promise’ the ACTU to attend! Then, if the judge thought it wise, he would call the employers to meet him 1n a serarate conference. Only after that, and if the judge thought it ‘necessary’, would all parties be called to a joint conference. Behind this facade negotiations began on Friday 2 May, the AEU

having earlier told its members in the metropolitan power houses

The “40 years’ case and the margins war 145

not to withdraw that night as planned. When talks bogged down, however, the instructions were reversed. At a triumphant May Day march of 7000 the AEU led the procession, in which neither government, ACTU or THC was seen to be officially represented. Later Rowe told his audience that the engineers were ‘on the brink of one of the biggest victories that the Australian working class had ever won’. And so it proved to be when settlement was reached on Monday 5 May. The publicly agreed terms were: 1 That work is resumed forthwith by all unions under the terms of the Mooney award; 2 That both parties invite the Full Court to investigate the Mooney award as it 1s agreed that in the method of fixation of margins adopted by the Commissioner some injustice may have been done, and if this is found to be the case; 3 That a method of fixing marginal rates for tradesmen and higher classifications on a percentage or some other basis should be considered in the light of the circumstances today compared with those obtaining in 1921, and in respect of other margins the acceptance of the appropriate marginal differences.

On the surface these terms do not appear to represent quite the victory Rowe had claimed. And indeed certain sections of the community attempted to imply that identical terms had been available ‘weeks

ago’. News Weekly (7 May) declared, ‘A.E.U. Back Where It Started’, while the Argus (6 May) claimed that the settlement was a

defeat for the AEU and ‘the forces of direct action and sectional power politics’, and ‘a complete vindication for the principle of arbitration as the final word in industrial disputes’. Others in the know were more honest. Jack Lang’s Century (9 May) said that there

could be ‘no suggestion’ that the AEU had surrendered and that in fact the employers had offered at least 15s extra to tradesmen to be incorporated in the new award. The Sun News-Pictorial (6 May) pointed to the fact that the engineers could have returned to work at any time since February under the Mooney formula, and appealed against the award. Convinced of the justice of their cause and with a callous disregard of the public welfare they persisted with their pressure tactics, and it is useless to blink the fact that pressure tactics have again won. Obviously the engineers have received an advanced guarantee as to the nature of the award which the court will go through the formality of ratifying. Despite face-saving chatter about negotiations ‘under the auspices of

the court’. . .and a ‘return to the normal jurisdiction of the court’, the strike has badly shaken the arbitration system.

For ignoring the emperor’s new clothes the Court lashed the editorial as a ‘malicious fabrication’ and an ‘outrageous statement’, but charges of contempt of court were dismissed. The trade union world

146 Division of Labour

of course knew the truth, including the AEU rank and file who agreed at a mass meeting on 7 May to return to work on the 8th. Any lingering doubts concerning the true settlement terms were finally dispelled in November by commissioner Mooney, who by

then had grounds for annoyance with the arbitration judges. The Court’s judgement?? departed significantly from the terms on which work had been resumed. Issued on 26 June, it declared that Mooney had radically distorted the correct relationships between the various

classifications. In particular his award of 5s had given ‘disproportionate increases’ to the lower-paid metal workers. The Court therefore gave fitters 16s extra, process workers 5s extra, and all other margins were proportionately modified. The net result for tradesmen was that their nominal rates exceeded the basic wage by 49 per cent—a figure exceeding even the original 43 per cent Harvester ratio of 1907. When the 7s interim basic wage rise was added, their gain since the dispute began was 23s. On the other hand, workers falling into classifications below that of process worker were subject to nominal reductions to the Mooney rates ranging from 6d to 3s per week. The Court appears to have decided on reflection that

the FIA—which organized the vast majority of the tradesmen’s assistants—did not deserve to gain its promised reward from a battle of wills essentially won by the skilled engineers. Significantly for the future, it also inserted in the award a clause forbidding overtime bans, under threat of fines. Apart from its anger at the cut in assistants’ wages the FIA was also disappointed in its expectation that general labourers employed in the metal trades would receive a margin for the first time. Both

FIA and AEU now publicly declared that the return to work had taken place on the understanding that all employees in the lower two of Mooney’s threefold division of classifications would receive minimum increases of 13s and 11s respectively. In October 1947 the FIA, supported by the other metal unions, applied to Mooney for an increase in its members’ wages on the grounds that the terms of the agreement ending the Victorian stoppage had not been fulfilled. In the first margins award by a commissioner since the 1947 amendments to the Arbitration Act (see Chapter 8), Mooney’s judgement rebutted the bench’s attack on his previous findings. In particular he criticized the Court for implementing the first part of term three of the agreement, whereby the Harvester ratio was to be restored, and

yet ignoring the second part, whereby other margins were to be

based on ‘the Mooney principle of division into groups with appropriate marginal differences’. The commissioner declared, I know of nothing more likely to prolong a dispute or create a further dis-

pute, than for an industrial authority to fail to implement a settlement arrived at by the parties when the terms of the settlement are not opposed to the national interest, and are otherwise unobjectionable. . .

The ‘40 years’ case and the margins war 147 To implement the agreement between the parties, I propose to further vary the metal trades award to provide that the lower grades (that 1s the 7s and 5s grades in the ‘Mooney award’) receive an increase of 13s and 11s respectively on the margins existing before the variation by me and by the Full Court. . .34

He also granted a 3s margin to general labourers employed in the industry. The outcome of the dispute represented easily the biggest victory ever achieved by the AEU, a union well used to industrial success. It was, however, enormously costly, despite the facts that some twothirds of the 17 000 affected engineers obtained other jobs during the

dispute and, until January when the lockout became a strike, the AEU men locked out had been entitled to unemployment benefit. All in all, the cost to the AEU amounted to something like $6.9m in 1987 prices. The total depletion of the reserves of this wealthy union gave pleasure to those who disliked the arrogance of the ‘Gentlemen Jims’, but, like the steel dispute, it hardly fits in with the description by Crisp of stoppages in the period as being ‘easy strikes for union leaders and cheap strikes for union treasuries’.2° The cost to the FIA, while unknown, must also have been considerable. At least one other union, the Sheet Metal Workers, was prevented from taking a more active role in the dispute by the drain on its funds. There is no doubt that the AEU Victorian officials had been very near to throwing in the towel as the stakes and cost rose in the second

half of April. Here the strength of Cranwell was significant, but of even greater importance was the determination of the rank and file. Convinced of the justice of their cause, the Victorian membership— communist and Catholic Actionist alike—remained united to the triumphant end. Rowe admitted, however, that communist attempts to heighten the political consciousness of AEU strikers by drawing non-activists into the extensive network of strike committees were frustrated by the ancient craft tradition whereby one simply ‘deprives the boss of one’s skill and awaits the effect’.3¢ After the dispute was over, employers and conservative politician acknowledged that the engineers’ wage claims were just.?’ In subsequent months the gains began to flow on to other awards, federal and state. The margins breakthrough enabled the bench at the end of the marathon ‘40 years’ case in September 1947 to postpone the inception of the shorter week until January 1948 without provoking union uproar. The September ACTU congress had actually decided that if

the Court had not introduced 40 hours by 20 October a national 24-hour stoppage would be held after which the shorter week would be unilaterally implemented by all unionists. In the event the ACTU accepted without demur both the delay and the Court’s subsequent insertion in its 40-hours awards of clauses requiring the performance of ‘reasonable’ overtime.3? Queensland followed New South Wales

148 Division of Labour with 40-hours legislation and the other states’ tribunals followed the federal Court’s lead. Discussion in this chapter has helped put into correct perspective what Hancock once described as the Court’s ‘unusual generosity to wage-earners’ in the immediate post-war years.?? In fact, the major

concessions had to be prised with main force from the reluctant Court which, confident of government support, procrastinated for as

long as it could dare. Further, although employers were quick to begin denouncing the ‘failure’ of the shorter week,*° the achievement of the margins—hours targets by early 1948 marked something of a turning point. With the wage peg finally relaxed, the government was no longer so obviously dug in on the front line alongside the employers. Although Chifley himself had the grace to offer ‘no comment’ to the press when the Court handed down its decision*!

the government’s outward support for shorter hours before the Court provided useful public window-dressing which persuaded not

merely many casual contemporary observers but also subsequent scholars that it had actually been a major force pushing for the shorter week.44 The government’s public relations image was further boosted by its claims that its new, much-vaunted reforms of the federal arbitration system would quicken the pace at which the tribunal conceded ground before the unions’ market power. Reality would prove otherwise.

CHAPTER EIGAT

FEDERAL ARBITRATION: REFORM, PERSONNEL AND SANCTIONS

The crucial role of arbitration tribunals in sheltering employers and the economy from the full shock of labour’s bargaining power has emerged clearly from our discussion of the hectic events of the first two post-war years. In this chapter we concentrate on the dominant

federal system. Analysis of Chifley’s key amending legislation confirms that he was determined not to allow decentralization of the wage-fixing process. Attention is then directed to two alternative tri-

bunals, erected during the war in the strategic maritime sector. These, while not according with the union movement’s ideal format,

gave the seamen and wharfies a more direct input into decisionmaking. As the Cold War heightened, so too did suspicion of mili-

tant unions’ motivation. In this atmosphere arbitrators found it easier to apply sanctions. The chapter ends with consideration of federal arbitrators’ confrontation with three key unions; the WWF, FEDFA and BWIU. In mid-1947 the Chifley government enacted legislation amending the Commonwealth Conciliation and Arbitration Act for the first time since 1934. All parties engaged in industrial relations had long accepted the need for some reform. On the eve of war the Menzies government was close to introducing its own amendments but its

bill, although printed in 1940, was not presented to parliament. During the war NSA Regulations had effected changes to the federal

Court’s powers of varying expediency (above pp. 10-11, 13). In addition to creating special tribunals for the maritime and coal industries and for some female occupations, the wartime governments, in order to expedite the hearing of disputes, made extensive use of the hitherto largely disregarded section of the Arbitration Act pro-

viding for the appointment of conciliation commissioners. The

150 Division of Labour

original legislation limited their numbers to three but by 1947 this had been expanded by Regulation to nine and they and the Court had been empowered to expedite dispute settlement. Chifley approved of the wartime re-emphasis on conciliation. After re-entering parliament in September 1940 he had responded to a request from the Menzies government to help evolve better and more prompt conciliation procedures which he regarded as “the real essence of settling

industrial disputes’.! How his own government in peacetime reshaped the Arbitration Act, the single most important feature of the Australian industrial landscape, was to reveal the crucial difference in policy prescription between it and the unions. The first point to note about the 1947 amendments 1s that they were introduced after little direct consultation with the union movement and represented a considerable rebuff to the ACTU.¢ The 1945 ACTU congress had called for reformation of the system along lines set out in a bill to be drafted by its executive. ‘Informal discussions’ subsequently occurred between Senator McKenna and ‘executive officers of the ACTU”? but the movement towards reform proceeded slowly in 1946 and, significantly, the government and unions con-

tinued their internal consultations largely on separate tracks. Federal union consideration of the ACTU bill included a special two-day conference. In the ACTU’s view “The Government did not pursue the matter vigorously’ before the general election of September 1946.4 This was doubtless partly because of the hope that the

simultaneous referendum would extend the Commonwealth’s in-

dustrial powers. Afterwards, however, Chifley, Evatt, McKenna and Holloway gave brief meetings with ACTU officers no greater precedence than those with various employer organizations, with the WA

branch of the ALP and with the AWU. In fact the government, because of what it saw as the radical composition of the ACTU executive, bypassed it and consulted an ALP ‘industrial committee’ consisting of the federal secretary and president of the ALP and two other ALP executive members. On 5 February 1947 Cabinet made its final decision after considering the ACTU bill along with written employer submissions from ACMA, and, jointly, from ACEF and ACCA.® In general terms the employers accepted the wartime extension of conciliation processes but called for co-ordination of decisions on common standards. Specifically, however, both employer proposals called for the abolition of provisions for conciliation committees (redundant since a 1931 High Court decision), no restrictions on appeals to the Court from

commissioners’ decisions and, in addition to its control over the basic wage and standard hours, the allocation to the full court, rather than to commissioners, of jurisdiction over annual leave, sick leave, public holidays and adult female basic rates. ACEF—ACCA also wished to give the Court sole control of overtime, shift, weekend,

Federal arbitration 151 junior and apprenticeship rates and called for the insertion in the Act of clauses prohibiting strikes until a secret ballot had been held and providing for fines and/or prison terms for nominated ‘offences’.

These included go-slows, work bans, boycotts, incitements to breaches of awards, and moving resolutions or publishing material abusing or insulting the Court or commissioners. The ACTU proposal was based on submissions which the Scullin government had largely incorporated in its 1930 bill only to see it butchered by a hostile Senate.’ It aimed to eliminate almost completely the legal elements from the system and to place all the emphasis on conciliation. All current judges would be compulsorily retired and a new one-man court established with purely judicial function. All disputes would be handled by conciliation commissioners presiding with a casting vote over committees separately established for each dispute consisting of four, six or eight members, half drawn from each side of the fence. The unions, in thus pressing their long-standing determination to change the legalistic format of the centralized federal system, wanted to let market forces, currently highly favourable to them, determine wages and working conditions on industrial and regional bases. With the ALP in firm control of the Senate, the way seemed clear for a major change of direction for the national system. Unfortunately for the unions Perlman was quite incorrect when he asserted that Labor’s 1947 Act was a simple repetition of the old

Blackburn bill drafted in the 1920s. In fact Chifley proved more conservative than Scullin. He had absolutely no intention of decen-

tralizing the determination of wage costs. Thus the Court had to remain and control basic hours, wages and conditions. The government did, however, see that some reduction in legalism and a greater element of conciliation in lesser disputes would help cut both delay and workforce frustration. Hence it extended the use of laymen conciliation commissioners who would be given exclusive powers to settle disputes—except those concerning standard hours, basic wage, annual leave and female minimum rates. In contrast to the Scullin

proposals, these would be handled by the existing Court which would also deal with all questions of law.? Appeal to the High Court would be abolished.!° Other amendments provided Commissioners with tenure to sixty-five years of age, allowed for their early involvement in disputes, virtually eliminated lawyers from all save judicial proceedings before the Court, and aimed to provide arbitrators with more statistical data.!! One reform which attracted surprisingly little attention was that which sought to give the commissioners clear discretion to grant union preference, which hitherto had been blocked by a debilitating ‘all other things being equal’ clause. Evatt, in introducing the bill in parliament, referred to this amendment only at the

end of his speech when tidying-up loose ends. The fact that the

152 Division of Labour Opposition accepted this feature virtually without a murmur!? 1s indicative of the contemporary strong trade union position and, to a lesser degree, of the effect of wartime application of the common rule to federal awards. !? As against this, the bill failed either to make union amalgamations

easier or to improve union officials’ right of entry to workplaces. More important, while rejecting the ACEF—ACCA call for greatly

extended penalties, the government did not heed union demands that existing disciplinary powers be eliminated. Indeed, by making it a superior court of record, the bill gave the Court all the commonlaw powers of punishing a person or organization for contempt. Provisions relating to deregistration of organizations, secret strike ballots under court order, cancellation and suspension of awards and,

most important, the enforcement of sanctions inserted in awards (‘ban clauses’) were all retained in the new bill. Next, as only leftwing Independent Doris Blackburn—widow of Maurice, the author of the 1920s ALP draft—noted in the debate, the bill failed to direct

either judges or commissioners as to the criteria to be applied in determining basic conditions of employment. By clear implication, therefore, the government accepted the ‘capacity to pay’ criteria and reyected union demands for a return to a pre-Depression ‘needs’ basis for minimum wage awards. Blackburn was similarly alone in vainly calling for the appointment of at least one female commissioner to the wholly male tribunal. Despite the government’s caution and its clear rejection of the unions’ main demands, Opposition spokesmen made alarmist claims about the bill’s likely effects. The lack of appeal from commissioners’ decisions and the danger that the proposed new appointments would be biased in favour of the unions attracted most of the flak. The Opposition forecast that the commissioners would prove ‘1 per cent conciliator and 99 per cent dictator’.!4 Fuel was added to these fires by the fervent response from ALP backbenchers T.F. Williams and R. James that they hoped the new commissioners would favour labour just as much as judges appointed by conservative governments had in the past favoured employers. Evatt accepted that ‘the crux of the bill’ was ‘the suitability of the conciliation commissioners to be appointed’. Chifley too saw their appointment as ‘undoubtedly the fundamental principle in this bill’!> but reference to the generally acclaimed worth and independence of commissioners appointed by the wartime governments and assurances of similarly careful selection in future were not enough to calm Opposition fears. The gov-

ernment met criticisms of the potential lack of co-ordination between commissioners by amending its original bill to allow for (a) the appointment of a chief commissioner who would, under supervision of the chief judge, allocate duties to his colleagues on a largely in-

Federal arbitration 153 dustrial basis; (b) meetings between the chief judge and all commissioners at least three times per annum; and (c) an annual report to parliament by both chief judge and chief commissioner. These con-

cessions failed to appease the Liberal and Country parties which, after swingeing attacks on the whole legislation, unsuccessfully moved for the introduction of appeals to the Court from commissioners’ decisions and for considerably increased penalties for breaches and incitement to breach awards. Imminent state elections in NSW and Queensland and awareness of the new national audience for parliamentary broadcasts contributed to opposition ‘grandstanding’ and repeated kicking of the communist can during the debate.!© Yet there was a further important

reason for the Opposition’s extreme language. The bill’s passage through parliament in April and May coincided exactly with the dramatic climax to the vast metal trades dispute in Victoria. Apart from inducing the government labour spokesman in the Senate to utter a completely mendacious version of the dispute’s settlement,!’

the growing tension in Victoria helped produce an atmosphere of near-hysteria as the national parliament debated the future of industrial relations. In this climate the Opposition’s more measured and accurate charges were submerged in the flood of wilder, exotic claims issuing particularly from backbench and Country Party mem-

bers. Thus for many labour supporters the Opposition’s factual observations that the metal trades dispute really revolved around the

government’s economic policy, wage pegging and the associated compression of margins were totally obscured by accompanying assertions that the Communist Party was fermenting revolution, anarchy and civil war.!°®

Wild and intemperate though most references to it were, the metal trades dispute did suggest two weaknesses—one potential and one

actual—in the new legislation from the government’s viewpoint. The dispute of course centred on margins increases. Settlement was reached before the new legislation became law in October and the key award was made in June by the full bench. The potential danger rested in the fact that margins represented the one major component of wage costs which the 1947 Act allowed the commissioners to de-

termine. It seems certain that the government underestimated the way in which full employment would help margins to spread down the occupational pyramid once the wage peg was removed. The aftermath of the Victorian dispute demonstrated in the clearest possible manner that a margins increase now had virtually the same national wage—cost impact as a basic wage alteration. If the commis-

sioners were to prove responsive to full employment market pressures, then government hopes of restraining widespread wage increases through the leisurely pace and conservative predilections of

154 Division of Labour the arbitration bench were in serious jeopardy. The potential lack of co-ordination between commissioners posed obvious related threats for federal economic policy. The second—and actually observed—problem fortified the first. It

rested in the greater speed with which the expanded arbitration machinery was able to implement a ‘flow-on’ from the key metal trades award. A background paper prepared for the Cabinet’s Investment and Employment Committee in mid-1948 estimated that with the old machinery the margins flow-on ‘might. . . have taken up to two or three years to pass through all the occupations’. As it was ‘the cycle had been exhausted by March of this year’, i.e., some nine months after the engineers’ original award.!? Yet most fears about the new system proved groundless. The industrial lawyers were naturally upset at the threat to their vested

interests*® and the leader of the ‘industry’, chief judge DrakeBrockman, wrote a fairly pessimistic report on the first year’s operation in which his main call was for more formal co-ordination. He

wrote of ‘many indications of a disturbing lack of uniformity. . .I cannot emphasise too strongly the desirability of effecting an authOritative co-ordination’.2! It is certain that in the forefront of DrakeBrockman’s mind was chief commissioner Mooney’s implementation of the outstanding negotiated terms of settlement of the metal trades dispute which involved alteration of the full bench’s decision

without employers’ right of appeal. He did not, however, provide any concrete examples of important divergences other than reference to the potential problems presented by the bench’s own interpretation of the wording of the Act giving it power to alter adult female

minimum rates. In the following year Kelly, the new chief judge, also referred to the divergence in the judges’ interpretation of the female rates issue (they were now split 2—2) but made no reference at all to any co-ordination problem among the commissioners whom he

praised highly both for their industry and their awareness of ‘their great responsibilities’. Indeed it is hard to trace either a marked change in the new tribunal’s approach or any remarkable impact which it made on the industrial relations system apart from the in1tial margins flow-on and the generally greater promptness in dealing with disputes. On the issue of female rates the bench and commissioners combined to restrain the move towards equal pay. The 1945 Regulations sustaining a 75 per cent floor in the fourteen ‘vital industries’ had been incorporated in the Defence Transition Bill. The 1947 Act specifically gave the judges power to ‘make an order or award altering the minimum rate of remuneration for adult females in an industry’. The metal unions unsuccessfully demanded that this provision be repealed on the grounds that for the first time it formalized the de facto separation of the male and female basic wage. The judges even-

Federal arbitration 155

tually decided legalistically that the Act only gave them power to ‘alter’ a rate already set by the commissioners—and no specific adult female minimum rate had yet been awarded. The metal unions then asked Mooney to establish equal pay in their industry, where a variety of female rates existed but where a large proportion of women earned from 90 to 100 per cent of male rates, not by virtue of the award but as a result of the WEB’s wartime decisions. The metal unions’ minimum expectation was that female rates would thus be standardized as a high proportion of the male rates for work done rather than, as was the case for the minority of female metal workers, as a mere 75 per cent of the basic wage plus a 3s loading. This group of women on ‘award’ rather than WEB rates had thus completely missed out on the margins gains of 1947. In October 1948 Mooney rejected the union case. All he did was to give a mere 7s to the ‘award rate’ earners—and he did so by increasing the loading rather than by increasing the percentage of the basic wage or by prescribing the amount as a distinct ‘margin’. His judgement specifically opposed the principle of equal pay and approvingly quoted judges’ views that male rates constituted a family, not an individual, wage. Soon after this union failure in the benchmark metal trades award the employers successfully challenged the ‘vital industries’ Regulations in the High Court, which invalidated them in June 1949. The Chamber of Manufactures then asked the Arbitration Court to re-

duce relevant women’s rates from 75 to 60 per cent of the male figure. The Chifley government’s response to the High Court decision alarmed those genuinely committed to equal pay. It amended the Act to provide the Arbitration Court judges with sole, specific

and separate power to declare a female basic wage. This unambiguous provision, accepted by the new ACTU executive, enabled ‘employers to claim and judges to accept that the Government intended to assess different, and consequently unequal, basic wages’.23 The Court’s eventual decision in 1950 established the federal minimum rate at 75 per cent, although in areas such as the metal trades male union bargaining power ensured continuance of most higher pre-existing rates. Of the seventeen commissioners (seven old, ten new) appointed under the 1947 Act a good majority had some trade union or ALP connections in their background2* but some were legally trained and all proved just as cautious as the judges, if not more so. The complaints about commissioners voiced at a federal union conference held only seven months after the inauguration of the new system clearly indicated how groundless the Opposition fears had proved. Delegates charged that the commissioners were not fulfilling the role envisaged for them and called again for conciliation committees. The commissioners were proving more Catholic than the Pope, being

overconcerned with niceties, formalities and documentation and

156 Division of Labour were too ready to allow paid agents and/or counsel to be present at compulsory conferences as advisers.2° The indignant charge that commissioners were acting as ‘dilutee judges’ seemed justified in view of the fact that some went so far against the spirit of the Act as to refuse either to participate in dispute settlement while workers were on strike or to accept consent applications on such matters as preference to unionists and the collection of union dues. An indication of just how far the commissioners were from being biased in favour of unions is provided by the fact that delegates actually suggested that there should be a right of appeal from commissioners and that the definition of penalty rates should not be left to their discretion. After lengthy debate the conference called urgently for a number of amendments to the new Act. Direct ACTU approaches to the government did produce an assurance from Chifley that in future commissioners would not refuse to deal with disputes ‘merely because’ workers were on strike2° but unions were still vigorously complaining about various commissioners’ behaviour at the end of the

government’s term in office.2’ ) Margins never became a decentralizing issue. Nationally the union movement concentrated its energies on the basic wage issue until 1950. Individually, unions for some time after the 1947—48 margins round were generally content to digest the rise and ensure its flow-on

to members working under state awards. The front-running metal tradesmen did not present another margins case until 1951. Commis-

sioner J.M. Galvin, a former AFULE official who reportedly assumed all the airs of high office2® and who earlier in 1951 had, with

very little provocation, greatly extended the full court’s 1947 prohibition of overtime bans by metal workers, eventually in January 1952 granted them nil increase. This was despite—or rather because of—Korean War-boosted inflation of approximately 50 per cent since the June 1947 award. He also reduced WEB-based female rates

in the metal trades from 90 to 75 per cent of the male—although subsequent union reactions ensured that this was a nominal rather than actual reduction.2? Far from union-trained laymen breaking free from the conservative and legal mould of the old Court, the commissioners from the outset looked for guidance from, and acceptance by, the judges and the legal community. This is indicated during Chifley’s term by the chief judges’ annual reports and by the chief commissioner’s only

report to the parliament which, inter alia, called for laywers to be allowed to appear before commissioners. In their 1950 and 1951 re-

ports, Foster (acting chief judge during Kelly’s illness) and Kelly complained not of any unwonted divergence between commissioners’ awards but rather of the inherent problems of dividing up ‘composite disputes’ between commissioners and Court in order to meet

the jurisdictional dichotomy established by the 1947 Act.?° Sir

Federal arbitration 157 Richard Kirby later argued that ‘this separation [between 1947 and 1956] of Judges and Commissioners in the social sense, the industrial relations sense and in pretty well every sense [was] the most powerful obstacle to sensible co-operative work by those responsible for the prescription of industrial conditions in federal awards’ .?! This was, however, written in the context of his patting himself on the back for improving teamwork after Menzies’ 1956 amendments ended the orginal dichotomy between judges and commissioners. Dabscheck, in his study of Kelly, quotes Kirby’s remarks in the course of illustrating the personal disunity and ill-feeling which arose at least occasionally among the commissioners in the early 1950s and the inability of Kelly to control it.44 Such personality clashes did not, however, usually flow over in any important way into divergences in their awards. In this context it is worth recalling the four criticismfree reports from 1949 to 1952—and the fact that the Menzies government did not see the need to introduce an appeal from commissioners to the Court until commissioner Findlay ignored Galvin’s controversial precedent by awarding a margins increase in the ACT later in 1952. A clear demonstration of the commissioners’ general posture 1s provided by their unsolicited opposition to the granting of union preference. The federal Opposition parties had spent little breath in endeavouring to block this aspect of the 1947 amendments. Menzies took it for granted that ‘preference in absolute terms will hereafter become the rule rather than the exception as in the past’.7? In fact the commissioners behaved as if the old provisions still held and followed the arbitration judges’ past practice of granting preference only if a long-established agreement between employers and union existed on the issue or if a clear case of employer discrimination against union members could be demonstrated. Even before the confusing effect of two High Court decisions in 1949 and 1950 the commissioners explicitly opposed the general principle of preference and equally explicitly asserted the importance of taking a uniform stance on the issue. 34

It is not very surprising that by 1949 Opposition spokesmen on industrial relations were accepting the worth and the lack of prejudice of the commissioners.?> Thus judges and commissioners alike

continued to act as a sea anchor dragging on the unions’ ability to improve award rates and conditions in accord with market forces. Inevitably, therefore, in a full-employment environment increasingly unrestrained by price or wage control, collective bargaining increased outside the jurisdiction of the arbitration system. Yet, given

Australia’s tradition and institutional setting, the gradual emergence of ‘wages drift’ surely represented a slower rise in actual paid rates—particularly for less skilled workers generally unschooled in

over-award bargaining—than would have been the case if, as the

158 Division of Labour

unions had hoped, the 1947 amendments had produced a system itself directly sensitive to market forces. Chifley was personally well aware of the importance of the outlook

and personality of the individual arbitrator. He accepted that the commissioners’ appointment was ‘the fundamental principle’ of the 1947 Act. He revealed considerable even-handedness by including in

the list A.S. Blackburn, a former Liberal MP, much reviled by South Australian unionists because of his energetic leadership of ‘Blackburn’s Black and Tans’ during the violent 1928 Adelaide waterfront dispute.*° In parliament Chifley spoke of his own experience of AFULE arbitration cases and the importance of individual judges’ temperament and bearing—‘“The selection of a judge. . . or

a. ..commissioner is therefore one of the most difficult tasks that any government has to face’.?” Given the continued dominance of the arbitration bench it is therefore of considerable significance to note the nature of his Cabinet’s appointments to it. In 1945 the bench consisted of four appointees of conservative federal governments and one of the Curtin ministry. The last was judge A.W. Foster, aged fifty-nine, who at the time of his appointment in 1944 had been on the Victorian country court and general sessions bench for seventeen years. In earlier days he had been a prominent socialist and rationalist, had twice stood as an ALP parliamentary candidate and in the 1920s had helped Maurice Blackburn draft the original ACTU arbitration bill. His background, however, in no way hindered him from enforcing the draconian legislation passed to combat the 1949 coal strike (below, pp. 296~7). Some

observers felt that by the 1940s Foster had left his radicalism far behind, in the process becoming very touchy about his personal dignity as a judge. >®

The chief judge was H.B. Piper, fifty-one, a South Australian lawyer first appointed by the Lyons government. He was the son of a

judge, privately educated and a member of the Adelaide and Melbourne Clubs. The longest-serving judge was Western Australian E.A. Drake-Brockman, sixty-one, a lawyer who had been president of the Employers Federation after becoming a Nationalist Senator (and chief whip). His appointment to the Court in 1927 had been bitterly attacked by the ALP and the unions. The Lyons government’s appointment of T. O’Mara (aged forty-seven in 1945) had

also been criticized by some unions because the greater part of

his industrial practice had been derived from employers’

organizations—notably the MTEA. W.R. Kelly, forty-seven, had been appointed by Menzies in 1941. He had been president of the south Australian industrial court and prior to entering arbitration had been a country lawyer and magistrate with strong conservative party connections. At the end of Chifley’s term in office, death and retirement had

Federal arbitration 159

temporarily reduced the bench to four. In the interim his government had made four new appointments and two promotions to the position of chief judge. By any standards—not least by those of earlier conservative governments—there is no evidence that the ALP sought to tilt the bench in labour’s direction. If anything the Chifley

appointments maintained the traditional conservative bias of the Court. O’Mara died in 1946. His replacement was another Sydney man, B. Sugerman, then forty-two, a distinguished civil lawyer, foundation editor of the Australian Law Journal from 1927 to 1946 and also editor of Australian Digest and the Commonwealth Law Reports.

Sugerman found arbitration work little to his taste?? and within a year he gladly accepted a move to the NSW Supreme Court bench. His place was filled by Chifley’s personal appointment, R.C. Kirby,

forty-three, then on the NSW district court bench. Before the war Kirby had moved from his early ‘silvertail’ contacts to become a specialist in the union side of worker compensation cases and a mem-

ber of the ‘Evatt Brains Trust’, that pioneering group of ALP lawyers which forged important links between a long line of powerful Sydney compensation lawyers and the right wing of the party.*° Kirby had stood as an ALP candidate in the 1940 state elections and

had recently headed three Royal Commissions, each potentially embarrassing to ALP governments in Tasmania, New South Wales and Canberra respectively. He had only once in his life professionally entered the Arbitration Court. Kirby’s initial federal arbitration appointment was to chair the new Stevedoring Industry Commission (SIC), a position which Foster apparently expected. Kirby and his biographer d’Alpuget retrospectively seem to confuse Foster’s flamboyant private personality with his generally orthodox, albeit sometimes erratic, persona on the

arbitration bench. Nevertheless their account of why Kirby was given the SIC job despite Foster having written the original report in 1946 which recommended the restructuring of the SIC illuminates

the federal government’s caution. It was ‘a signal that not even a Labor government was prepared to risk its hand by appointing a man... who took his radical politics on to the bench’.*! Certainly there was nothing radical about Kirby’s approach to his role. This most ‘political’ of Chifley’s appointees did recommend a fine rather than the gaol sentence incorporated in the majority decision of Kelly and ‘red judge’ Foster for McPhillips in 1949 (above p. 64) but there was little else to mark him out from his colleagues. His biographer relates how he speedily settled into the conservative establishment. He was not noticeably generous to the watersiders, getting on quite well personally with Jim Healy but standing firm against the WWF in the clash which resulted in the dissolution of the SIC in 1949. Two years later Kirby was one of three judges to sentence E. Roach of the

160 Dhtvision of Labour

WWF to a whole year in gaol for ‘contempt of court’ and in other 1ndustries Kirby proved willing to apply to unions the ‘penal powers’ increased by Menzies in 1951. The remaining Chifley arbitration appointments were even more conservative. In 1947 when Piper retired the government showed no hesitation in appointing the senior judge and ex-conservative politi-

cian, Drake-Brockman, to the vacancy despite simultaneous union calls for his removal from the bench because of his bias.*4 In 1949 it

made its two most contentious appointments by bringing onto the bench the president of the Western Australian Arbitration Court, E.A. Dunphy, forty-two, and appointing Kelly as chief judge upon the death of Drake-Brockman. Dunphy, a former WA Crown Solicitor with good ALP contacts, was, like Kelly, a Catholic. As we have seen he considered that the right to strike had disappeared and he was renowned for his hardline anti-communism which he continued to demonstrate in the federal arena. Even right-wing ALP MHR

K.E. Beazley acknowledged Dunphy’s harsh approach.*? Sir Richard Eggleston, then ACTU advocate, saw Dunphy as an outright anti-communist.*4 The communists themselves, who were understandably prone to feel both paranoiac and vindictive towards the arbitration judges in this period, tended to place Dunphy in a class of his own. McPhillips, for example, who was imprisoned in 1949 first by Kelly and Foster for contempt of court and then by

Foster alone during the coal strike, in retrospect saw his archindustrial enemy Mr Justice Cantor of the NSW Industrial Court as ‘a BHP judge’ but ‘a very affable fellow’. He viewed O’Mara, who was constantly accused of bias by the FIA and the CPA during the Balmain dispute and the ongoing FIA-AWU battles,*> as ‘more a devout Catholic than an anti-communist’. But McPhillips remembered Dunphy, who presided over the climactic 1951 FIA ballotrigging case, as a man who allowed his own conservative ideology to overwhelm him to a degree where he ‘could hardly hide his venom’ when dealing with communists.*® Lastly, there was Kelly. Some controversy still surrounds this unusual figure. The oral tradition casts him as a fussy and vain man and

some of his actions in the 1950s seemed to leave him open to the charge of naivety at best and anti-union bias at worst.*” He helped expose the Court to such hostility that the Menzies government was reportedly pleased to remove him from arbitration by ‘promoting’

him to the new Industrial Court when it reformed the system in 1956.48 Dabscheck has recently offered a more sympathetic portrait of Kelly, particularly qualifying views of his naivety. All we need say here is that no one has depicted him as other than a conservative figure. The essential choice facing the government in appointing a chief judge in 1949 was between Kelly and Foster, three years apart in seniority. Chifley, like many ALP leaders before and since, pre-

Federal arbitration 161 ferred to appoint the establishment figure rather than take any kind of risk with Foster; Kelly’s overwhelming concern with inflation*? also seems likely to have been weighed approvingly by Chifley. With conservative judges naturally inclined to accept its authoritative economic evidence—sometimes fed through the mouths of ‘independent’ witnesses such as Professor Giblin—and inherently receptive to Chifley’s constant anti-inflationary speeches, the government had little need to be concerned with the likely outcome of the Court’s major wage-—cost decisions after the relaxation of the wage-pegging

Regulations.°° Of more concern were trends in the ‘bottleneck’ essential industries, most notably in the maritime, waterfront and coal mining sectors. Separate tribunals had been established during the war to facilitate dispute settlement in these traditionally turbulent industries. Coal will be dealt with in Chapters 11 and 12. In the other two sectors, the arbitration judges originally appointed to head the special commissions found themselves unable to handle the indignity of descending from the bench to the heat of dealing with day-to-day industrial pressures arising from both sides in very tight

wartime product and labour markets. Lay chairmen were then appointed but after the war, despite union opposition, these industries were moved back towards control by the bench. In the maritime sector, the Curtin government had moved speedily to gain the wartime backing of merchant seamen engaged in what had become the most dangerous of civilian jobs.°! Within three weeks of Pearl Harbor a joint conference determined that the 44hour week be prescribed as the industrial standard, that overtime rates be paid for Sunday work and a Maritime Industry Commission (MIC) be established to administer these principles, to handle increased ‘war risk’ bonuses, conditions of leave, use of inexperienced labour and industrial disputes. The MIC consisted of equal numbers

of employer and union representatives plus Mr Justice DeBaun, a former industrial advocate appointed by the conservative Stevens government to the NSW Industrial Commission in 1938. Its wide disciplinary powers seemed appropriate, particularly since even at the peak of the Japanese thrust southwards there was a certain lack of rank-and-file enthusiasm for the win-the-war-at-all-costs policy of the communist leadership of the Seamen’s Union of Australia (SUA). Nevertheless the SUA representative withdrew from the MIC for ten months in protest over fines imposed on seamen and only rejoined in April 1944 in order to help defer a reduction in the war risk bonus. In October a dispute ensued when De Baun’s casting vote reduced the bonus. Upon being refused a vote of confidence by

the union representatives, De Baun resigned. Thereafter the MIC functioned under an acting chairman appointed from among the

162 Division of Labour

shipowners’ representatives with a deliberative but not a casting vote. The major tactical strength of the seamen rested on the fact that the MIC only controlled them during the terms of their engagement and once discharged they could hold back from attending pickup points.

After the war the employers argued that all industrial issues should again be settled in the Arbitration Court but the union favoured retention of the MIC’s partial role particularly since it offered a better chance of retaining the war risk bonus. When the NSA Regulations lapsed in 1948, legislation enabled the MIC to continue until 1t was abolished by the Liberal government in 1952. The war bonus issue was the central bone of contention for the first three peacetime years. Tension climaxed in 1948 when a number of partial agreements on various conditions of work were followed by commissioner Knight’s general award in July. After further threats and expressions of discontent, particularly over Sunday and public holiday rates the SUA reached an agreement with the shipowners to replace the bonus with an extra £8 a month.>2 Another notable dispute in 1948 involved a clash with the Queens-

land government over payment for seamen on watch overnight on Port of Brisbane dredges. Disagreements as to where jurisdiction rested for this intra-state dispute did little to aid settlement. After an SUA refusal to sign on Queensland-bound vessels, meetings between

its federal secretary, E.V. Elliott, Premier Hanlon and Senator Ashley, Minister for Supply and Shipping, worked out a compromise.°? Clearer, significant union victories were achieved in the Katoomba (1946) and Wangarella (1947) disputes. The first estab-

lished the principle that if an Australian ship was sold to foreign owners Australian crew should sail it to its destiny and then be repatriated at the original owner’s expense: if a foreign crew were used, an indemnity payment had to be paid to the unions. This principle became the subject of disputes in 1946 and 1949 and of eventual parliamentary inquiry.°* The SUA was particularly proud of the Wangarella achievement which was ‘the first time ever in international nautical history that a crew was paid additional rates for assisting in the salvage of a ship’.>> It also allowed The Bulletin once again to attack communist union officials. There was a time when a ship in distress brought out the best in seafaring men; but that was before Australian seamen handed over their affairs to a gang who in their apelike malignity regard ships and seamen alike as pawns to be used or cast aside in slavish obedience to a shifty foreign power.>®

The SUA was by far the largest maritime union. Federally, and in all state branches except South Australia, its full-time officials were

militants and, for the most part, CPA members. Federal secretary E.V. Elliott and other dynamic SUA leaders such as W. Bird in

, Federal arbitration 163 Victoria, encouraged by the renowned mass meetings of members ashore, high voting turn-outs and increasingly active shipboard committees, were involved in most militant joint union campaigns. They

lent support to the steelworkers in 1945; as we shall see, to the Queensland railway workers in 1948; and, most importantly, to the 1948 campaign against the Victorian Essential Services Act (see Chapter 9). In addition the seamen took part in many ‘political’ bans

and stoppages. Most notably they supported at various times the bans on Dutch and Greek ships and on the shipment of arms to Malaya. The SUA also placed a black ban on Queensland ports in protest against the gaoling of the Brisbane communists in the aftermath of the 1948 railway strike and organized a stop-work protest in

support of the imprisoned miners’ leaders in 1949. As the anticommunist frenzy heightened with the Cold War, economist Colin Clark predicted that in a ‘super Pearl Harbor’ planned by Moscow, SUA members (and wharfies) would plant atom bombs in major ports singled out for attack.°’ In reality the single biggest threat of disruption to shipping was

mounted by the conservative Institute of Marine and Power Engineers (IMPE). Early in March 1947 a fireman on the Corio was dismissed in Sydney. SUA members then refused to sail the ship on the grounds that he was their union delegate and had been victim-

ized. After hearing the case the MIC reinstated the fireman. The ship’s four engineers then refused to sail while the man was on

the ship and were suspended by the Commission. The Coro remained idle. In August the employers’ journal queried a social order that permitted this sort of thing: ‘Clearly ethical and moral decay is

white-anting the fibre of this nation’.°* In September the dispute took on a wider significance. Engineers in ships all round Australia began giving a month’s notice on the grounds that the Coro decision had jeopardized their right to select their crews freely. The IMPE ignored appeals from the acting chairman of the MIC, S.T. Edwards. The ACTU executive instructed all affiliated unions (the IMPE was not an affiliate) to see that ships were manned and serviced and condemned the dispute as unjustified. The shipowners began reluctantly to dismiss masters and mates, since they were unwilling to sail with unqualified engineers. On 26 September Judge Kelly considered the dispute in the Arbitration Court. He ruled that

the Court had no jurisdication in the matter since the dispute was between the MIC and the IMPE. The prospect loomed of 5000 seamen and 10000 wharf labourers being laid off and blackouts in Mel-

bourne and Adelaide as coal shipments ceased. Senator Ashley, Minister for Supply and Shipping, was soon consulting with the parties concerned and with Chifley.°? The Sydney Morning Herald put the blame for the dispute squarely on the engineers:

164 Division of Labour :

A body with the standing of the Marine and Power Engineers Institute should have far too great a sense of responsibility to paralyse Australian coastal shipping because of its objection to a ruling by the Maritime Industry

Commission. ..the engineers have no excuse for brandishing such a bludgeon. . .1n a comparatively trivial dispute.

The Bulletin blamed the SUA: ‘One way or another these Communists mean to pursue their industrial war against Australia’.®! Calamity was averted at the eleventh hour after a conference between Ashley, Edwards, Elliott and IMPE secretary, E.A. Cole, who agreed that Kelly would arbitrate. The judge ruled that the MIC had not been justified in ordering the reinstatement of the dismissed fireman and he ordered that the four suspended engineers be reinstated. Reactions were predictable. Elliott was furious: ‘The judgment is insulting in phraseology, staggering in content, dangerous in implication and contrary to common law rights and industrial practices. It is completely divorced from any impartial review of the circumstances of the dispute’. Cole was delighted. ‘Mr Justice Kelly found that the Commission’s decision to over-rule the discharge of the fireman was not justified. This vindicated the policy of the Insti-

tute in refusing to accept the attempt to take from the Chief Engineer the right of free selection of stokehold and engineroom complement’.® There was talk of strike action by the seamen but Elliott was determined to resist ‘any unwise industrial action’. Their only protest was to refuse to man the Corio, which remained in Sydney for two more months until an official end to the dispute was announced by Ashley after a meeting with Cole and Elliott. The terms of the settle-

ment were not disclosed but minor face-saving concessions were made on both sides after the parties had agreed they had nothing to gain from continuing the dispute.° The special problems of the stevedoring industry, attested by a variety of commentators,™ read like a prescription for industrial re-

lations disaster. Casual work, marked seasonal demand, regional variations in work practice, non-existent amenities, low occupational status, impersonal employer—employee contacts, divided (overseas and local) employer interests, hiring by the almost gladiatorial ‘bull’ system, above-average age and debility of the workforce, a history

marked by often violent conflict and the active encouragement of scab unions by government and employers all made it certain that any method of industrial regulation would face serious problems in the new era of full employment. Wartime labour difficulties on the wharves had sufficiently perturbed US military commanders for them to threaten to use their own troops to unload American ships. The Curtin government at the height of the 1942 emergency had established a Stevedoring Industry Commission (SIC) headed by Judge Piper, and made up of seven members—one (non-voting)

Federal arbitration 165 government official, three employer and three union representatives. The SIC was empowered to control the engagement, registration and direction of workers and to prescribe working conditions. The actual use of wharf labour in each port was managed by individual waterside employment committees made up of equal representatives of employers and workers under an independent chairman. They were also involved in local dispute settlement. The major wartime changes were the substitution of gang hiring for individual hiring, improvement in pay and a beginning made in the provision of basic workplace amenities. Important factors in the

change included the great demand for labour and the employers’ wartime protection against the major cost implications—but it is commonly agreed that the role of J. Healy, federal secretary of the WWE from 1937, was highly influential. ‘Big Jim’ Healy was probably the warmest character and best loved of the new generation of

communist union officials who rose to prominence in the postDepression years.®> He was often portrayed by media and conservative spokesmen as an implacable enemy of employers, the industry, Australian society and Western civilization, yet there is considerable

evidence that, along with his dedication to his members and to his class, there was definite flexibility and pragmatism. During the war he greatly oiled the SIC machinery, seeking on occasion to stiffen the employers’ disciplinary determination.® Judge Kirby, who worked

with him long after the communist win-the-war campaign had ended, described Healy as ‘one of the most likeable and reasonable men I have ever met’.°”

Contemporary discussion of events on the waterfront was bedevilled by the communist issue. In reality, as most students of the in-

dustry have observed, the constant demonstration of aggression occurred because of full employment—albeit with marked seasonal peaks in labour demand. This traditionally victimized, low-status group of workers proved eager to exercise their industrial muscle. While Healy could be said to be the dominant personality, he had to

deal with a majority of ALP members on the WWF’s federal executive.©8 In addition, the various port branches maintained their independence of action and the union proudly directed critics of its militancy to consider its renowned democratic internal processes and

very high level of rank-and-file participation in decision-making. Communist strength was greatest in NSW and Queensland, but even there CPA members could lose ‘control’ in the annual elections as happened in the Sydney branch in 1946, in Mackay in 1947 and in

Brisbane in 1948 and 1949. Judge Kirby provides evidence of Healy’s inability to control his branches—including those where more militant members took the bit between their teeth.°? NSW was strategic because of its dominance as a coal supplier. Yet the New-

castle branch, for example, did not join in the separate stop-work

166 Division of Labour

protests in 1949 against the prosecution of CPA secretary, L.L. Sharkey (below, p. 247), and the gaoling of McPhillips. Indeed only thirteen and fifteen ports (out of fifty-eight) respectively joined these

key protests which led to the disbandment of the SIC. Melbourne, Adelaide, Fremantle and Hobart worked on each occasion.’ Melbourne, the second biggest port, housed a strong WWF ‘Group’ and elected a right-wing majority to its executive in the 1940s, as did

most other southern ports. Fremantle was notably independent, having only rejoined the Federation in 1946 after thirteen years separation, and often clashed with Healy.’! Bentley has demonstrated the futility of equating communist branch ‘control’ with industrial disruption in the period 1950—66 and there is no reason to argue differently for the 1940s. Perlman, an American studying the question at the height of the Cold War and relying on the prejudiced Sydney Morning Herald for much of his secondary source material, clearly discarded the ‘communist plot’ hypothesis as an explanation of union belligerence. Walker, too, reached a similar conclusion. Contemporary and subsequent commissions of inquiry all confirm Bentley, Perlman and Walker’s essential conclusion.’ Yet amidst the clamour and tension of the industrial contest taking place on the wharves under the strange new rules of full employment, dispassionate objectivity was at a premium. Menzies, as wartime Prime Minister, made clear to a deputation of ship owners his doubts about the efficacy for waterfront problems of banning the Communist Party at a time when it officially opposed the (‘phoney’) war effort.’ When he was Opposition leader in the mounting Cold War, accusations of a communist conspiracy and the need to proscribe the CPA fell more readily from his lips. For non-WWF Groupers, ideologically opposed to communism, CPA members seemed the source of all waterfront unrest and this view coloured the outlook of an increasingly large section of ALP politicians as Chifley’s term in office wore on. The Prime Minister himself, aided by his personal

experience of Healy and his close contact with Judge Kirby, the second SIC’s chairman, remained immune to the disease as far as the

waterfront was concerned. In addition to his cool, considered answers to parliamentary questions there are two clear instances of Chifley’s grasp of the situation. Late in 1946 British shipowners endeavoured to exert pressure on the Australian government. They did

this through representations to the British Labour government whose Minister of Transport in turn called to an “urgent conference’ the new Australian High Commissioner, J.A. Beasley, who had been

an ALP wartime minister for Supply and Shipping. Beasley then cabled urgently to Canberra to ascertain his government’s likely support for employers in the showdown with the WWF which the British minister seemed to favour bringing on in view of delays to cargoes considered vital to Britain. The scenario outlined was for

Federal arbitration 167 Sydney employers to initiate a lockout by refusing to engage WWE

labour unless the union guaranteed to abide by SIC decisions. Chifley’s response was emphatically negative, pointing to the worldwide incidence of waterfront unrest, the historic and structural roots

of the current domestic turbulence and the excellent prospects for settlement of the particular dispute (over Saturday work) irking the shipowners. When Beasley chose publicly to refer, before a British audience, to ‘sinister forces’ on the Australian waterfront Chifley gracefully played down the significance of the remarks.’* Two years

later when SIC chairman Judge Kirby appeared to threaten that troops might be used to load cargo in a strike-bound North Queensland port, Chifley promptly informed him that there was no possibility of government support for such a step.”°

The intention here is not to trace all the major disputes on the waterfront. Rather the aim will be to indicate some of the issues arising in the life of the SIC which throw light on the difficulties in

operation of this alternative version of the traditional Australian ‘arbitration model. The WWF saw the SIC as a vehicle for employees’ advancement eminently preferable to the centralized and slow-moving Arbitration Court. The government established and

supported the SIC in part because of its basic sympathy for the wharfies’ downtrodden past but also because the SIC promised much more rapid settlement of disputes in an industry vital to the economy in both war and peace. This sympathy did not, however, prevent the government from using its powers either to direct the SIC on certain issues (such as the level of attendance money), to bypass it (as in the

case of ‘double dumped’ wool), or to call in the Arbitration Court (as in the case of annual leave payments). Overseas shipowners, too, generally supported the principle of an SIC which could

ensure speedy dispute settlement. The only persistent opposition came from coastal shippers for whom local labour costs loomed proportionately higher. The reference point for their barrage of criticism of the SIC’s ‘appeasement’ of the WWF and the alleged alarm-

ing fall in labour efficiency’”® was the ‘normality’ of pre-war conditions—a version of reality vociferously upheld by media and Opposition spokesmen. As with the MIC, wartime urgencies revealed that a judge was not necessarily the best choice as chairman of a joint tribunal aiming to reach quick decisions. Piper, ‘not the strongest of judges’,’” appears to have been open to two other main charges. First, he was too often diverted by his other responsibilities. Second, in his anxiety to fit in with the Court’s general practice, he was too prone to cause delay by referring waterfront issues to the Court.’® This tendency became more marked as the tide of war receded from Australia’s shores. Piper resigned from the SIC on the grounds of pressure of work in November 1944. The deputy chairman, R.W. Nicholls, resigned

168 Division of Labour almost simultaneously after the government exercised its powers to direct the SIC and overturned a decision to suspend a group of Sydney wharfies made with Nicholls in the chair.”? Piper’s successor, D.V. Morrison, proved a more capable chairman but his background as deputy registrar and conciliation commissioner militated against any forceful interpretation of the SIC’s jurisdiction v1s-d-vis the Arbitration Court. Healy described him as ‘timid’ in his dealings with the bench and sought to have the government clearly instruct the SIC and the Court that the former should deal with all industrial issues on the waterfront including outstanding items in the WWF’s last general log of claims (1940).8° The

union’s main concern was to continue its own direct input into decision-making by ensuring the continuance of the SIC after the war. The WWF felt that the SIC should, as in New Zealand and Britain, be funded by a levy of employers which could be further used to help decasualize the industry by providing daily ‘attendance’

money for workers offering but not required at a pick-up. An obvious implication of decasualization was the provision for the first time of sick and annual leave for wharfies—for whom VE Day was their first-ever paid statutory holiday. Finally, their collective bitter memories of past wrongs also demanded the removal of the small ‘scab’ Permanent and Casual Wharf Labourers’ Union (PCWLU),

created during the bitter 1928 dispute. As we shall see, the continuance of the SIC and decasualization constituted the major issues in post-war waterfront industrial relations. The PCWLU proved a stumbling block for Healy and his supporters whose consistent, diplomatic efforts to ensure the absorption of the ‘scabs’

into the WWF faced an emotional resistance from the WWF

rank and file, most notably in Sydney and Melbourne. In 1946 the issue helped tip Sydney communists S. Moran and T. Nelson from their branch executive. In Melbourne ‘moderate’ branch officials— who had reason to fear that absorption of the PCWLU would boost the militants’ electoral support within their branch—headed the opposition. In 1946 E. Chapple, Melbourne secretary, resigned from the WWF federal council on the grounds that it condoned ‘industrial scabbery’. The Melbourne left-wingers, derided as ‘scab-herders’,

felt their support of a merger ‘kept us out of office for years’. Absorption via establishment of a WWF ‘number Two’ branch for PCWLU men finally took place in Sydney in 1950 and in Melbourne

* in 1954—although ex-PCWLU members were still shunned by many.®!

Discussions in mid-1945 between the WWF, Chifley, Ashley and Beasley led to Cabinet approval of a formal inquiry into the industry

by Judge Foster who reported in February 1946. Foster’s specific terms of reference were to inquire how to ensure efficient and delayfree stevedoring, whether the Arbitration Court or some other body

Federal arbitration 169 should handle industrial matters and whether the industry should be decasualized. The government immediately introduced legislation based largely on his recommendations. The new SIC was headed by Judge Kirby assisted by commissioner Hewitt.®2 It consisted of two representatives from the WWF and one each from the domestic and overseas shipowners’ associations. The federal government was represented by a non-voting official. With the exception of the basic wage and standard hours, the new SIC was responsible for settling disputes and regulating all industrial matters. The Commission was empowered to register all employers and employees, although the WWE was granted a closed shop unless numbers offering for work

proved inadequate—in which case the SIC could register nonmembers. The union was also allowed to discipline its own members although the SIC could suspend individuals’ registrations. The tri-

partite waterside employment committees continued under SIC auspices to deal with local issues in each port. The function of interpreting SIC awards was given to the arbitration bench. The parliamentary debates on the bill overlapped with those on

the major 1947 amendments to the Arbitration Act. Again the Opposition’s contributions raised the spectre of the communistic origins of the SIC bill and, more prosaically, argued that the high level of wharfie wages was adding fuel to craftmen’s demands for wage justice, currently climaxing in the metal trades dispute. While Men-

zies saw wharfies as ‘hag ridden’ with Communists, it was backbenchers and country members who again offered the most extreme

versions of the communist plot thesis. B. Corser saw wharfies as ‘Communist-driven thugs’ ‘molly-coddled’ by the government whose own representative on the SIC, he prophesied, ‘will also be a ““Com’’’.83

In terms of working days lost, the major unrest on the waterfront occurred in the first two peacetime years—during which the old SIC

was operating. In May 1946 a ten-day national stoppage centred around WWF efforts to end the war-emergency practice of ‘double

dumping’ wool, 1.e., compressing and binding two wool bales together to save space. At the outset virtually all observers, including the press, saw handling double-dumped bales as dangerous and un-

necessary in peacetime. Faced with employer resistance Morrison took the middle ground of welcoming a general inquiry into the whole question of appropriate weight-handling limits for wharfies: in

the meantime the bales should be rolled, not lifted. This did not satisfy the WWF, and the government’s non-voting SIC representa-

tive called for the suspension of double dumping pending the inquiry. Forde, acting Prime Minister in Chifley’s absence overseas, ended the dispute by refusing to issue export licences for any more double-dumped bales. For this he was roundly condemned by shipowners, wool buyers, Opposition and the press.*4

170 Division of Labour After the wool dispute the most serious unrest tended to centre on the decasualization process. Two points need to be stressed. First, despite media propaganda and despite the undoubted aggressive mood of the WWF members and their many successes, work on the waterfront remained hard and generally unpleasant. D’Alpuget relates how, after a tour of the wharves in 1949, federal Opposition shadow minister, R.G. (later Lord) Casey ‘who could never have been accused of feather-bedding the working classes, was shocked by what he saw: “Just like coolies. They’re treated like coolies”’, he complained to Kirby’ .®° Second, the movement towards decasualiza-

tion was painfully slow. Sick pay was only gained in 1956, permanent employment was not achieved until the mid-1960s—and stages of the decasualization process were not always welcomed by the WWEF’s rank and file. The history of the industry is littered with instances of rank-and-file assertion of independent opinions. Important examples in the 1940s include Sydney and Fremantle members’ vigorous resistance to the respective substitution in their ports of gangs and rosters for the old ‘bull’ system, and more general opposition to shorter shifts which, although introduced amid sizeable un-

rest in Sydney in 1946, were blocked in Melbourne for a further three years. Shorter hours, annual leave and attendance money were prominent among the issues at the heart of a series of complicated and in-

terconnected disputes which began at the end of 1946, continued through the first quarter of 1947 and which climaxed as the legislation establishing the new SIC was passing through parliament.®© The

introduction of a three-shift system incorporating working hours which for the first tume approached those considered normal in most

other occupations led to an even greater demand for wharfies. In October 1946 the SIC made an abortive attempt to resume Saturday

pick-ups.8” In December the shipowners gained a High Court injunction to prevent the SIC granting two weeks annual leave to wharfies—who responded with a 24-hour national stoppage. This dispute then became intertwined in the disagreements over SIC plans to pay 16s attendance money, financed from a levy on employers, from 1 January 1947. The employers failed to secure an injunction on this issue but were helped by Chifley who sought to dampen the pyschological impact of the SIC decision on his now bitterly contested wage peg by stepping in to reduce the amount to 12s. With annual leave blocked and attendance money reduced, the WWE decided to ban overtime from 4 February. Negotiations initiated by Senator Ashley centred around the scale of pay for annual leave, with the employers arguing for a base of 30 hours per week in this casual industry and the WWE and SIC claiming that 44 hours was the reasonable postwar expectation. Faced with deadlock, with increasing numbers of wharfies suspended for refusing overtime and

Federal arbitration 171 night work and with a mounting tie-up of shipping, the government referred the whole matter to the Arbitration Court. On 11 February Judge Foster granted annual leave on a 44-hour basis but the following month saw Sydney brought to a standstill for sixteen days. The stoppage was not caused by the still-unresolved attendance money issue, which was of little immediate importance because of the continued plenitude of work; rather the dispute arose from the suspension of men who had refused to work overtime. It also made nonsense of the notion of a monolithic, red-controlled WWF.°®

The trouble began on 9 March when a stop-work meeting discussed the suspensions. The moderate president of the branch, W. Coghlan, said that a mass meeting might seek a general strike if the SIC did not withdraw its direction to the men to work overtime.

The next day 3000 Sydney members rejected a motion for an Australia-wide stoppage but voted for their executive’s resolution not to go back until the SIC withdrew its overtime orders. The meeting carried a resolution asking the WWE federal council to seek a ban on overtime in the other states. Pamphlets calling for an all-out strike and for the dismissal of Morrison as chairman of the SIC were distributed. The Sydney Morning Herald reported that some of the

distributors were communists and an editorial alleged that ‘The Communist element is campaigning for a nation-wide strike and the dismissal of Mr Morrison’ .®?

When, however, the ‘communist-controlled’ federal council de-

cided not to call for a national overtime ban, the Herald was strangely critical of its action. It alleged that the council was trying to leave the WWF’s anti-communist Sydney executive ‘out on a limb’ by isolating the strike to Sydney: “The Communists, it is believed, hope the strike will develop into a fiasco and discredit the Sydney executive with the rank and file’. The next day Coghlan, who had publicly criticized the WWF’s communist assistant general secretary, E. Roach, for his opposition to a national ban, made it clear that

the Sydney branch was determined to continue the strike. The Herald leader writer commented, the outlook for industry generally, and for the labour movement, will be black indeed if, instead of resisting the Communist infiltration, and giving sane leadership to the rank and file, trade union executives abandon the

cause of arbitration and employ the weapons of the wreckers. AntiCommunist union leaders who try to beat the disruptionists by taking over their methods are actually playing into their hands.

The strike dragged on; Sydney ran short of sugar and potatoes and

Opposition MLA E.D. Darby called a meeting in the Domain to organize volunteer labour to unload perishable goods. Ugly scenes ensued and the Herald blamed ‘a howling mob under Communist direction’. Communists were certainly prominent in the demonstra-

172 Dhtvision of Labour

tion but most wharfies had strong historical reasons to object to ‘scab’ labour. The Sydney branch offered to admit 500 more men to

the union if the SIC would rescind the overtime order. The SIC

refused and countered with an offer of only two nights overtime (instead of three) in return for admitting the extra 500. Healy now criticized the SIC, saying that, since some wharfies were not physically capable of working more than an eight-hour shift, extra men would prove more effective than compulsory overtime, which operated indiscriminately. Healy’s emphasis on the renowned physical infirmity of a large section of the ageing stevedoring workforce opened the door for a settlement reached on 21 March. The compromise proposals, accepted three days later at a mass meeting, provided for limited overtime to be worked by men physically capable of it. The Herald reported that the decision to resume work was regarded as an ‘overwhelming defeat for the Communist Party’. No one gave Healy any credit for his mediation. ‘The Communists’ sole aim in the recent strike was to discredit the Sydney branch’ argued the Groupers.”? Enterprisingly, the Bulletin found an oblique form of words to blame the communists. Condemning the ‘gang of direct actionists’ leading the strike, it commented ‘Nor is there anything new in these wreckers’ game. It has been going on for many years and always under direction from the same spiritual home’.?! Ten months later, however, The Bulletin, viewing events in retro-

spect, for once diverged from its single-minded anti-communism and pointed to a racial target: Strike leaders with Irish names. . .may call themselves Communists or anti-communists, but when it comes to hitting the public in the eye they are all one. The last old-man Sydney wharf strike, the one in which protesting politicians were bashed at a Domain meeting, was run by Coughlan (President) and Ferry (Secretary) with Healy, Roach and Moran rushing in from

the wings. . . 2

Perlman and d’Alpuget have already traced the breakdown of the second SIC under Kirby. Its demise can be attributed to the Cold War and to associated miscalculations on the part of both the SIC chairman and, to a lesser degree, the WWF leaders. Its first year

of operation, 1948, was largely one of ‘unusual calm on the

waterfront’.?? Queensland presented the only major exception, both through WWE support of the railway strikers and local disputes in the sugar ports. According to Judge Kirby, he and Healy worked particularly well, backing one another up in endeavouring to boost both labour productivity and conditions of work. Days lost in disputes fell again in 1949 but the SIC foundered on the issue of the support given by the WWF’s federal council to 24-hour stop-work protests against the prosecution of Sharkey in March and the gaoling of McPhillips in April.

Federal arbitration 173

It seems likely that the inexperienced Kirby, who had thrown himself into the job with considerable verve, was deluded as to the

true authority of his néw role by the apparent smoothness of his induction and the ease with which he had, thanks to Healy’s good offices, established some direct contact with rank-and-file wharfies. The whole tradition of the wharfies, including their selfless prewar anti-Japanese boycotts, pointed to the inevitability of their involvement in ‘political’ protests and disputes. D’Alpuget’s biography sug-

gests that in retrospect Kirby was aware that no communist plots underlay WWF policy. Indeed on the issue of WWF bans on Dutch shipping which continued virtually unabated from September 1945 until Indonesian independence in November 1949 it seems clear that Kirby privately supported the union’s stance. Yet on an issue involving imprisonment of one of the union movement’s basic wage advocates for alleged contempt of the Arbitration Court, Kirby painted

himself and the SIC into a corner by going over the heads of the WWE leaders and appealing directly in a national broadcast to the rank and file to ignore the second strike call. When, inevitably, his appeal was disregarded by the militant branches?* he recommended that the appointments of Healy and Roach to the SIC be terminated unless they promised to comply with future SIC decisions. In making this fateful decision it appears from his biography that Kirby was also influenced by the removal from the SIC at his behest late in 1948 of Captain J. Williams, one of the shipowners’ representatives. This occurred after Williams refused to apologize for what the judge viewed as an attack on the authority of both deputy chairman Hewitt and of the Commission. Rather than face a WWF majority on the SIC the shipowners then appointed a replacement for Williams. It is surprising that the judge should in retrospect endeavour to equate the Williams case with the Healy—Roach affair. The implication that an arbitrator simply applies rigid rules equally to the two sides of industry no matter the circumstances or the consequence comes surprisingly from a former chief judge with thirty years hard-won experience. It would, however, have well fitted an industrial tyro operating amid the growing hysteria of the Cold War and misled by propagandizing press reports that the WWF would capitulate rather than sacrifice the SIC.?°> (The wharfies had already

demonstrated that they were prepared to risk the loss of the SIC during the disputes over annual leave and shorter hours at the beginning of 1947: then they had stood their ground despite threats from

Morrison and the government that impending legislation for the second SIC might be abandoned.*©) Kirby’s 1949 ultimatum to the

WWE was couched in a manner which left little room for manoeuvre. Most union members saw the issue in terms of the WWF's right to choose its own representatives on the SIC. D’Alpuget, while admitting that Kirby ‘had knowingly committed a sin against union-

174 Division of Labour ism’, rationalizes Kirby’s move in terms of the SIC having just about played out its historic role of improving waterfront conditions while

the WWF ‘had in fact achieved almost all it could hope for within the limits imposed on militancy by the commission’.?” Looking back over the interval of years it seems likely that Kirby was influenced,

in descending order, by his industrial naivety, the Cold War and a sense of his own public dignity. ‘Amid gloating from the right, the SIC fell apart’ when the WWF refused to nominate replacements for Healy and Roach. Only the Newcastle branch voted against the federal council’s stand. ‘Moderate’ Melbourne voted three to one in favour.”®

In June 1949 parliament passed legislation which handed over administration of the industry to the new Australian Stevedoring In-

dustry Board, on which neither side of industry was represented. The ASIB was given broad discretionary powers over discipline, while a special division of the Arbitration Court presided over by Kirby was established to arbitrate in all disputes save those affecting the basic wage, standard hours and annual leave. The new system

faced no immediate threats. The Tait Report later noted that ‘the first year of the Board’s existence was not a bad year in the Stevedor-

ing industry as far as industrial disputes were concerned. Both the number of man hours lost and the percentage to man hours worked was the lowest for the six years of the Board’s existence’.??

When in 1950 Chifley allegedly told Healy that he blamed the WWE, with other unions, for losing his government votes at the 1949 general election, Healy was able to quote in subsequent correspondence the low percentage of man-hours lost through strikes from 1947 to 1949—particularly in the second half of 1949: ‘This is in accordance with the promise I gave you that the Federation would do all in its power to keep the waterfront working prior to the election period. Time lost by rain was six times greater than time lost by strikes’. 10°

The passing of the SIC brought no regrets among employer groups and their supporters. ‘The Stevedoring Industry Commission

has never been above suspicion—from its inception it has been heavily loaded in favour of the men against the employers’.!°! With-

in the labour movement the facts about the SIC’s demise became tangled with the ‘communist issue’. Each side alleged that the other had been at fault. Groupers claimed CPA members had allied themselves with the shipowners to smash the SIC while the communists accused the Groupers of lining up with Kirby and the owners against

the WWF.!°2 The militants also believed that the future of the

SIC—or at the very least its structure—had been in doubt even before the McPhillips stoppage. Healy reported that in February he had gained wind of a meeting between Kirby, Chifley and Ashley shortly after which the Prime Minister—who was to be absent over-

Federal arbitration 175 seas when Kirby issued his ultsmatum—remarked to a WWF delegation ‘that he seemed to be the only person now in favour of the continuance of the Commission’. Healy also claimed that Clarey and J.P. Horan (TWU) were also involved in the meeting with Kirby, Chifley and Ashley ‘at which the future of the Commission was discussed’.!93 Clarey and Horan forced the WWF journal to publish a retraction of its later version of their involvement. The nature of their protests, which specifically denied participating in discussion of the abolition of the SIC, makes it appear likely that the conference centred around the reform of the Commission, including suggestions by Kirby that it be altered to give him more authority.!°* Although

Kirby’s biographer makes no reference to such moves, Healy’s account seems to point up again the significance of the innovative apprentice judge in events surrounding the collapse of the SIC. For

his part Healy appears to have misjudged Kirby and to have expected him to pull back from the brink. ‘Members can be assured that this threat of overthrowing the Commission is only intended to stampede you into conceding some limitations in your right to take strike action on any matter’.!9 In the post-SIC period d’Alpuget tells us that ‘Kirby loved the drama and took unashamed delight in the publicity aroused [by his confrontations with the WWF]’.!°© The wharfies, who had to endure

probably the heaviest-ever public relations barrage against their union in the 1950s, obviously missed their direct input into decisionmaking. Indeed in 1955 Healy went so far as to state that the WWF

made a mistake in not appointing replacements for himself and Roach.!°” He did so, however, in the process of advocating before a

public inquiry into the industry the reintroduction of an SIC-type body. In the actual circumstances of 1949 it is difficult to see how he and his fellow ‘militants’ could possibly have maintained credibility with the rank and file had they endeavoured to back down from their position in the face of Kirby’s ultimatum and the ensuing howling onslaught from the media and from so many points of the political compass. After its initial smooth inauguration the ASIB ran into problems because of its lack of arbitral powers. In 1957 the Tait Report was to recommend its reconstruction along lines not very dissimilar from the SIC with a judge or commissioner heading a three-man authority whose remaining members should be drawn respectively from the ranks of employers and of unions—although in neither case from the stevedoring industry itself. The Cold War environment encouraged arbitrators other than Kirby to ‘get tough’ with the militant unions. Chapter 11 traces explosive events in the coal industry. In two other important cases the federal

176 Division of Labour

Court decided to deregister the culprits. The deregistration of the key 17 000-strong FEDFA in June 194919 rested on a three-month stoppage of some twenty-five crane drivers which affected 1200 other

workers at the Granville plant of the Clyde Engineering Co. The dispute arose over a claim for higher wages denied by Commissioner L.P. Austin in February 1949 after an earlier stoppage had ended in the expectation that he would incorporate the desired increase in his award variation. As Foster pointed out in his dissenting judgement, the FEDFA’s federal executive made every possible effort to secure a return to work. The NSW branch, which accounted for one-third of total membership, was renowned, however, for close control by its

rank and file. Observers, including the Sydney Morning Herald,'°? agreed that the FEDFA, like the AEU, maintained an independent rather than a doctrinaire stance. The branch was usually found at the forefront of postwar industrial militancy. In 1947, Kenny and other right-wingers chose it as the scapegoat during the metal trades water-

front dispute and expelled the branch from the NSW Labor Council.!!° During the Clyde dispute it came as no surprise that the conciliatory proposals of the moderate federal secretary, W.P. Evans,!!! were overwhelmingly rejected by the NSW members. Deregistration had remarkably little effect. The Court maintained

in force the federal awards by which FEDFA members had been covered but, in fact, the majority of members worked under state awards. National membership actually increased by some six per cent during the sixteen months of deregistration and none of the five branches suffered a drain. The main concern seems to have been felt by ACTU moderates, who feared that the FEDFA case might set a dangerous precedent whereby militants, even if in a minority, could cause the Court to thrust other unions out of the arbitration system into the cold, cold world of direct bargaining.!!4

The other deregistration occurred in the construction industry which represented a major bottleneck in the postwar economy. Virtually no additions to the stock of housing or to other ‘inessential’

buildings occurred during the war. Peace therefore witnessed an enormous backlog of demand for accommodation, worsened by returning. servicemen and the marriage boom. On the supply side, the fuel shortage hindered the manufacture of building materials including bricks and concrete, while the scarcity of labour was worsened by the uncongenial nature of many building occupations. Howard has demonstrated that the Chifley government’s record in the building industry was disappointing, not merely when set against

the expectations of its supporters, but also according to its own stated aims. The declared housing targets were never approached and controls over prices and materials were relaxed in a manner which worked against the interests of both lower-income earners and public-sector institutions. Howard describes the decision of Chifley

Federal arbitration 177 and Dedman on materials as ‘economically premature and socially inequitable’.!!3 The subsequent intra-state allocations of the Cain and McGirr Labor governments similarly jeopardized Labour’s proclaimed social priorities. The reason for the ALP’s retreat is not

hard to find: “The war. ..had transformed the housing shortage from a low-income social problem to a middle-class political one’.!!4 Plans for a pace-setting public building sector, boldly announced in 1945, failed to materialize despite union urgings.

The main interaction between government and unions and employers came on the tripartite committees supervising the Com-

monwealth Reconstruction Training Scheme (CRTS) whereby ex-servicemen were trained in building trades. Here the differing interests of employers and unions ironically converged to ensure a reduction in the intake. Employer representatives on the committees were preoccupied with shortterm difficulties. Building firms, they said, would not commit themselves in

advance to the hiring, at apprenticeship rates, of large numbers of CRTS trainees (40% trained prior to employment) at a time of acute unpredictability in material supply. Union representatives, on the other hand, were concerned about the longer-term situation in the industry. Believing that unusually high demand in the early post-war period would not be sustained, they held that high CRTS intakes would later lead to older, pre-war building workers being squeezed out.!!5

As a result, the original target of 32 850 in training in June 1947 was

cut by 50 per cent in April 1946. The new target was met but by mid-1947 the unions were agitating for regulatory intervention in the building materials industry where profits had been rising since 1939 and where competition was practically non-existent. The Commonwealth ignored their demands while passively accepting the states’ deregulation of materials allocation. The 1947 ACTU congress was critical of the housing shortage. In calling for the socialization of the building industry the congress rejected the ‘supine acceptance’ of a contemplated 25 per cent cut in the annual house-building target. As the materials shortage gradually eased, government attention focussed on the quality and supply of manpower. One informed estimate in 1947 suggested that productivity per head had actually fallen by 25 per cent since 1939. The two main reasons were the difficulty that many ex-servicemen found in settling down to steady work and the general reduction of skill levels. The latter rested on ‘early postwar delayed retirements of older building workers; inability of even

the largest building firms to maintain non-CRTS apprenticeship standards; and the flourishing of inexperienced, opportunistic small firms in the. . . industry’.!!© The CRTS committees heard many union complaints about illegal employment of trainees and the evasion of training by employers, yet

178 Dhivision of Labour

during 1948 the intake began to fall well below the revised target levels. By the end of the year immigration was becoming a more important source of new building labour. The materials and construction industries comprised four of the nine categories of industry specified for the employment of ‘displaced persons’. The unions remained wary about the schemes and sporadic but unorganized job site opposition to ‘DPs’ was occasionally evident in 1949.!!7 Overall the construction workforce grew from 90000 in 1939 to 107 000 in 1950, still well short of the 130000 target of the government’s grandiose “Ten Year Plan’ outlined in 1946.!!8

The major union was the Building Workers’ Industrial Union (BWIU), whose 45000 members in 1949 constituted about 55 per cent of the industry’s wage earners (i.e. excluding 24000 working contractors and sub-contractors).!!? Its members were almost solely carpenters except in NSW where a 1942 amalgamation with the state bricklayers’ union had produced the new title of BWIU—although

the union remained a weak federation of powerful, autonomous branches. The conditions of employment of most building workers were traditionally determined at state level where the multitude of

employers in this unconcentrated industry congregated loosely around similarly autonomous associations, most notably the Master Builders’ Associations (MBA). Only in Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania were federal awards of significance. The NSW branch of the BWIU was the largest, accounting for 40

per cent of membership, but it was the Victorian branch (25 per cent) which proved the pacesetter. During the war, which witnessed

a considerable leap forward in on-site unionization, communist officials were elected. The BWIU was prominent among the seven

unions in the Victorian Building Trades Federation (BTF)— although probably the best-known communist in the industry was BTF president Don Thomson, of the Operative Painters’ and Decorators’ Union. The ‘milestone’ 1941 Defence Award covering emergency building projects was cancelled on MBA application, but a four-month ‘go slow’ by the BTF resulted in October 1945 in the landmark Building Trades of Victoria Award incorporating the wartime advances and introducing annual leave. !2° The BWIU’s leadership inevitably attracted the burgeoning anti-

communist forces and led to the formation of one of the Victorian ‘big five’ Industrial Groups headed by K. Gregson and D. Woodhouse, a member of Santamaria’s “‘Movement’!!. The Groupers alleged consistent ballot rigging by their communist opponents and secretly worked with employers to ensure the BWIU’s federal dereg-

istration. The opportunity arose out of Commissioner Galvin’s delayed variation in 1948 of the building trades of Victoria award. The BWIU had, since mid-1947, been responsible for ‘petty guerilla warfare’ as it tried to enforce payment of ‘on-site’ rates to men employed

Federal arbitration 179

in joiners’ shops and on maintenance work in mixed industries. Overtime and other bans were applied, resulting in the deletion of BWIU officials’ ‘right of entry’ clauses by Judge Kelly.!22 Galvin’s decisions, particularly those concerning disability allowances, weekly hire, “distant jobs’ and penal provisions, disappointed the BWIU. A resulting dispute involved eighty BWIU members in two joinery shops. This was deliberately extended by the employers who sent ‘black’ work from the shops in dispute to other plants and dismissed

a further 200 men who refused to handle it. On 28 June 1948, the VCM and the Victorian Timber Merchants and Sawmillers Association (TMSA) moved to have the union deregistered. Before the Court, the BWIU officials refused to back down and

Kelly, Foster and Kirby unanimously decided to grant the employers’ request, while maintaining in force the conditions of the BWIU’s two federal awards. BWIU Victorian secretary, J. Chandler, and federal secretary, F. Purse, were confident that the decision would have little effect, but a mass meeting of 4000 Victorian members decided, two to one, to reject their advice and to apply for reregistration immediately.!23 That the Victorian employers acted in expectation of a speedy change of course and of leadership within the BWIU is demonstrated by the fact that their deregistration move came at the very time that they were liaising closely with NSW employers to compile and serve a federal log on the building unions in all four south-eastern states.!44 The discord apparent between members and officials at the mass meeting failed, however, to translate into Grouper success in the BWIU elections—despite the TMSA taking ‘all steps possible’ to ensure that the Groupers won.!2> The

Groupers again claimed foul play but, ironically, deregistration

meant that the 1949 Arbitration Act amendments could not be used to test their charges in the only union in which Royal Commissioner Lowe was satisfied ballot rigging had occurred in Victoria.!2© Hence the Groupers took a bold short cut. They moved to register a completely new union under the union’s old name of Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and Joiners of Australia (ASCJ). Although formally denounced by the ACTU executive, including Stout and Monk,!2’ the Groupers’ ploy was successful. Employers helped by urging their workers to support breakaway unions. !28 Initial ASCJ registration in October 1950 was overturned on appeal but, after relatively minor rule changes it was finally registered in June 1952. In contrast, four successive BWIU attempts to reregister, beginning in October 1948, were rejected by the Court. The first three efforts (1948-50) outwardly failed on technical grounds connected with various rule anomalies. In part these failures demonstrated the inability of the constitutionally weak federal executive to co-ordinate the rules of its autonomous branches. The fourth failure in 1952 made it clear that the Court was guided by other than tech-

180 Division of Labour

nical criteria. As well as again finding rule anomalies, Kelly and Dunphy, with Foster dissenting, refused to accept the BWIU’s undertakings concerning its future industrial policy even though these were couched in terms traditionally acceptable to the Court. Dunphy, in particular, revealed his anti-communism and dwelt on the implications of the CPA affiliations of Purse and other federal

officers. !29

Given the predominance of state awards and the fact that ASCJ

operations were largely confined to Victoria,!3° deregistration meant

relatively little to the three-quarters of BWIU membership outside

that state. In Victoria however, the initial haemorrhaging was severe. Between 1949 and the signing in 1956 of the Melbourne Building Agreement which stabilized the position, the BWIU lost approximately half of its membership to the ASCJ which became the

largest carpenters’ union in the state. Here the Court’s hard line clearly aided the anti-communist cause.

CHAPTER NINE

VICTORIA AND QUEENSLAND 1947-49: GETTING TOUGH WITH THE UNIONS

In 1948 separate efforts were made by the respective Liberal— Country Party and Labor governments of Victoria and Queensland to ‘stand firm’ against the unions. Sooled on by the conservative press, they endeavoured to resist labour market forces in the public sector. In the process both seemed to cause more industrial dislocation than they prevented, but this negative impact was obscured to a

large degree by their successful kicking of the communist can. In order to establish the real causes and nature of the conflict it is necessary to consider events in some detail. This 1s all the more essential

in the Victorian case, for the complicated and interrelated disputes which kept industrial relations there in continuous turmoil for over three years have never been subject to dispassionate study—despite the well-publicized contemporary allegations by a CPA official of sinister communist string-pulling. When events are analysed, the mainspring in each state is seen to be spontaneous rank-and-file discontent among public transport workers. Communist anxiety to lead this groundswell in turn encouraged anti-communist paranoia both inside and outside the labour movement. Victoria had long been politically conservative and in the state parlia-

ment both the bias in favour of rural electorates in the Legislative Assembly and the property franchise for the Legislative Council arti-

ficially inflated representation of anti-Labor forces. However, the personal rivalries between leaders of the Liberal and Country parties

presented opportunities for minority ALP governments to hold office provided they adopted no radical policies. This profile fitted well the ALP state branch whose executive had long been dominated

by the right wing and which, even before the Grouper-Movement forces gained control, had been in conflict with unionists urging

182 Division of Labour more radical policies.! After the November 1945 state election, John Cain’s ALP took office facing a hostile upper house and relying on the support of independents in the Assembly.

During the metal trades upheaval of 1946-47 the conservatives sought to persuade the electorate that Victoria had been brought to the brink of bloody civil war and this solely because of the ALP government’s failure to deal with the communists’ ‘control’ of the union movement. Barely had the metal trades dispute ended when

the bank nationalization issue flared in the federal arena. This offered the conservatives in the Legislative Council the excuse to

block supply on the flimsy grounds of protest against the government’s refusal. to hold a banking referendum at the federal Opposition parties’ request. The ensuing election in November 1947 ‘was fought on anti-Communism, anti-Socialism, and anti-national [ization]’* with all federal Opposition leaders prominently involved in the fiery campaign. The rural bias ensured that, although polling

nearly three times as many votes as the Country Party, the ALP, with sixteen seats out of sixty-five, was reduced to third largest party

in the new Assembly. The new coalition, led by T.T. Hollway (Liberal) and J.G.B. McDonald (CP), promised to fulfil its oftvoiced promise to stand firm against the ‘communist-controlled’ unions: in January 1948 an Essential Services Act was introduced, and it was proclaimed in November 1948 and in July 1949. We must begin our analysis of the controversies over this Act by placing it in its correct context of industrial relations in the Victorian transport industry.

The war had meant that all transport sectors were stretched to virtual breaking point, with workers putting in excessively long hours with increasingly run-down equipment. With the onset of peace, public transport workers emerged from their relatively pacific

industrial tradition, joined immediately in the demands for better hours, pay and other conditions and for a time came to rank in militance with such as the wharfies and the metal tradesmen. All states

were affected. We have already noted major transport disputes in Adelaide and Western Australia (pp. 67-73) and will shortly consider one in Queensland. Thus, when we survey the Victorian scene it

should be clearly understood that, although the minority Dunstan Country Party governments (1935—45) had perhaps let transport run

down more than was strictly necessary,? events there reflected a national pattern of discontent among the transport workforce. Even the press at times admitted the firm foundation of genuine discontent. A more reliable indicator is the fact that pacific leaders of transport unions were often drawn along by their aggressive rank and file. A notable example is R.R. Broadby of the Australian Tramway and Motor Omnibus Employees’ Association (ATMOEA) who, before

moving to the ACTU to become assistant secretary in 1948 and

Victoria ana Queensland 1947-49 183 secretary in 1949, was involved in the major Victorian transport dis-

putes in his role as Victorian branch official as well as that of ATMOEA federal secretary (1944—48). Another is T. Junor, Presi-

dent of the NSW Industrial Groups, ATMOEA federal president, NSW assistant secretary and Broadby’s successor as federal secretary. Other ‘Grouper’ officials, while denouncing the ‘Comms’ within their unions, were at different times similarly induced to support—if not urge—direct action in support of union demands.* The central irritant of a simmering wartime backlog of unrest was

exacerbated by the long and socially disastrous hours—usually worked in shifts and extending over weekends—to which most traffic employees were subject. The format of work rosters and rates of overtime pay, particularly for weekends, were the major sources of discontent in the industry. Tram and rail workers were subject to

a double bind. With the lifting of manpower restrictions, recruitment to their industry dwindled because in the new full-employment world the socially unattractive working hours outweighed the once greatly prized job security. As a result the existing workforce was

expected to work still longer hours. Until this vicious circle was broken by the introduction of better rosters and higher overtime pay, discontent would continue to surface. (Towards the end of 1946, for example, officials of the AFULE and ATMOEA in South Australia were respectively complaining about the shortage of staff causing excessive overtime and the decline in the size of the work-

force due to constant weekend work. At the same time the NSW tram workforce was shrinking and NSW railmen were threatened

with shorter holidays if 500 recruits were not found immediately. By 1948, 10s was being offered to any Victorian railworker who enlisted a junior.>) In the two major states the “bottom line’ in the readiness of the state instrumentalities controlling public transport to make the requisite changes was the local political background and tradition. In New South Wales the ALP was firmly and confidently entrenched in office and was to the fore among state governments in pioneering concessions for the workforce, including extensions of leave and re-

ductions in hours: thus transport unions seldom resorted to direct action. In Victoria by contrast the tradition was conservative and the occasional ALP governments clung precariously to office: for this reason industrial muscle was more likely than political pressure to prove the moving force for Victorian transport employees.

Throughout the Victorian transport disputes the names of J.J. Brown, H.H. Bell and C.L. O’Shea were particularly prominent. State secretary of the ARU from 1942, Jackie Brown was the bogeyman of most conservatives. The press presented him as the villain of the piece in virtually all industrial disputation—at times, for example, during the metal trades dispute it was hard to realize from press

184 Division of Labour

headlines that it was the AEU rather than Brown’s ARU that was calling the shots. A fitness fanatic with an exuberant, shoot-fromthe-hip personal style which fed the media illusion, Brown headed a militant state executive. Often he was pushed along by rank-and-file militants who made their voice known through twelve elected committees representing the various occupational sections such as shunters, signalmen and guards. Most significantly perhaps, the CPA saw him as the most unruly ‘economist’ in its ranks. Time and again he

was rebuked for spontaneously pursuing the pragmatic short-run ends of his rank and file rather than heeding the strategic ‘lines’ advocated by the CPA leadership. Even O’Shea, his communist ‘partner’ in the Victorian ATMOEA, castigated Brown for this shortcoming.’ Brown was first elected ARU state secretary for life but, following communist practice, he insisted that his position be subject to re-elections. A strong Industrial Group operated in the ARU. It was formally inaugurated during the transport stoppage of October 1946 but anti-communist organization in a number of centres such as Ballarat stretched back to the 1930s. While making occasional sectional gains, as on the signalmen’s committee in 1948, the Groupers never came close to removing the militants’ majority in the ARU. In the July 1948 elections for the ARU state council all thirty right-wing candidates were defeated. F.R. Scully, the Group secretary, was beaten for the job of union organizer, 6857 votes to 3225. It was alleged that during the elections Scully had handled ballot papers other than his own. He was found guilty by the ARU executive,

at what he described as a ‘Moscow trial’, and expelled from the union. Scully appealed against his expulsion but was not successful.

The 1949 elections saw a victory for Brown as secretary by 7900 votes to 4600 and the return of an overwhelming number of militants to the ARU state council. News Weekly alleged ‘irregularities and

malpractices’ in the ballot for secretary but acknowledged that it would be impossible to demonstrate that they could account for the 3300 majority.®

Hector Hercules Bell was the strong-minded chairman who had

dominated the Melbourne and Metropolitan Tramways Board (MMTB) since 1935. He was used to getting his own way and, unusually for any state transport instrumentality, he was used to the MMTB making an annual profit—much to the envy of other capitals, particularly Sydney.? Nevertheless Bell’s emphasis on holding down costs and ordering rosters regardless of workforce convenience ensured deteriorating labour relations. During the 1948 strike a mass meeting of tramway employees unanimously passed a resolution requesting ‘a Royal Commission into the management and administra-

tion of the Tramways Board. . .and the reasons for the strikes in 1944, 1945, 1946 and 1948’.!9 In the parliamentary debate on the 1946 transport strike, I. McLaren (Independent) commented that

Victoria and Queensland 1947-49 185 ‘Behind the whole fabric of the Melbourne and Metropolitan Tramway Board there was a feeling of dissatisfaction which has never been thoroughly investigated or overcome. It took a strike to bring out the evil that lay behind the scene’. He added that the Board was notorious for its lack of attention to administrative details and he believed there should be a Royal Commission to investigate it.!! In a defence of the Board, Country Party leader McDonald attacked what he said was the common view of ‘the Tramways Board being a monster organization of industrialists bleeding the workers. . . ’.!4 Criticism of the Board was not confined to its handling of industrial relations; the advanced age of Bell, born in 1876, the appointment of his son to a job for which there was said to be a better qualified applicant, and

the sending of that same son on an overseas trip, thus allegedly teeing him up for further advancement, also attracted adverse

comment.! | On his side, Bell usually denounced communist influence in the

ATMOEA.!* In response C.L. (Clarrie) O’Shea, the state secretary who was to write his name indelibly in Australian industrial history during the 1969 ‘penal powers’ dispute, correctly replied that his members had elected him to office knowing his political position, and that tramway union elections were the most democratic in the

trade union movement. O’Shea, a communist, was _ federal

ATMOEA secretary between 1942 and 1944 and state secretary from

February 1947 onwards. The latter job had previously been a life position but O’Shea, like Brown in the ARU, helped alter the rules to ensure that he was subject to regular re-election.!°> ATMOEA executive elections were held annually. The ballot was secret and con-

ducted, the Argus reported, on parliamentary lines with postal and absentee votes. Participation often topped 90 per cent. Rank-and-file control was further strengthened in May 1946 when it was determined, by secret ballot, that individual depots be granted autonomy when deciding on direct action. An anti-communist group had been founded in 1943. In 1945, 1946 and 1949 ‘moderates’ formed the majority of the state executive, in 1947 and 1948 ‘militants’ did. Either way, if the executive stepped out of line the rank and file seldom hesitated to make known their displeasure. The first postwar transport stoppage was a 24-hour rail strike in August 1945 when the rail commissioners applied for reductions in

recently awarded increases for night and shift work. This ARU strike was endorsed by the ‘moderate’-led AFULE, and by the railway workshop unions. The NSW and South Australian commissioners had also applied for award variations but all three states backed away from what was clearly an explosive issue and the Arbitration Court dismissed their applications.!© The most significant result of the dispute was the formation of the ‘Combined Unions Committee’ to facilitate liaison between the transport and maintenance unions. !”

186 Division of Labour Although at times this committee drew in such ‘moderate’ unions as the ETU, Boilermakers’ and FEDFA, it in fact became the focus of militant unions in Victoria. Formally resurrected during the metal trades and the Queensland meat and railway disputes, the committee expanded to include the seamen, ship painters and dockers and the

BWIU and endeavoured to counter the artificial majority usually accorded to the Stout—Clarey forces on the THC by a representative system which unduly favoured the small unions.

The first sign of unrest in the ‘moderate’-led ATMOEA was the decision of a meeting at the Malvern depot to work only a six-day week from 1 October 1945. Bell responded by saying that anyone who refused to work rostered shifts would be sacked. On 1 October ten men were suspended for failing to report for duty. The resulting strike next day spread from depot to depot until at 8.30 p.m. the last tram stopped. Federal secretary Broadby and state secretary, J.I. Abfalter, sought to calm their members but Bell warned the strikers that they were likely to lose their war bonus and their continuity of service. As the Board coincidentally announced record annual re-

ceipts and passengers carried, the stop-gap Liberal Premier, I. McFarlan, advised Bell to back down and promise six-day rosters within a fortnight. !®

After the 25 day strike the ATMOEA and ARU met to discuss their common problems. Both feared that the recent lifting of manpower controls would mean an exodus of workers, making it i1m-

possible to maintain a normal working week or annual leave. Already, many porters had left and the rest were threatening to strike for a six-day week and normal leave. The ARU traffic men endorsed the porters’ stand, but when the porters voted to stop work on two Sundays out of every four the ‘militant’ ARU executive asked them to defer any action.!? News Weekly said ‘It 1s quite obvious that

if the Department wishes to retain the services of porters and to attract others it will have to drastically revise its present miserable policy with regard to wages and conditions and make the service at least comparable with other jobs’. The paper argued that the ‘communist’ executive of the ARU would love to join forces with the ATMOEA and have a general transport strike. Therefore, unless the MMTB and the rail commissioners gave evidence of their intention to remedy the men’s grievances as soon as possible then ‘they must share with the Communist trouble makers the responsibility for the strike’.29 On 7 November, just before the state elections which put

the Cain government into office, the ARU, AFULE and the ATMOEA met and decided to run a joint campaign for a 40-hour week, a basic wage of £6 4s, double time for Sunday work, time and a half for Saturdays and the lifting of the tax threshold to help lowerincome earners. After hard bargaining on ATMOEA’s post-strike log the Tramways Board yielded only a little ground.?!

Victoria and Queensland 1947-49 187

In February 1946 unrest among Newport powerhouse workers over dirty and hot conditions threatened all suburban train services

until the advice of the ‘militant?’ ARU executive not to strike was accepted.2? Also in February, despite the acute shortage of labour about 30 tram conductresses were sacked, leaving about 500 women still working for the Board out of a wartime peak of over 1000. ATMOEA protested vigorously, saying it made no distinction between male and female members—but its reaction stopped short

of striking.2? (Helped by natural wastage, women were finally phased out in mid-1947 but within seven weeks of the last women leaving, twenty ex-conductresses did a refresher course and rejoined the service.2+) When over 100 ‘connies’ were sacked in Sydney they

organized a stopwork protest and marched to parliament from whence they had to be forcibly removed. In contrast to Victoria, the

NSW ATMOEA gave them no backing and Groupers, including Junor, accused them of communist sympathies. In fact the suggestion that the diminished numbers of conductresses be augmented became one of the factors, along with the perennial hours, leave and penalty rate issues, causing a rare 24-hour tram stoppage in Sydney on 20 January 1947—a strike vigorously supported by Junor.*° Meanwhile at the 1946 Victorian ALP conference J. Cousland and H. Maxwell of the ATMOEA were prominent in the establishment of that state’s Industrial Groups. It was also alleged that disafhliation by the ARU had been the direct result of communist white-anting. Brown replied that the ARU was anxious to regain affiliation but would not do so unless the ALP rescinded its 1943 conference resolution which barred paid officials of affiliated unions from campaigning for other parties at elections.7° On the last Saturday in April 70 per cent of Melbourne trams did not run. The wildcat strikers were protesting at the reintroduction of prewar rosters for Saturday ‘specials’. Broadby argued that individual depots could not take direct action but must refer complaints to a general meeting. He told Hanna Street members that the tail must not wag the dog. His speech was greeted with cries of “Wait tll

the next election’. One member complained that the executive shelved many of their grievances and that was why this particular one had come to a head so quickly. The Cain government also came in for criticism for reappointing 70-year-old Bell as chairman of the MMTB for yet another two years.?’ In post-mortems the blame was apportioned in various ways. Broadby continued his criticism of the strikers, claiming that the Hanna Street members were chiefly to blame: the others had struck out of a false sense of loyalty. Liberal leader Hollway argued that the

present trouble was part of a communist plan to disrupt essential services: strong government was needed. News Weekly agreed. ‘Reds started it? Santamaria’s paper said and quoted Abfalter as saying that

188 Division of Labour

a cardinal rule that the executive should be consulted had been broken. However when the the ATMOEA executive met it blamed the discontent on the Board, which it said should employ more men if it wanted to run extra services. Rank and file at other depots sup-

ported Hanna Street and denounced a system which meant that some men were away from home for fourteen hours at a stretch. A major consequence of this row over Saturday specials was that a

secret ballot of the membership decided to give depots their autonomy.28

At this point transport workers’ discontent began to merge with the national demands for a 40-hour week and higher wages which climaxed in the metal trades dispute. To understand the Victorian controversies of 1948—49 it is essential to sketch in here those parts of the campaign involving Victorian transport workers. The underlying staffing and hours problem will emerge clearly. A May stopwork meeting by maintenance workers at Newport railway workshops urged the ACTU to call a 24-hour national stoppage in favour of a 40-hour week and, while waiting for an answer, decided to hold a one-hour stop-work the following week. The ACTU emergency committee responded by saying that stoppages should not be held while the 40 hours case was being heard. Suburban guards, signalmen, porters and shunters voted to support the Newport stop-work proposal but communist Brown dampened the flames. He argued that serious notice must be taken of the ACTU point of view, and the ARU executive vetoed the proposal for a one-hour hold-up. In midJune, however, the annual meeting of the council of railway shop committees decided to ask all shop committees to consider holding a stop-work meeting to protest at the attitude of the federal government and the ACTU to the 40-hour week. The council also voted to

ask the federal government to legislate immediately for a higher basic wage, and to ask the Cain government to introduce the 40hour week for its own employees immediately .2?

Rank-and-file agitation continued, prompting an unsuccessful ARU proposal to the THC that the ACTU call a 24-hour stoppage over the delay in the hours case. In mid-September a 24-hour stoppage for improved overtime conditions by 115 goods guards nearly spread to passenger services. On Sunday 22 September the ARU held a mass meeting on the staff crisis. This produced a list of nine demands, and a call for prompt action by the government. In the week after the federal general election signalmen, who were working more than 120 hours a fortnight, threatened a monthly stoppage unless overtime was eliminated. Goods guards also threatened to strike again. They deferred action until the Railways Classification Board announced its (unsatisfactory) overtime decision.29 From here the situation rapidly deteriorated, with neither government nor tribunal

Victoria and Queensland 1947-49 189

prepared to concede the workers’ demands. C. Stoneham, State Minister for Transport, did ask the ARU for a three-week truce dur-

ing which the question of bonus payments, sick leave and so on might be investigated, but the basic government position was as

stated by Cain when employees at the Newport powerhouse announced a one-day strike unless their demands for three weeks annual leave were met. The Premier declared that an impartial

tribunal—the federal Arbitration Court—existed to determine wages and conditions and he would not interfere. For his part Drake-Brockman advised railway unions not to defy the law as in-

corporated in the current NSA Regulations. After AFULE train drivers and four sectional mass meetings of ARU members called for

direct action the ARU state council agreed to a strike on the 7th. Following this decision, weekend meetings of ATMOEA members voted to join the strike. The 24-hour strike was the first combined rail and tram stoppage in Victoria’s history. Hollway saw it as ‘the beginnings of the Communist new order. The labour movement which after a bitter struggle set up the Arbitration Court. . . is now proceeding to smash the whole of the machine in an organised attempt at anarchy’ .?! At their mass meeting ARU members endorsed the nine demands and voted to let their executive decide how best to implement them. At the tramworkers’ meeting the ATMOEA executive expressed disapproval of the vote to strike. But in a move to regain some of the initiative the trammies’ executive voted to ask the Board to receive a deputation to discuss a 40-hour five-day week, time and a half for Saturday, double time for Sundays and the adjustment of rosters. The Grouper-dominated THC accepted, by 93 votes to 68, Stout’s report criticizing the ARU for holding a stoppage without the sanction of the disputes committee.*4 When soon afterwards the ARU held a secret ballot of members, 9777 (73 per cent) were in favour of

giving the executive authority to take direct action on the ninepoint programme.?3? An ATMOEA mass meeting on 13 October de-

clared that the only way the MMTB could halt the drift of tramworkers to other industries was to grant their claims. In the meantime Melbourne’s trains and trams ran; but in Sydney there was a

tram stoppage, in South Australia there were no trains and in Queensland railworkers were threatening to strike. Melbourne’s chances of avoiding a transport strike receded as each day passed. On 14 October the ARU transportation section called for

a ban on Sunday trains. The following day the ARU executive adopted a complete ban on overtime which led to a 50 per cent cut in country services. By 18 October the press was predicting a general tram and train stoppage on the 21st unless the MMTB gave a favourable reply to the ATMOEA’s claims. The AEU had also promised to

190 Division of Labour

support a tram strike if 1t occurred and its own strategic ban on overtime had produced counter-threats of layoffs from the rail commissioners and promises of support from ARU men at Newport. The MMTB’s reply to union claims stated that the 40-hour week rested with the Arbitration Court; NSA Regulations blocked a wage increase; when negotiations over rosters with the union executive were completed the Board would give favourable consideration to

demands for weekend penalty rates. In the light of this reply the ‘moderate’ executive on 20 October recommended strike action from midnight; only six out of some 1000 members at the mass meeting voted against.24 The ARU executive, using the authority given by

the secret ballot of members, then issued instructions for a rail strike. When the strike started Drake-Brockman announced the suspension, for the duration, of all current references to the Railways Classification Board. When asked if he would intervene Cain said neither the government nor parliament was qualified to determine

the conditions of employment for state employees. Cain was, of course, in a wretched situation. The Wonthaggi coalminers added to the Premier’s problems by coming out in sympathy with the public transport workers. One of his few comforts was that the road trans-

port workers (TWU) stayed out of the strike. Cain correctly saw wage pegging as the major cause of the current problems and he began to put behind-the-scenes pressure on Chifley to modify the Regulations. On 23 October the two striking unions held a mass meeting which

was addressed by communist Brown and moderate Abfalter. The latter told the men that they must be prepared to stay out and that the motor transport unions must be stopped from carrying passengers: “They are our greatest menace’. The following day, after Chifley’s conference with employers’ representatives from a number

of the states, the first rumours began to surface of a deal on the 40-hour—basic wage imbroglio. Meanwhile ATMOEA picketed emergency bus services and many drivers agreed to revert to their normal routes. That evening a particularly rowdy THC meeting

voted that the disputes committee should assume control of the

strike. On the 25th Bell told the disputes committee that the Board was

willing to give time and a half for Saturday and double time for Sunday. It was also prepared to discuss union grievances over rosters. The ATMOEA was satisfied with these concessions but the

ARU was not content with the offers of the rail commissioners.

Weekend talks failed to solve the impasse. Melbourne was threatened with electricity rationing because briquettes could not be transported from Yallourn. The ARU federal council was threatening to extend the strike to other states unless a satisfactory settle-

ment was reached and the WWF had threatened gas supplies by

Victoria and Queensland 1947-49 19]

deciding to stop unloading ships including colliers until normal transport resumed. On 28 October Cain told union leaders that Chifley proposed to ease their grievances over wages and hours and that the continuation

of the strike would endanger his minority government. Brown moved and Abfalter seconded a motion that, in view of the promises Cain had made, mass meetings should be recommended to return to work. The concrete gains offered were, for the railways: time and a half for Saturday; three weeks annual leave for shiftworkers after one year and day workers after five years; withdrawal of penalties against Newport men involved in the overtime dispute. Tramways workers

were offered time and half for Saturday; double time for Sunday; favourable consideration of roster claims. At the mass meetings the men voted overwhelmingly to return. Brown had to report failure to

his members on double time for Sunday and payment for passive time but stressed Chifley’s promises about wage pegging, the basic wage and the 40-hour week. Despite the settlement the parliamentary Opposition went ahead with a no-confidence motion pouring scorn on the government for its policy of appeasing communists in general and Brown in particular. Very little was said about the ATMOEA, the union which had initiated the strike, or its non-communist secretary, Abfalter, who was

willing to continue the strike after the 30th in support of the ARU.?> When it came to a vote the two independents supported the

government, and one of them, McLaren, remarked on the general public sympathy for the strikers.*° Nevertheless the communist plot thesis lingers on. In her 1982 biography of John Cain, White writes, “The Communist party probably deliberately fomented this strike in

order to embarrass his [Cain’s] government and they certainly succeeded. . .’.2” The footnote reference attached to this allegation is to ex-communist Cecil Sharpley’s serialized revelations in the Herald, 16-23 April 1949. The only reference in these articles to the 1946 strike 1s as follows: ‘In the Victorian transport strike Ted

Hill on behalf of the Communist State Executive had frequent unannounced conferences with Mr. P.J. Kennelly of the Cain Ministry’.78 In Sharpley’s evidence before the subsequent 1949 Royal Commission into the Communist Party he said more about the strike. He alleged that, having been informed by Brown how much

discontent there was among railwaymen, Hill recommended that Brown should organize a strike. ‘In this strike, as in all other strikes controlled by the Party, the first decision is always made by the high organ of the Party controlling the strike’.3? Both White and Sharpley

argue as if this had been a railway strike only. How Brown could control the tram union is never explained. Grouper Broadby, it should be noted, regarded the strike as ‘most successful, especially for tramway workers’.*°

192 Dhvision of Labour

The communist plot thesis as usual completely ignores the role and attitude of the rank and file who are seen by absurd implication to be merely so much malleable putty in the hands of the red masterminds. In any case CPA records do little to support the plot thesis. At the central committee plenum in February 1947 Brown, as usual, came in for specific criticism for his economistic tendency to inform the Party leadership only after events had taken place and not before. At the very same time the CPA secretariat expressed fears of the adverse effects on both the Cain and Chifley governments of further overtime disputes in the railways.*! This was the message stressed in discussions with Hill by Kennelly, the redoubtable ALP ‘fixer’, as he sought to use all possible avenues in his attempt to get the Cain government off the hook. (When interviewed Kennelly revealed, however, that the good offices of Hill made not the slightest bit of difference as the metal trades dispute mounted to its climax in early 1947.42) White’s report of Grouper criticisms of Kennelly ‘for giving in’ during negotiations with Hill on the October transport strike are difficult to square with the actual settlement of the dispute which hinged on assurances that Chifley would make possible wage, overtime and hours gains 1n the federal tribunal. News Weekly’s version of the ‘communist plot’ was particularly

Machiavellian. It argued that certain tram depots, knowing that their demands were likely to be granted, determined to bring about a strike so that when their claims were met it would seem that they had

been won as a result of strike action and not through Broadby’s negotiations. Similarly, it alleged that Brown (alone?) knew that the commissioners had promised to make concessions concerning annual

leave before the strike started but had concealed this knowledge from the rank and file. News Weekly took great comfort from one result of the strike, ‘One effect is that Labor leaders, formerly lukewarm on industrial groups are now strongly favourable’ .*4 After the strike there were still many ends to be tied up and Cain’s

problems were by no means over. For instance, until DrakeBrockman lifted the ban on the Railways Classification Board hearing claims the agreement on annual leave and penalty rates could not be ratified. The ban was not lifted until 7 November. If communists can be accused of trying to embarrass the Cain government, it seems even easier to level the same accusation at Drake-Brockman for he refused to give approval to an agreement between the commissioners and the AFULE for Saturday penalty rates which, he said, was outside the law. Immediately there was talk of a new strike but within

days Transport Minister Stoneham announced retrospective payment for train drivers for Saturday at time and a half, dating back to 3 November. His chosen loophole was that such a written agreement

did not have to be filed with the Arbitration Court. A month later Drake-Brockman was again making waves. In an ARU application

Victoria and Queensland 1947-49 193

for double time for Sunday, the union counsel alluded to the agree-

ment between the ATMOEA and the MMTB for Sunday rates. Drake-Brockman said that if there were such an agreement it was an unlawful one. He would not sanction such agreements nor help anyone to break down the attempts of the federal government to avoid inflation. He gave double time for Sunday to shunters only, deferring the claim for other railmen until 13 January. The ARU executive asked the men to maintain Christmas services and to leave the finalization of the claim in its hands. Nevertheless train drivers

and guards argued that there should be a stoppage on Sunday 3 January.‘*+

Meanwhile the ATMOEA leadership was changing. Abfalter, branch secretary for thirty years, resigned because he could not get

his executive to endorse assurances he had made to the MMTB

about the interpretation of the interim basic wage increase. The rank

and file then made it plain that they had resented the ‘moderates’ stance at the outset of the stoppage. In the annual elections a record turnout of 98 per cent voted overwhelmingly for what the Argus called ‘militant’ candidates and News Weekly dubbed ‘Communists’.

State president Broadby was among the casualties. In an equally high poll two months later he lost to O’Shea in the ballot for Abfalter’s vacant job—although he was able to retain his federal secretaryship against O’Shea’s challenge in June. The Groupers were un-

able to attribute the Victorian results to ballot rigging or apathy. News Weekly correctly concluded that the federal government deserved the chief blame. Its ‘vague and indecisive industrial policy’ which the moderates were forced to support, knowing they risked defeat at the hands of dissatisfied members, had caused the triumph of the Reds.*° On the hours front, Cain refused to imitate NSW Premier McGirr and promise a shorter week for state employees, so attention focussed on weekend penalty rates. On 13 January 1947 Drake-Brockman referred the question to the full court for settlement. There Judge Kelly began to query the strictly ‘illegal’ devices which had kept the lid on unrest. He asked if the chief judge had approved the payment of time and a half for Saturdays. When told that the chief judge had

been informed that the payment was being made under a state award, Kelly asserted ‘The point is that time and a half is being paid by the Victorian Railways without the approval of the Chief Judge

and contrary to the Regulations’.*® This foreshadowed the full court’s incendiary decision at the end of March that the NSA Reg-

ulations still blocked any rise in weekend penalty rates (p. 141 above). By this time both rail and tram unions were being drawn into

the escalating metal trades dispute. The ATMOEA was most concerned by the enforced layoff of 500 bus drivers, 200 of whom were found alternative jobs by the Board. A mass meeting shortly after-

194 Division of Labour

wards rejected the advice of its ‘militant’ executive to restrict services in sympathy with the AEU, although Rowe reminded them of AEU support during the October transport strike. At a communion breakfast earlier that day Archbishop Mannix had told 400 Catholic tramworkers not to support the small coterie of communists who wanted to capture the economic policy of the country.*’ After the AEU’s eventual triumph on margins (Chapter 7) railworkers sought a flow-on from the metal trades award. In August Drake-Brockman refused to ratify margins approved on 28 July by the local industrial board. Proposals for a stoppage were referred to the THC disputes committee by the ARU which asked the federal government to avoid further industrial trouble by appointing an acting chief judge in view of Drake-Brockman’s ill health. Finally, on 27 August Drake-Brockman handed down an award which to ARU eyes contained all the worst provisions of the first Mooney and full court metal awards. The THC disputes committee rejected a proposal for a strike on 4 September but signalmen were so angered that they held a two-hour stoppage on the 29 August without warning, disrupting all train services. The trouble was resolved for the time being by the rail commissioners who promised not to oppose an application to the Court asking for increased margins for lower-paid workers.*®

Meanwhile in the tramways the perennial issue of rosters had resurfaced. In spite of the promise given by the Board in October 1946 to look favourably at roster claims, nothing had been done during the metal trades dispute. When new rosters were finally arranged in

July 1947, strikes were narrowly averted at the Malvern and Glenhuntly depots. Meanwhile track maintenance men were barely restrained from precipitating a total tram shutdown over their niggardly night shift rates. Trouble seemed certain in spring when, after the Arbitration Court announced that the 40-hour week would commence in January 1948, Bell made it plain that he wished the men to continue working a six-day roster. He said that five-day

rosters would require 844 additional recruits and they were not available. The union threatened strike action, but at the beginning of October the Legislative Council refused supply and the tramwaymen agreed to defer their stoppage until the political crisis was over.*?

Immediately after the election the ATMOEA revived its campaign for a five-day week. In view of a recent overwhelming vote by the rank and file the executive informed the Board that in no circumstances would the union work the six-day rosters which, on 30 Decem-

ber, the Board announced would begin on 4 January. In conference Bell refused to give the union executive a definite date for the introduction of five-day rosters. The ATMOEA’s request that the new six-day rosters, involving a longer spread of hours, be abandoned in

Victoria and Queensland 1947-49 195

favour of existing 44-hour week rosters, the extra four hours to be paid as overtime, was rejected on the grounds of changes in peakhour traffic due to the introduction of the 40-hour week.>*° All trams stopped at midnight, 3 January.

A mass meeting of 3000 tramworkers voted not to resume work until the Board restored the old 44-hour roster pending the introduction of a five-day, 40-hour week on 1 March. No theory of a communist plot was needed to explain their attitude. Tramway boards in three other states had managed to prepare five-day rosters allowing four days off every two weeks, whereas all the Victorian tramway workers received was a longer lunch hour. News Weekly, while dis-

approving of direct action, commented that the Board had introduced a new roster which gave the men ‘no advantage of the Court’s extra 4-hour leisure and which it must have known would antagonize

them. . .the Board must carry the full responsibility for creating dissatisfaction among its employees’ .>!

In a departure from the industry’s tradition,°* Bell reported the dispute to the Arbitration Court soon after it began and asked for a compulsory conference of the parties. Government mediation, which had helped settle the 1945 and 1946 disputes, was not forthcoming.

The new coalition government saw such intervention as a sign of ‘weakness’ which played into the hands of the communists. During the election campaign Hollway had assured voters that he would not tolerate lawlessness, force or intimidation. When approached by the

union in mid-December 1947 to help forestall the probable stoppage, he did nothing; and after the strike began, he steadfastly refused to intervene, saying that the dispute must be dealt with by the Arbitration Court. The Argus applauded the government’s ‘quiet strength’ in the face of a ‘rash and precipitate strike’ .>3

Thus the dispute became the first big test for Chifley’s new streamlined Arbitration Act, which had become law in October 1947. It did not make an auspicious debut. Commissioner Blackburn, who dealt with tramways, was occupied with another dispute in Adelaide but chief commissioner Mooney refused to allocate the dispute to another conciliator. Blackburn did not arrive in Melbourne until six days after the strike had begun. When he did at last

appear he went against the spirit of the 1947 amendments and worsened his already shaky reputation in the union world by announcing that he would not arbitrate until after a return to work.>4 At a mass meeting which followed his decision, 2500 strikers voted almost unanimously to continue the strike.

While the Commonwealth Investigation Service—from which ASIO evolved in 1949—followed the dispute with close interest,>° the ‘Red plot’ thesis took a knock when the ‘communist’ ARU did not support the tramwaymen. After negotiations Brown reported that the final conference with the railway commissioners had been

196 Division of Labour the most satisfactory discussion on working hours ever attended by

the union. The concessions granted to the ARU removed all the hope of a sympathy strike. A confrontation with shunters and signalmen was averted by the commissioners agreeing to support an immediate application to the Court for a 38-hour week. More notable

yet, after conferences involving the new state Minister for Transport, W.S. Kent Hughes, other railwaymen were granted an agreement on the working of the 40-hour week identical to the one the tramwaymen were seeking. Deputy Premier McDonald explained, ‘There is a difference. The Railwaymen are working: the tramwaymen are on strike’. Towards the end of the first week Bell made a ‘bitter denunciation of Communist influence on the Tramways Union’ and Hollway told its leaders that he would not negotiate until the men resumed work: ‘This is not a question of rosters at all. It is a question of the rule of law or the rule of the jungle.’>© On the eighth day of the stoppage the Cabinet met with the Police Commissioner, the railway commissioners and the chairmen of the

Tramways and Transport Boards, to discuss the possibility of emergency road transport under police protection. Hollway declared ominously that since the tramwaymen had refused to obey the law,

‘we now go into the unpredictable’. The next day the Premier announced that parliament would be recalled on 15 January. Rumours of impending emergency legislation began to circulate. In response, officials of rail, road transport and maintenance unions declared their opposition. On 13 January 1948 Chifley was reported as making sardonic comments on the ability of the Victorian government to settle strikes ‘in 24 hours’. Reg Ansett offered to buy and run the tram and bus services. The media carried reports of disputes in other parts of the country over the operation of the new 40-hour week. Meanwhile the MMTB began the work of preparing five-day rosters. Bell called this ‘a routine matter’, not to be interpreted as any concession to the strikers. Simultaneously, the Board made preliminary arrangements for an application for deregistration of the ATMOEA. In response O’Shea strongly criticized the arbitration

sytem and the refusal of Mooney and Blackburn to conciliate— contrasting their current attitude with Mooney’s readiness to fly to Kiewa to help settle the tunnellers’ strike there. Many tramworkers were taking other employment and the union planned to help the rest by a levy of its membership in other states and through financial support from unions as diverse as the bakers’, the carpenters’ and the AWU.°’ Thursday 15 January contained elements of both drama and farce. The government intended introducing its emergency legislation that

evening. In response, the seamen struck work immediately, the Grouper-led wharfies decided to follow suit at midnight as did the Newport powerhouse unions, who thus ensured a halt to all electric

Victoria and Queensland 1947-49 197

trains during the joint 24 hours of protest. Nine building unions arranged stop-work meetings for the 19th. The first note of farce in this otherwise sombre prospect was struck by commissioner Blackburn. In the federal tribunal’s best tradition of face-saving Blackburn agreed, at last, to deal with the dispute—but only if he met the ATMOEA in federal conference. The rationale for this was the threat of deregistration proceedings which concerned the union’s members in all states. He thus summoned federal secretary Broadby to meet himself and Bell—and simply refused to admit to the room O’Shea and state president A.C. Cullen, the officials who had been actually handling the dispute. This tactic also might allow Grouper Broadby to gain kudos from the fact that Blackburn gave the union almost everything it had been striking for, in particular an order that the Board must give the men a five-day week by a definite date—15 April. Moreover, as Labor Call was quick to point out, the detailed provisions for rosters until 15 April meant that the men would return to work in the interim on practically the same basis as the six-day 44-hour roster.>8

The only thing that might conceivably prevent the tramworkers from happily accepting Blackburn’s offer was the threat of the state government’s proposed emergency legislation which had raised the hackles of the whole union movement. Parliament assembled shortly after Blackburn’s conference began. Hollway thus forbore to make any statement on the tramways dispute. In successfully proposing

the temporary suspension of sittings he did refer neutrally to the threats made against the government by ‘certain organizations’.°? When members reassembled three hours later, informed of Blackburn’s decision, the Premier announced that he nevertheless intended to proceed with the Essential Services Bill. Because of an unconnected refusal of the Opposition to give leave for the Legislative Council to meet the following day, all stages of the bill were to be completed in two and three-quarter hours in the Assembly so that the Council could deal with it the same night.©® In brief, the bill, hastily drafted by Kent Hughes,®! allowed the government to declare a ‘state of emergency’ in transport, fuel, light, power, water, sewerage, or any other specified ‘essential service’ threatened by an industrial dispute. Strikes and lockouts in an essential service were outlawed unless a secret ballot was first conducted by the Chief Electoral Officer. Union officials instigating or taking part in an illegal strike risked fines up to £1000 and each striker fines up to £50. The

government was empowered to carry on emergency services and given wide powers of compulsion for this purpose. Even if a majority of employees voted to strike the government could still ‘direct’ them, under pain of penalty, to return to work. Effective picketing during the state of emergency was an offence. There seemed to be three bases for the government’s decision to

198 Division of Labour press ahead with the bill. First, it was threatened with a loss of face in view of Blackburn’s decision which demonstrated the justice of ATMOEA’s claims. Second, a withdrawal of the bill could clearly be

presented as a backdown in the face of strike threats. Third, there was the genuine feeling in government circles that such legislation

would enable it to nip in the bud any future disputes in essential industries. In the short debate on the issue, government speakers constantly banged the communist drum. Hollway opened with the claim that, “There is the menace of complete anarchy in this community by reason of the threat of Communists who have defied our industrial and arbitration systems’. McDonald spoke of the people ‘being held to ransom by unreasonable, dictatorial and Communist inspired elements’. Later speakers compared the situation in Victoria to that in the Balkans and Eastern Europe. Introducing the bill into the upper house J.A. Kennedy saw the secret ballot as potentially ‘the spearhead against the Communist control of the unions’ and the legislation as a whole as a defence against ‘Communist dictators who are anxious to disrupt our conditions and bring about unrest and chaos with a view to introducing a foreign form of government abhorrent to all right-thinking Britishers’.°* Events later in 1948 suggest that not all speakers were indulging in mere rhetoric. Many

believed what they were saying. To the more industrially naive Liberal-Country Party members the necessity to take a big stick to the communists blinded them to the fact that their threats were like-

ly to bring on the very type of industrial explosion that they were supposedly seeking to avert. The more sophisticated among government supporters may well have viewed the issue in terms of a public relations exercise and relied on the moderates in the labour movement to ensure that the government’s bluff was not called. Certainly the ALP benches were horrified by the government’s intransigence. Despite their predictions that the legislation ‘will never be used, and

you [the government] know it. . .It is only to fool the people’ ,®? they cogently argued that the bill represented such a threat to all unionists that it would heighten industrial antagonism and 1n fact play into the hands of the communists.®*

While the upper house still debated the controversial bill, decisions determining Victoria’s immediate industrial future were being

made offstage in the Trades Hall and the Premier’s office. At the THC meeting the militants wanted to call the government’s bluff. They were confident that any move to implement the legislation would produce so massive and spontaneous a reaction that the threat of such a strike-breaking statute could be smashed once and for all. In contrast, the ‘moderate’ majority felt that such confrontation and

industrial dislocation could only help the communists and they fought hard to restrain the militants. Stout moved that no unions should take industrial action without prior sanction of the THC ex-

Victoria and Queensland 1947-49 199

ecutive and/or disputes committee. After lengthy debate—and what the communists viewed as stalling tactics—Stout was forced, by 108 votes to 79, to accept a compromise amendment that the executive go to parliament and ‘seek an assurance’ from Cabinet that the bill be withdrawn. The THC adjourned at 9:45 p.m. with left-wing dele-

gates jubilant at their rare victory.® At 1 a.m. the deputation returned to announce that the government would not withdraw the legislation—but neither would it be proclaimed. In any future emergency the government would not proclaim the Act without first

‘conferring’ with the THC. The CPA leadership subsequently revealed its disappointment at this partial success—but, on the night, the party’s troops in the THC trenches revealed that they did not possess the calculating minds endowed to them by popular mythology. Rather, something like group euphoria pervaded the taut and tired delegates as they heard the executive’s report. If complete victory had not been achieved, then at least the state had been pulled back from the brink of industrial warfare. Militants celebrated with the ‘moderates’. It was agreed that the Newport stoppage should not take place and that mass meetings later that day of tramworkers,

seamen and wharfies should be recommended to return to work immediately. As usual the exuberant Brown was to the fore. CPA

officials E.F. Hill and J.D. Blake couched their separate public criticisms of the over-readiness of the THC to accept the compromise in measured and impersonal terms.®* Behind the scenes, however, the party leaders were furious with Brown and other communist delegates such as Don Thomson of the Painters and Decorators.°’ Frank Johnson, Hill’s colleague on the state CPA’s Industrial Committee tore into the ARU leader. He reported to the CPA’s national executive that neither the party nor the ARU rank and file were consulted. Instead Brown ‘got carried away. . . and proceeded to get the [railway] Commissioners out of bed and got the trains to run again’ despite the fact that, for once, the left had the majority of THC delegates on side ‘and could have carried practically any resolution they wished’.®8 For the CPA the fevered events of 15 January were clearly but the first round in the battle. According to many conservative observers, however, the contest was completely over, with the coalition government having knocked its subversive opponent completely out of the ring. The Argus editorial felt Hollway had completely vindicated the judgement of Victorian electors. . . Faced with the dire threat to essential services. . .Mr Hollway maintained law and order in the State by ruling through Parliament, the only true source of constitutional authority. . . the will of the people has been translated into law with dramatic and telling effect. No matter what victories may be claimed by the unions—and victories will be claimed—the plain fact is that Government has asserted itself over the Communists.®?

200 Diwvision of Labour

Employer journals also exulted: Alleging an attack on trade unionism. . . the communistically-inclined section of the transport workers precipitated a tram and bus stoppage, and were well on the way to involving the railway when the Hollway Government

interposed. With drastic but just methods it dealt with the gangsters . . . There was an immediate run for cover. . . The railway strike died stillborn and the bussies and trammies couldn’t get back to their jobs quick enough. . . The effort to produce anarchy just melted in the face of a resolute man making a resolute stand and backed by a party that had just returned from the electorate with full public confidence. . . The series of strikes that marked his assumption of office was clearly a planned attack to destroy his administration by dividing it. . . Victoria’s emphatic ‘No’ to the

dictatorship of the strike will have a resounding effect throughout the Commonwealth—1it is pregnant with hope for the future and with emancipation from the new serfdom that has been steadily imposed on this country under Labour rule.”°

This last theme was picked up by many observers. In a newsletter which reported that R.G. Casey was off to England to raise £100 000 to help the Liberals defeat Labor, Canberra ‘insiders’, Eric White and Don Whitington, argued that ALP leaders feared that Hollway’s ‘tough treatment’ of the unions might lead the public to ask if Men-

zies might not achieve similar results in Canberra.’! Jack Lang agreed that Victorian events—and the ensuing propaganda—had helped the offensive to pass to the Opposition side of federal politics.72

Not all observers summarized events in terms of a government victory. The intransigence of Bell and the failure of Blackburn to conciliate were rightly seen as exacerbating factors in the stoppage in several quarters.’* More significantly, the conservatives’ version of

Hollway achieving a courageous victory was challenged by other than labour sympathizers. Edgar Holt, editor of Smith’s: Weekly, offered the view that intelligent compromise could have settled the original dispute over tramway rosters and that the Government chose a dubious issue on which to bring down an emergency powers bill. The Bill. . . must sour relations between the Government and the unions. . . My information is that Premier Hollway’s hand was largely forced by behind the scenes influences in his own party.74

Even closer to home, the Age was not carried away by euphoria. At the outset of the dispute its editorial writers had admitted the justice of the tramworkers’ cause—while deploring the tactics of their ‘ex-

tremist industrial leaders’. In the opening days too the Age questioned the obduracy of Bell and the failure of Mooney to ensure that

some commissioner or other would start conciliation procedures promptly. Later the paper chided Blackburn’s refusal to conciliate and questioned the practicability of attempting ‘to “‘smash”’ a strike

Victoria and Queensland 1947-49 201 when strikers feel that they have a case’.”> On 16 and 17 January its editorials were full of ‘misgivings’ over ‘the ill-advised decision of the State government to bring on its emergency legislation’: On reflection, the State Government may feel that its hastily drafted legislation, put through under pressure by its own ‘militants’, may not be the best answer to a timeless need. . . Had the Government insisted on making its bill law on Friday, not only the extreme or Communist-dominated unions, but many others, would have joined forces in a resentful flare-up that could have led to disaster.

In contrast to the communist plot scenario, the CPA and some ALP leaders judged events to have stemmed from a ‘deliberate attempt’ by the Liberal—Country Party ‘to deal a mortal blow at the

trade union movement’.’© The conservatives had long urged the need to deal firmly with the communists and boasted their own abil-

ity to do so. A tram stoppage might be expected to incur aboveaverage public inconvenience—and hence displeasure with the strikers—although in fact the conservative press had to admit the relative unconcern (‘strike-happiness’) of the public.’’ Bell, with his proud record of profitability, could be counted upon for obduracy. The government must have known that prior to the strike the tramways employees were unpopular among many of their potential supporters in kindred unions because of their failure to support the engineers at the climax of the metal trades dispute in 1947.78 And, so the argument went, the government deliberately impeded the ARU

from making common cause with tramworkers by granting the railmen the very concessions sought by the ATMOEA. If plot there had been, however, once the strike started the government proved itself unprepared to deal speedily with the crisis. Its actions smacked of ad hocery rather than premeditation. No legislation had been prepared—contemporary observers and subsequent events bore witness to the hasty drafting of the Essential Services Bill. Indeed, contrary to its pre-strike policy of isolating the ATMOEA, the government, first by its threats and then by the actual bill, ensured that the strikers gained support from kindred unions. Its final compromise with the THC indicates that it hardly intended to have a showdown with the militant unions. By then it was clear to all that only the communists, against whose influence the government was supposedly acting, would gain by proclamation of the Act.

The settlement terms appeared to pay almost immediate dividends. A record number of applications were received from would-be tramway employees apparently attracted by improved conditions—above all the guarantee in April of a five-day week. The

new rosters proved generally acceptable. The only hiccup was caused by Bell’s attempts to break a six-year agreement on rates for broken shifts and to attribute the pay reduction to the ATMOEA’s

202 Division of Labour insistence on five-day rosters. Commissioner Blackburn restored the peace by ruling against the Board.”? The Queensland rail strike, which began in February 1948, served to heighten the Cold War atmosphere in Victoria and to make con-

servatives more thankful for the Essential Services Act. Premier Hollway argued that the ‘Communist menace was no less real here than in Czechoslavakia, [the] latest country to come under the heel of the Soviet’. Melbourne Lord Mayor Sir Raymond Connelly

agreed completely: ‘Even if we have to create civil war we will have to meet the challenge of the Communist wreckers within this community. . . What is happening in Brisbane would have happened in Melbourne, but, thank God, we had a man like Hollway’.®° Aided by the known distaste of the THC moderates for the dramatic confrontation unfolding up north, the government adopted an aggressive posture during the Queensland strike. In an attempt to hinder Queensland unionists who had arrived to raise money for their strike

fund, the Cabinet announced that only Victorian union officials could address railmen on railway property. At the next THC meeting the ARU criticized the THC executive for ‘lack of action’ in relation to the Queensland dispute. An acrimonious debate ensued in which Jordan, the assistant secretary, accused various unions, including the ARU, of collecting for the strikers without the authority of the THC.?! When Queensland Premier Hanlon declared a state of emergency the ARU considered a federal rail boycott of Queensland goods. Kent Hughes met this threat with a statement ‘interpreted authoritatively’ as meaning that any ARU ban in Victoria would result in the proclamation of the Essential Services Act. The press believed that if the ban then persisted the CPA risked being declared illegal. While Brown attended an ARU federal executive meeting in Sydney, representatives of all twelve ARU sections and ten other Victorian unions decided in favour of a ban. Almost immediately a lunch meeting of the ARU goods section rejected the move. Later, Kent Hughes informed ARU officials that anyone refusing to handle Queensland goods would be stood down, and road transport workers decided not to join the boycott. In the light of these events—and the fact that the ban subsequently imposed by the NSW branch of the ARU rendered academic any local decision—the idea of a Victorian boycott was quietly shelved. The militants had lost face in the propaganda war and conservatives became more confident yet that a firm stand would always do the trick.*®4

Nevertheless the question of how far to press the advantage gave

rise to divergent opinions within the coalition. Legislation was drawn up to outlaw the CPA and other ‘subversive organisations’ but, apart from legal queries about state powers in this area, the

Victoria and Queensland 1947-49 203

Liberals favoured a softer approach than the Country Party. After a Cabinet meeting on 3 May Hollway announced that the bill would be kept on ice for the time being. As the Commonwealth Investigation Service reported to Canberra, His Party—the Liberal Party—believed that the passage of this repressive legislation now would serve no useful purpose, particularly as a state of peace and apparent harmony existed in industry. In the event of Communists stirring up strife in the community, they [szc]

contend Parliament can be called together quickly and the legislation assed. ‘ A majority of Parliamentary Country Party members, pursuing the policy of its [sic] party’s annual conference, has urged that the legislation should be approved by Parliament immediately, and placed on the Statute Book. They reason that this action would prove a deterrent to those subversive

Organisations whose creed is to upset the present forms of political government.®?

The Liberal view on banning the CPA prevailed but the temp-

tation to invoke the Essential Service Act eventually became irresistible—although strangely enough the trigger proved to be action by three separate groups of ‘moderate’-led workers. In October rumours circulated that striking matchworkers had been forced to return to their jobs for fear of the Act. Then the Operative Bakers’ Union went on strike because its members wanted a more civilized

start to the working day than 4 a.m. On 9 November, after three weeks, the THC induced the strikers to agree by a small majority to

return to work. The press alleged that a major factor had been a threat by the Cabinet to invoke the Act.*4

A week later there was a lightning gas strike over disciplinary action against a night shift worker. McDonald, who was Acting Premier while Hollway was overseas, called a Cabinet meeting the following day to consider what action to take. Cabinet decided to proclaim the Essential Services Act. After formally ‘conferring’ with the THC executive which naturally argued against the proclamation, the government went ahead and proclaimed the Act—despite the fact that the gas strike had already been settled.8> Militant unionists felt it strange that the spontaneous two-day stoppage in the gas industry was brought so sharply to public notice “by the refusal of the Gas Company to use staff labour to continue the gas supply as was their custom in all previous disputes and in fact was the method of producing gas on every Thursday since the overtime embargo was placed on this work last May’.8© Back in January a number of unions

including the ARU, AFULE, ATMOEA and SUA had resolved to call stop-work meetings if the Act were ever proclaimed. Now the militant combined unions committee met and decided to support a 24-hour strike from midnight on 16 November. The eight major

204 Division of Labour

public transport unions, the ship painters and dockers, BWIU and BLF committed their support. On the day, Wonthaggi miners voted at pit-top meetings to join in.®7 On the eve of the stoppage the THC summoned a special meeting. The ‘moderate’ majority passed a resolution condemning the govern-

ment for proclaiming the Act and offering support for any union refusing to observe the provision requiring a secret ballot before striking—but also condemning the union executives which had called for the 24-hour stoppage. The strike went ahead, however, bringing Melbourne’s public transport to a halt. Between 6000 and 10000 of the strikers voted in favour of a resolution urging that the Act be repealed. T. Scott (FEDFA secretary) told the meeting that delegates who had voted against the THC resolution the previous night represented 53000 more union members than those who had voted for it.®°

The big question now was whether the government would prosecute the strikers for not first holding a secret ballot. The day after the strike McDonald received a letter from the SUA state secretary, W.

Bird, saying that, if the government did prosecute, the federal executive of his union would declare a complete blockade of all Vic-

torian ports. Simultaneously the FEDFA and AEU separately threatened to disrupt the electric power industry. Some railway shop

committees decided to organize walk-offs if prosecutions were attempted. A meeting of ten federal unions in Sydney promised to mount, if necessary, co-ordinated national action against the Act. On the 19th it was announced that Cabinet had deferred a decision as to which officials would be prosecuted until Hollway returned from overseas on 22 November. McDonald assured ‘genuine trade unionists’ that they had nothing to fear from the Act which was aimed at

‘communist dictators’ who were intent on creating industrial anarchy.°®?

When Hollway returned he presided over a Cabinet meeting which agreed to summons all union leaders ‘against whom a summons can be sustained’. Next day summonses were issued to ten unionists from the ARU and the ATMOEA. They did not include the communist secretaries af the two unions, Brown and O’Shea. In the haste surrounding its drafting back in January the Act had been carelessly written; union secretaries could not be charged under its present provisions. McDonald had assured the unions that the Act was aimed at ‘communist dictators’; the astonishing fact was that a number of the men charged were actually ALP Industrial Group

leaders. Cain said that at least four of the men summonsed had

opposed the one-day strike.?? On 24 November the government introduced a bill to amend the Act so that in future it could catch ‘the ringleaders and the real destructors—and not the rank and file that the present Act would enable us to catch’.?!

Victoria and Queensland 1947-49 205 When the summonses were issued the federal council of the SUA

announced that it would go ahead with its threatened blockade. Hollway’s initial response was: ‘The Government is not going to be

deterred by any threats of Russian-inspired agitators’.?* Events quickly forced a softening of his view. Although drastic gas rationing was imposed on 27 November, supplies would be totally exhausted by the 30th, rail cuts were likely to follow and electricity would be

hit by the Victorian miners’ threat to strike unless the government withdrew the summonses. Transport and building unions arranged

further stoppages for the 29th. On 27 November Hollway announced that he had accepted three settlement proposals put forward by the THC executive: the seamen’s ban would be lifted immediately; in future the railway and tramway unions would submit disputes to the Trades Hall Council; the government would not oppose the adjournment of cases against the ttn ARU-ATMOEA members.?? Sir Albert Dunstan (Country Party) who strongly disapproved of the Premier’s ‘deal’ alleged that, as well as the published terms of settlement, the Premier had also promised the THC not to proceed with the court actions against the unionists and not to proceed with the amending bill which had been introduced to tighten up the Essential Services Act.?* Hollway denied these allegations but the court cases were dropped and the bill, which had not progressed beyond the first reading, was heard of no more.

The agreement between Hollway and the THC leaders also needed the approval of the SUA which viewed the crisis as the culmination of ‘a long prepared plot’ by the government.” The militant unions felt that better terms could have been extracted from Holl-

way. However after lengthy discussion throughout Sunday 28 November the combined unions committee announced that the blockade would be lifted and stoppages scheduled for the next day would be cancelled. The meeting expressed its ‘uncompromising opposition to the Essential Services Act’ and declared that “there will continue to be industrial unrest while the Act remains’. Brown said

that an important victory had been won thanks to the solidarity of the seamen. But he criticized both the THC and the ACTU for their ‘weak’ attitude.”©

The events of this hectic November fortnight, so briefly outlined above, gave rise to much bitterness and fraternal ill-feeling on both sides of the political—industrial fence. Labor Call had referred to the settlement with Hollway as a ‘triumph’ for Stout and ‘a great tribute to the solidarity of the trade union movement’;”’ but the truth was that by proclaiming the Act the government had exposed the deep divisions within the movement. The combined unions committee had authorized two issues of a publication called Trade Union News, on 22 and 27 November. While reprinting the Act word for word

and thus revealing to many workers for the first time the exact

206 Division of Labour

threat it posed to many tenets of Australian unionism, it also attacked Stout and the moderates under headlines such as ‘Right Wing Plotting Sell Out’ and ‘Stout Tried to Wreck Big Protest’. The THC moderates were determined to punish the eight unions responsible and, after four invective-laden meetings, finally succeeded in passing a motion to suspend them on 21 December. These ructions were yet another manifestation of the basic differences between militants and moderates which surfaced so often in the 1940s—exacerbated as usual by the militants’ frustration with the biased THC system of representation. Included in the countercharges hurled across the THC floor were allegations of communist masterminding and control of the whole dispute. This was par for the course—and was to remain so for another thirty years. Yet while the moderates always tended towards overkill on this topic, the subsequent allegations of CPA functionary, Cecil Sharpley, seemed to lend extra weight to their charges on this occasion. At the time (1949), Sharpley’s allegations were publicized with all the sensational alarmism of which the Cold War media was capable.

Looking back, the modern reader, while deploring the manner in which the names of anyone mentioned by Sharpley could be immediately smeared across newspaper columns and airwaves, is also struck by how unlike the US Senator McCarthy’s committee in most other ways were the proceedings of the 1949 Lowe Royal Commission prompted by Sharpley’s claims. Indeed, it seems rather incongruous for the CPA—an avowedly revolutionary party—to have its

counsel, F. Paterson and E.A. Laurie, indulging in all the usual formal, and so polite, ‘bourgeois’ legal interchanges with the judge and the counsel assisting him. Sharpley, an English immigrant, joined the CPA in 1935. With

little industrial background he became in 1942 an official in the Munitions Workers Union which he helped amalgamate with the FIA. In March 1946 he became a CPA functionary whose major duty

was to work with the CPA’s ‘fractions’ in Victorian trade unions. According to Sharpley, by 1949 these numbered twenty-seven, of which seventeen were still ‘weak’.?8 ‘Late in 1947’ lawyer Ted Hill became a full-time CPA functionary whose supervision of Sharpley led to personal clashes. Sharpley’s evidence provides some interesting insights into the Party’s aspirations and modus operandi but his information and memory were often faulty. Sharpley and the counsel

assisting the 1949 Commission sought to equate the Party’s longterm revolutionary aims and its theoretical prescriptions for communist unionists with current practice in Australia. The result was a considerable exaggeration of the CPA’s role and influence in industrial relations. While acknowledging the honest way in which seamen,

tramway workers and coalminers elected communists,?? Sharpley made many allegations of attempted ballot rigging elsewhere. Apart

Victoria and Queensland 1947-49 207 from the fact that ALPers and others had pioneered in this field long before the CPA was established,!°° Lowe found only one case proven (in the BWIU). Sharpley’s other main allegation was that the CPA ‘ran’ all major industrial disputes. The evidence for this was essentially that the Party was involved in discussions with fraction leaders before and during disputes and endeavoured to direct union tactics

through its members. These observations are grounded in truth. Controversy arises as to the degree of success achieved by the CPA. As we will see in Chapter 10, Sharpley would not have been alone among CPA officials in experiencing delusions of grandeur in this respect. In discussing actual disputes Sharpley was at times demonstrably

unreliable. This was particularly true concerning the metal trades dispute.!°! For a start he consistently placed it in 1947—48 instead of

1946—47—with the result that Lowe similarly misdated it in his report.!°2 Sharpley also had the engineers returning to work over Christmas, seemed at times to confuse the FIA with the AEU, falsely claimed that the settlement terms could have been obtained months

before, never mentioned the fact that the stoppage began as a coordinated lockout by employers, and ascribed the whole affair to premeditated CPA policy. Cross-examination!% revealed a number of lesser inaccuracies in various other parts of his evidence. Of all the disputes in Victoria, those surrounding the proclamation of the Essential Services Act in November 1948 fit best Sharpley’s general thesis. There can be no doubt at all that the CPA saw the Act as a major threat to fundamental union principles—and to

militant activities within the union movement. In the worsening Cold War, facing public obloquy and growing demands that it again be outlawed, the CPA was convinced that the Act was a central component of an orchestrated attack on the working class. From its in-

ception communists were constantly urged to work for its repeal. In internal conclave, in Party publications and out on the stump, communists bracketed the Act with restrictive industrial legislation currently passed or proposed by the Commonwealth and other state governments. !°* When the opportunity arose to make a stand against

the repressive measure, communists were naturally to the fore. Further, given the nature of the dispute, the pattern of protest could not be determined by the ‘economistic’ instincts of the rank and file.

Instead they looked for tactical direction from their leaders. The protests involved short stoppages requiring advanced, co-ordinated

planning both of the stoppages themselves and of tactics to be adopted in the fiery arena of the Melbourne THC. This format allowed for a far greater than normal input by CPA ‘theoreticians’ — a role relished by Hill.

Even so, Sharpley’s story of the CPA’s complete domination of events 1s exaggerated. The Act was repressive—even the conserva-

208 Division of Labour

tive press was occasionally prepared to concede this.!®° Without genuine opposition to the Act on the part of non-communists, including a large proportion of the rank and file, the campaign could never have been maintained. In particular the issue of summons and attempted police interrogation of those charged gave rise to intense and widespread indignation.!°¢ All accounts agree that, with all major CPA officials at a Sydney conference, Hill was selected to return to co-ordinate the communist input to the campaign. Despite prevarications before the Lowe Commission, Hill appears to have been party to the communist union officials’ tactics and was influential in urging them to implement their unions’ decisions in January 1948 to stop work in protest at the proclamation.!°” This view carried the day over O’Shea’s objections that in fact the ATMOEA’s tradition demanded a recommittal of the proposition to the rank and file. O’Shea correctly predicted that an executive decision would rebound on militant candidates in the annual elections in ten days time.!98 Some militants on the ARU executive allegedly expressed similar concern.!99 Once prosecutions were launched, Hill was en-

gaged as the militant unions’ legal adviser and was thus able to attend and participate in joint union conferences. Hill’s account of the dispute in the Communist Review certainly conveyed a strong

sense of CPA participation in the militant unions’ decisionmaking—-a fact for which he was criticized by the CPA’s state executive. !10

A minor controversy surrounds the CPA’s input into a sudden decision of fifteen signalmen to stop work for an hour on 24 Novem-

ber, thus bringing all rail services to a halt. R. Dixon of the CPA’s secretariat was highly critical of this tactic although Brown and Hill denied Sharpley’s allegation of responsibility.1!! Of more importance was the origin of the seamen’s blockade decision which Sharpley ascribed to the CPA’s direction to Bird.!!2 Hill’s rebuttal rested on a telegram from the seamen’s federal executive (16 November) predating Bird’s letter of intent to Hollway (17 November). The telegram, however, instructed Bird to take ‘stop work action’ in conformity with the members’ decision in January 1948 and made no reference to a blockade.!!3 There can be little doubt that the blockade was the unions’ major card—yet Bird was renowned for his inability to take Party orders. Indeed, the historians of the SUA, when relating the growing dislike of Bird on the left—‘particularly in the CPA’—proffer his 1948 blockade as an example of why he was ‘labelled as “‘adventurist”’ in high Party circles’.!!4 Sharpley himself states that in the first instance Bird was anxious for stronger action than a 24-hour stoppage. At the end he was extremely reluctant to

lift the blockade without an assurance that the Act would be repealed.!!5 Commonwealth Investigation Service files also suggest that Bird acted independently.!!°

Victoria and Queensland 1947-49 209 As for the close of the dispute, we can accept Hollway’s denial of

Sharpley’s claim that the Premier negotiated with communists as well as with Stout and Clarey.!!” The settlement itself was surely not

as satisfactory to the militant unions as Hill’s account suggests. From the Act’s inception the militants’ opposition, spearheaded by the CPA, had aimed to secure the Act’s repeal. In the Communist Re-

view Hill argued that agreement to submit future disputes to the THC merely confirmed an existing rule and, more importantly, demonstrated that the Act had been proved unworkable: he also said that to carry on fighting for repeal would ‘be tantamount to demanding the resignation of the Government, which had a fairly strong majority in Parliament’, and would certainly face the ‘active

opposition’ of the THC and ACTU. These sentiments represent a backdown from those expressed by the CPA leaders when criticiz-

ing their THC delegates at the conclusion of the January dispute. They reflect the compromises which, in the real world, must be accepted by even the most determined ideologue.

According to Brown, what really made the militants accept the compromise was Stout’s claim that Hollway had assured him that the Act would never be implemented while he was Premier.!!8 Rumours of such an assurance, and indignation at the equally secret agreement

by which Hollway dropped the proposed amendments to the Act, proved too much for the Country Party. Immediately after the strike settlement it passed a resolution calling for the amendments to be proceeded with; ‘appeasement methods only strengthen the hands of the Communists’.!!? The public recriminations which followed were

marked by bitter personal animosity between Hollway and the Country Party leaders, particularly Dunstan. On 2 December Holl-

way began forming an entirely Liberal Cabinet after Cain had assured him of supply in the Assembly. The Country Party, minus a couple of defectors, moved into the official Opposition benches. On 7 December the parliament was the scene of an acrimonious post-

mortem as, to the delight of ALP members, the estwhile partners denounced each other’s industrial irresponsibility and personal lack of integrity. McDonald related the hidden clauses in the settlement and how he and Hollway had revealed their differences in front of Stout and Clarey.!2° Dunstan berated the Premier as a ‘painted playboy’ violating ‘all principles and practices associated with Cabinet rule by majority decisions. . . The greatest menace to democracy in

the fight against communistic influence is a weak and appeasing Premier’.!2! In response, Hollway questioned the naivety of some of my friends in the Country Party whose idea of industrial peace

seems to be—I hope I am not misjudging them—first that the military should be called out and properly armed, and that by a few stray shots all the strikers should then be driven back to work.

210 Division of Labour He blamed the personal ambition of ‘Dunstan the Wrecker’ for the split. ‘If I had not agreed to those terms of settlement, in my opinion, complete industrial turmoil, civil commotion and riots in Victoria would have broken out’. !22

Hollway’s ex post facto assessment was naturally somewhat ex-

aggerated. Nevertheless the lack of power would speedily have brought Victorian industry to a standstill and any moves to break the seamen’s blockade would have run straight into the legal problems of trying to use state legislation against a union operating under a

federal award. This point had been remarked back in January by Cain who had become painfully familiar with it during the metal trades dispute.!23 Several employer groups, including retailers en-

tering their peak annual sales period, urged settlement on the Premier!24—-whose close personal relationship with Stout!2> had also pointed him towards a compromise solution.

In labour’s post-mortem, attention was focussed on the THC where the eight militant unions had been told that they must repudiate the views expressed in Trade Union News before their suspensions would be lifted. All initially refused. The ATMOEA’s November elections had produced a more moderate executive for 1949, and when it met in January it voted to write to the THC disassociating the union from the sentiments expressed in Trade Union News and to

ask for a review of the suspension of the union’s THC delegates. O’Shea refused to comply and the executive voted to hold a ballot of

members to ask them whether the letter should be written. News

Weekly described this as ‘one the most important ballots ever held in the history of the union’ and told tramworkers that ‘the question 1s only whether O’Shea 1s to be allowed to ride roughshod over the new executive. . . If O’Shea wins. . . the annual elections will be but a farce’.!2© O’Shea won—2030 to 1503.

The ACTU was asked to direct the THC to readmit the suspended unions but Clarey ruled that the executive had no power to intervene

in the matter. Physical attempts to force entry to the council were repulsed by Grouper-organized counter-violence. With the exception of the ATMOEA the suspended unions made the best of their banishment by refusing to pay any affiliation fees to the THC.!*’ The ATMOEA, however, proved the more industrially militant of the two transport unions, twice approaching the brink of strikes over

Bell’s refusal to hire ex-employees and to concede extra annual leave.!28 The major ARU confrontation concerned the signalmen who demonstrated their industrial militance over wages despite the recent election of a Grouper executive to their section. !2? The major industrial event of 1949 was, of course, the national coal strike. Within two weeks Victorian coal stocks were running low. Hollway wanted to augment them with coal from the Haligonian Duke, a Canadian vessel which had lain in port under a black

Victoria and Queensland 1947-49 211

ban since February because it carried a non-union crew. Since the

‘moderate’-led WWF still refused to touch the coal, Hollway, acting under the Essential Services Act, proclaimed a state of emergency on the waterfront for fourteen days; the stevedoring industry and the transport of coal from the ship’s side to anywhere in Victoria were declared to be essential services. Cabinet then called for volunteer labour to unload the ship. Nevertheless Hollway delayed using volunteers day after day while he tried to persuade union officials to accept the THC executive’s view that the coal was really ‘white’ and should be unloaded by union labour. He failed—but rather than implementing his threat of volunteers he called in the Commonwealth, which used servicemen to unload the ship. 13° The Victorian union movement, while concerned at the call for volunteers, was, on the whole, willing to follow the Chifley government’s lead in fighting the miners and made little protest about the use of troops. Labour Call applauded the Commonwealth’s determination to maintain gas supplies in Melbourne ‘while the unjustifiable miners’ strike was in progress’.!3! It had been thought that gas workers might refuse to use the coal, but they didn’t. One of the few unions to stay solid with the miners was the SUA. On 26 July Bird announced that all overseas coal would be regarded as black and that seamen would not man tugs to berth colliers while the coal strike continued. This announcement, which the THC decided was ‘indefensible’, came just as the limited state of emergency was due to end. Hollway responded the following day by proclaiming a complete state of emergency throughout Victoria for one month, hoping thus to deal with the striking coal miners at Wonthaggi. He also extended the Essential Services Act by proclamation to include as essential services tugs and pilot boats. !32 On the first day of the tug boycott police had questioned the crew of a tug and the SUA responded to this ‘intimidation of union mem-

bers’ by calling, just before the new state of emergency was proclarmed, a 24-hour stoppage of all seamen as a protest. At their stopwork meeting the seamen condemned the ‘provocative’ actions of the government but made no attempt to extend the stoppage. Both Hollway and the press claimed a victory for the Act. Bird, they said, had

been effectively dealt with. But though the seamen returned to work on most ships they continued their refusal to staff tugs to assist colliers. The Haligonian Duke was forced to leave Melbourne under its own steam and other colliers were refused assistance in berthing. Therefore the SUA seemed liable to penalties under the Act for disrupting an essential service. When asked if action would be taken against Bird, Hollway said innocently that it was not for him to say: “That would be a matter for the police’. In the end Hollway asked the Commonwealth if the Navy would staff the tugs for as long as the SUA refused to work them. No punitive action was taken against the

212 Division of Labour

union and nothing more was written about how Bird had been brought to heel. !? In dealing with the Wonthaggi miners Hollway was even more unsuccessful. After proclaiming the state of emergency the government had announced that it intended to issue summonses retrospectively against the miners for going on strike a month previously with-

out first conducting a secret ballot.134 While the Country Party argued that this action should have been taken at the start of the strike, the labour movement united in viewing it as cynically oppor-

tunistic. With the coal strike faltering under fierce action by the federal ALP government, the Liberals were attempting to jump on the bandwaggon in order to share in the political kudos. In fact such provocation was likely to stir up the embers of the miners’ dying cause; the FEDFA and the AEU immediately threatened retaliatory action if miners were summonsed. Kennelly and the ACTU’s Monk and Broadby anxiously urged caution on the Premier. Within 24 hours of its declaration of intent, Hollway said that the government had deferred the issuing of summonses. “This is not a backdown’ he assured, but he continued to delay taking action although the strike dragged on. Eventually, on 9 August, aggregate meetings were held by miners in all eastern states. The Wonthaggi men voted overwhelm-

ingly to stay out, 334 to 4, but they bowed to the national majority vote for a return to work and went back with the rest.!° By now Hollway had made himself something of a laughing stock. Labor Call dubbed him a ‘political fool’ and pictured him in cap and bells.!3© The Sydney Morning Herald was even more scathing. An

editorial headed. “The Anti-Strike Act that Failed’ ridiculed the Premier:

His backing and filling, his threats and withdrawals have made a farce of the

whole business. . .A school master who does not really intend to thrash recalcitrant pupils would do better to keep the cane locked in the cupboard, rather than produce and flourish it at intervals. A Stanley Holloway skit on Premier Hollway as the reluctant dominie would be a fitting sequel to the Essential Services tragi-comedy. !3’

Hollway seemed to have learnt his lesson; he never again brandished his Act. In February 1950 Melbourne’s tramworkers struck for a £1 increase in margins and stayed out for eight weeks. Soon after the strike began Hollway’s Cabinet discussed using the Essential Services Act, but decided not to. Hollway later explained that this was not because the Act was ‘known to be useless’ as Cain had alleged,

but because ‘it would have caused the strike to spread instead of remaining concentrated’. !38

The Liberal government led by Hollway was succeeded in June 1950 by a Country Party government with McDonald as Premier. The May elections had not given McDonald an outright majority

Victoria and Queensland 1947-49 213

and he was kept in office with the support of the ALP; support which was allegedly bought by, among other things, a promise never to invoke the Essential Services Act.!2? When, therefore, an eightweek rail strike occurred at the end of the year the Liberals tried to

provoke the government to use the Act. The Minister for Public Works, Sir Percy Byrnes, replied that “The Government was advised that the Act was as full of holes as a colander and that we could not apply it to the men at the top who incited the strike. It would not be worth the paper it is written on if it was put into operation’.!4° This

contrasted with the statement attributed to a ‘prominent Country Party member’ during the 1949 coal strike: “The Essential Services Act should have been invoked as soon as the Wonthaggi miners went on strike. . . As we helped to draft the legislation we know it can be used effectively’. +!

The Labor Party regained office in December 1952. Although committed to repealing the Act, it did nothing about it during its three years reign. As in Victoria, the major dispute in Queensland was not the outcome of a communist plot.!44 It centred around a clear and legitimate in-

dustrial issue and was supported by railway unionists and officials ranging across labour’s entire political spectrum. The prime movers were craftsmen, led by the AEU whose Queensland railway leaders were politically conservative ALP men. The manner in which railway workers sprang so eagerly to their support is explained not by miraculously pervasive communist influence but by deep-seated discontent with their treatment by the state’s government and Industrial Court. The generally conservative stance of the government has already been outlined in Chapter 6. As for the Court, state awards had long been more important than federal awards in Queensland. The decisions of the Court in the 1940s demonstrated that its view of the industrial world and of militant unionism corresponded closely to that of the ALP government.!*3 As Blackmur demonstrates, this ensured deteriorating relations with the union movement which often

felt that the Court was biased against it. In the late 1930s the Queensland basic wage had been set higher than the federal figure, both to reflect differential prosperity and to attract labour. The state Court’s moves in the postwar years toward equalizing Queensland rates with those of the Commonwealth Court at the same time as it

refused to introduce concessions such as weekend penalty rates already established in the federal arena, produced a widespread union conviction that Queensland was becoming a low-wage state. When the war ended the government ignored union calls to legislate for an increased basic wage. Its support before the Court for an in-

214 Division of Labour crease in December 1946: simply kept in step with the concessions simultaneously forced on Chifley. Legislation introduced in September 1947 to establish a 40-hour week from 1 January 1948 similarly accepted the inevitable already forced on the Commonwealth Court. Indeed the Act caused considerable ill-feeling for leaving the 40 hours question to the discretion of the Industrial Court in the case of certain occupations, including domestic servants, railway gatekeepers, employees on coastal vessels, musterers, drovers and many farmworkers.

The 1948 rail strike arose because the Hanlon government, the state’s largest employer of metalworkers, refused to grant a flow-on of the 1947 Commonwealth margins increases. Since more lies were

probably told about this dispute than any other in the 1940s it is essential at the outset to clarify the union claims and the government

offer. As soon as the Victorian metal trades dispute was over, the Queensland metal unions applied for a flow-on to the state award which covered most of their members in private employment. Since the state basic wage was higher than the Commonwealth basic wage, the Industrial Court increased the fitter’s margin by only 12s 4d—

thus equating the actual money rates under the two awards. The unions were unhappy and reapplied for a ‘full’ flow-on but the focus speedily shifted from the private to the public sector. In September the AEU applied for a similar 12s 4d increase for its railway members. The railway commissioner opposed the claim but, with AEU approval, the Combined Railway Unions (CRU) on 10 November lodged a fresh claim for the full 16s for craftsmen and the Mooney variation (pp. 146—7) pro rata for other employees. On 10 December, i.e., six months after the initial Commonwealth award, the government offered 6s 10d to craftsmen only, other rates to be decided by the Industrial Court. Hanlon and his transport minister, J.E. Duggan, publicly justified their position in terms of the disparity between state and federal basic wage, the non-monetary concessions and ‘privileges’ enjoyed by railworkers and the likely anomalous position of non-workshop employees if the CRU claims were granted. In reality they were motivated by the deteriorating financial position of the railway system which was still staggering from the phenomenal strain placed on it by wartime demands. The government thus sought to maintain the service at the expense, partially, of its employees’ wage relativities. From the workers’ viewpoint the

excessive efforts which the war had demanded from them represented the very reason why Hanlon should immediately grant their wage claim—yjust as the still-deteriorating state of the rail system constituted a continuing everyday irritant in their working lives. The lengthy delay and eventual government rejection contrasted with the position in other states where railworkers obtained the flowon quite quickly—and where the weekend penalty rates also claimed

Victoria and Queensland 1947-49 215

by the CRU had been widely established. The Industrial Court’s reasons for not hearing the AEU or CRU claims earlier rested on the necessity to adjust all state awards in line with the 40-hour week to

come into force federally in the New Year. In adjusting railway workers’ hours format, however, the Court caused much ill will by the unprecedented manner in which, without consulting the unions, it varied its original decision to satisfy the backdoor approach of an officer of the Commissioner for Railways. This not merely enraged the unions but added considerably to their suspicions that the Court would prove much more sympathetic to the government’s view on margins than to their own. Two other actions of the Court further inflamed the position. First, the Industrial Registrar informed the

unions that their margins case could not begin until 2 March. Second, the Court fined ARU president, M. O’Brien, and secretary, F. Nolan, for organizing an ‘unauthorised stoppage’ of ARU members on 18 November. O’Brien, who was also CRU chairman, was further fined on a second charge of contempt of court for accus-

ing the Court of adopting a partisan attitude in a recent railway dispute and of moving at two very different paces when dealing with claims from unions or employers. As early as October, federal chairman Cranwell had participated in the formulation of a plan of campaign by the AEU’s Ipswich district committee which represented the large majority of AEU railway members. In the long interval between AEU claims submission and government response, AEU determination to act to secure the flowon was restrained only by false expectations of government agreement. At the crucial meeting to discuss the government’s offer of 6s 10d the CRU rejected a militant move to involve all railworkers and instead accepted an AEU motion to concentrate on workshop wages.

If the government did not respond to union claims by January a workshop strike would be recommended. The CRU aim of thus inducing a better offer from the government and/or a speedy hearing of the claims by the Court did not succeed. After Hanlon had refused even to receive a CRU deputation before the New Year, the

government baldly reiterated its offer of 6s 10d for tradesmen only on 9 January. The AEU then initiated a secret ballot of all Queensland workshop and running shed members to ascertain their willingness to strike. The overwhelming response of 1064 for and only 114 against surprised even its leaders. The ballots of other workshop unions also produced large pro-strike majorities. Hence on 28 January it was announced that workshop labour would be withdrawn at midnight on 3 February. At an abortive compulsory conference on the eve of the strike the Industrial Court president made clear his belief that the strike was communist-inspired. This view would appear to be based on the

CPA’s conviction, publicized in January, that there would be a

216 Division of Labour major wages dispute in the state railways. The CPA, as always, welcomed the opportunity for its members to play a prominent role in union counsels and to proselytize among the strikers. In this case it also saw an opportunity to add real weight to its year-old campaign to have repealed the 1946 ‘meat amendments’ to the Arbitration Act

(p. 124). Yet, as Blackmur has clearly demonstrated, even ‘blind Freddie’ could see that industrial trouble was looming in the railways if a substantial margins breakthrough was not soon achieved. The signs were there for all to see in the second half of 1947 and in December Duggan, the Minister for Transport, had assessed the situation accordingly in separate minutes to the Premier and to V.C.

Gair, Minister for Labour. For Justice B.J. Matthews to imagine that the CPA had somehow either primed the conservative craftsmen

or created an artificial and unwarranted dispute reveals a level of delusion surprising in such a senior arbitrator. He nevertheless warned the unions to expect no assistance from the Court if the strike eventuated. As soon as the threatened withdrawal took place the government

moved to counter the union strategy of confining the dispute to workshops and running sheds. Once it was satisfied that a wartime plan for emergency road transport was capable of maintaining basic economic flows, the government closed down the entire railway system. It did so by successfully applying to the Court on 9 February for permission to stand down, without pay, the remaining 14 000 railway employees. Hanlon’s aim of forcing the craft unions to return to work was aided by the federal government. Chifley provided finance and planes to bolster the alternative transport system while a bureaucratic go-slow and strict enforcement of regulations meant that only a small proportion of railwaymen’s families secured any support from social security payments. Meanwhile the railway department threatened strikers that if they took other jobs during the dispute they could forfeit their position and their accrued leave entitlement. The parliamentary Opposition summarized these tactics, not inaccurately, as ‘the Government’s method of ending an industrial disturbance by starving the rank and file of unionists back to

work and imposing tremendous losses and hardships upon the public’. !44

Hanlon’s extension of the dispute failed to ensure a union back-

down. Rather it added greatly to the resentment of all railway workers. The major union covering those stood down was the ARU, whose Queensland branch had a long tradition of militance which had often produced clashes with ALP governments—most notably in the mid-1920s when the latter took deliberate steps to crush the ARU and its radical influence in the labour movement. In the 1940s the ARU remained unaffiliated with the ALP and highly suspicious

of the Hanlon government. The membership of the AFULE was

Victoria and Queensland 1947-49 217

normally less mulitantly inclined—but nevertheless had recently voted communist Theo Kissick back into office following his earlier fall from grace after the meat dispute (p. 124). The remaining unions affected were small sectional bodies like the Signalmen’s Union

and the Traffic Employees’ Union which in some cases had been originally established by breakaway occupational groups in protest

against the ARU’s militant industrial unionism. The sectional unions had refused to give much support to the meatworkers in 1946 and, although indignant about the stand-downs, were not to prove keen supporters of the craft unions in the 1948 dispute. The effect of the stand-downs on the craftmen themselves was to reinforce their determination. The refusal of the Court on 24 February to meet the outstanding union claim for full application of the Mooney 16—13—11 formula to the private-sector metal trades clearly signalled to the unions that there was little hope of its granting ‘16— 13-11’ to railway workshop employees. Conversely, the action of the craftsmen in stopping Brisbane trams by withdrawing key mainte-

nance men told Hanlon that his confrontation tactics had failed.

Thus he made a speedy U-turn by having the railway commissioner successfully ask the Court for an order instructing strikers to return to work on 1 March. When mass meetings rejected the order and

picketing threatened food shortages in certain districts, Hanlon moved to ensure compliance. On 27 February a state of emergency was proclaimed and picketing, and any other action maintaining the strike, was banned under pain of arrest. Railwaymen were told that they would be dismissed if they failed to return to work. Press and

radio were completely closed to the unions. In a broadcast on 29 February Hanlon asserted that the CPA’s ‘high command’ had invaded Queensland and was the spearhead in promoting defiance of the law. He described the strike as ‘a challenge now to democratically constituted government and has all the elements of civil war’.

The government action in assuming ‘the most drastic strikebreaking powers yet taken by Labour [sic] in Queensland or Australia’!4> was supported in pulpit and in press in hysterical and

mendacious terms. Widespread backing for Hanlon among rail unionists was conjured out of thin air. Direct analogies were drawn between recent events in Czechoslovakia and Queensland. The supposed communist initiation and control of the dispute was everywhere emphasized—as was the imminence of civil war and bloody revolution. Such excited propaganda was, as usual, aided by the eager determination of communist union officials to be in the vanguard of dispute leadership. Party publications and internal records reveal that in early 1948 communists were launching themselves on a wave of optimism about their true position in the labour movement. Propelled by congenital delusions of grandeur, the Queensland party leadership welcomed the dispute as a vehicle not merely to secure

218 Division of Labour

repeal of the 1946 arbitration amendments but also to reveal the ‘true’ nature of the ALP. The high public profile eagerly sought by

Queensland communists such as TLC secretary, M. Healy, and A. Macdonald (FIA) was enhanced by the arrival in Brisbane early in the dispute of the AEU’s Ted Rowe, who had figured so prominently

in the Victorian metal trades dispute. The media seized upon this ‘*“Red”’ instructor’ from the southern states as the personification of malevolent communist control of the dispute.!*© In fact, while the well-publicized Rowe plunged into the fray with all his considerable energy, by far the most influential AEU figure was his federal chairman and stalwart ALP member, Joe Cranwell. It was Cranwell, fear-

ing a repetition of the Victorian metal trades attrition, who had planned the Brisbane tramway extension and who urged further extensions to ensure a speedy end to the dispute. The Queensland AEU, which had given the meat workers but lukewarm support in 1946, was led by ALP men such as C. Merrell and J.P. Devereux. They, and the conservative Ipswich district committee which made all strategic decisions as far as AEU members were concerned, belligerently supported Cranwell’s view. The TLC central disputes committee was similarly dominated by ALP men—although the media naturally preferred to focus their attention on the communist minority, particularly when the committee went along with Cranwell’s advice. It called upon all workers stood down not to return to work but rather to join the workshop strikers at mass meetings on 1 March. In return the disputes committee extended its settlement demands to include marginal increases and weekend penalty rates for all rail workers. Simultaneously the SUA and the WWF stopped work in all Queensland ports with the prime intention of blocking fuel supplies for the road transport scheme. On 1 March the disputes committee’s tactics seemed to carry the day. Thousands of strikers made a mockery of the anti-picketing edict by surrounding the workshops at Ipswich and other centres.

Only a trickle of craftsmen joined the larger proportion of locomen—perhaps one third of the state’s total—whose return to work allowed the government to commence a skeleton service. In subsequent days, as the failure of the government’s order became known despite the media lies, the numbers crossing the picket lines fell. This trend was encouraged by black bans on all shops and depots, by Ipswich miners’ refusal to mine coal for trains, and by grow-

ing interstate union support. However, the isolation of the unions from the Queensland media added to the conspiratorial instincts of

communists and dramatized the situation even further in their

minds. Their feeling that perhaps a revolutionary atmosphere was developing in turn fed the government’s excited suspicion of a vast communist plot. Hanlon and tk-> media always emphasized the visits to Queensland of any communist leader of federal unions involved in

Victoria and Queensland 1947-49 219

the dispute such as Rowe, J. Healy (WWF) and Elliot (SUA) while ignoring those of Cranwell or NSW ALP president and Chifley confidant, Jack Ferguson (ARU), who addressed meeting after meeting. Similarly, the extensive picketing was represented as communist intimidation of the majority of railworkers anxious to resume their jobs. The Sunday Mail assured its readers that ‘there is not much difference between the Brisbane events and the quiet disappearance, to death or concentration camps, of Czechs whose political beliefs did not coincide with those of their new masters’. !47 This theme was heightened when fights broke out after a meeting of storemen and packers decided by 86 to 61 unload a tanker which

had managed to berth at their Shell depot. The government responded with even more draconian legislation. On 9 March it rushed through an Industrial Law Amendment Act (ILA Act) which made illegal on the pain of a fine up to one hundred pounds and/or six months imprisonment all activities designed to prolong the strike. Any argument or advice in favour of the strike, any physical presence of people in any location which the police believed could in any way assist the continuation of

the dispute, any display of whatever type, all were outlawed by the Act. Exceptional powers of enforcement were conferred on the police, and 1ncluded the authority to arrest without warrant, to issue instructions to any person to prevent a breach of the Act, and, in the case of officers of the rank of sergeant or above, the right of forcible entry to any place.!*°

The parliamentary debate on the Act was marked by the lies and distortions of Hanlon, Gair and Duggan. Their overall aim was to establish the communistic origin and control of the dispute and to deny both the influence of the Cranwells and Devereuxs and the facts of the government wage offers during the negotiations preced-

ing the stoppage. Within three days of the Act coming into force charges were laid against three leading communists, M. Healy (TLC), E. Englart (WWE) and lawyer M. Julius. The disputes committee inevitably extended its settlement terms to include repeal of the Act.

The unions’ weak link was the AFULE. Its members at the important rail centre of Toowoomba made the skeleton service possible and on 15 March, after evidence that the resolve of railworkers at the more isolated centres was weakening and that some were actually drifting back, the AFULE instructed all its members to return. This obviously serious blow to the cohesiveness of the running staff meant

little to the craftsmen. Of more importance to them were the first serious signs that the government was softening its position. On 11 March, in negotiations with the CDC the Railway Commissioner offered 12s 4d to tradesmen while insisting that rates for lower work-

shop grades, for purely railway classifications and for everyone’s weekend work should be left to the Industrial Court. The implica-

220 Division of Labour tions of this proposal were, however, masked by the violence which erupted on 17 March when a small procession, largely of commu-

nists, protesting against the ILA Act was broken up by batonwielding police. Several strike leaders were injured and arrested but

attention focussed on the apparently unprovoked batoning of Queensland’s—and Australia’s—only communist MP, F. Paterson, who, as a legal advisor, was observing the march from the footpath. The bloody events of St Patrick’s day created a backlash against the government. In Brisbane the attendance of over 6000 at a mass rally of protest on 19 March exceeded expectations and 1600 WWF

members marched through the streets in outright defiance of the Act. More significantly the police behaviour drew a storm of protests from across the country. In southern states since the very beginning of the dispute the media had generally shown little restraint in kicking the communist can. Hanlon was presented as another strong man

prepared, like Hollway, to ‘get tough’ with the unions. A permanent split in the national labour movement was hopefully prophesied in some quarters.!4? When Hanlon banned the Queensland media from presenting any part of the strikers’ case, unions bitterly noted

the lack of critical comment from southern newspapers normally ever ready to spring to arms when the ‘freedom of the press’ was threatened. !>°

Less predictable in the early days of the strike was the reaction of

the interstate labour movement. Grouper Dinny Lovegrove was widely denounced by militants for describing the dispute as ‘foreign inspired, tyrannical and injurious both to the Labour Movement and

the post war reconstruction of Australia’.!°! The knowledge that such views were widely shared among Victorian ALP right-wingers had encouraged the government to take a strong line against the local ARU’s attempt to support its Queensland colleagues. The composi-

tion of the ACTU interstate executive ensured a protest was registered with Hanlon and after St Patrick’s day the ACTU endeavoured to gain Chifley’s intervention. !°4 Behind the facade, however, the

ACTU officers were unenthusiastic. Clarey was widely known to oppose the strike which he considered to be a ‘fight between the Government and the Communists’.!>? Chifley himself maintained a publicly consistent stance of refusing to interfere in an essentially state dispute and of referring the strikers

to arbitration while providing requisite back-up for his ALP colleague’s emergency transport system. The available evidence suggests, however, that Chifley was somewhat embarrassed by Hanlon’s inflexible and provocative stance. Certainly ministers such as Holloway, Ward, Cameron and Rosevear were decidedly uneasy but Senator Ashley’s peace mission to Brisbane in early March produced no apparent diminution in Hanlon’s aggression. }>+

If the federal government refused to intervene, the major potential

Victoria and Queensland 1947-49 221

interstate influence on the dispute lay across the NSW border. The most notable feature here—which again strikes at the heart of the communist plot thesis—was the enthusiastic and unambiguous support offered to the strikers by Jack Ferguson, the ARU state secretary and leading ‘moderate’ in the NSW union movement. Never a centralized union, ARU federal co-ordination was rare. Guyatt reports that the first time the ARU ‘had functioned as a national body’ was in 1946 when its federal Council served demands on all states. !>> Nevertheless Ferguson clearly understood the justice of the Queens-

landers’ position. The NSW branch not only banned all freight movement but, despite confident media predictions to the contrary, had no trouble in persuading the Grouper-dominated NSW Land

Transport Group of Unions to do likewise from midnight 5 March.!>© The NSW Labor Council then unanimously endorsed the freight blockade. Ferguson moved the Council motion, saying ‘This resolution is based on the appreciation of the fact that the Queensland dispute is the legitimate expression of working class resentment against the inability of the Queensland Arbitration Court to concede reasonable wages commensurate with the wage standards of other states’.!°” The NSW journal Railroad told members, It is wrong to attempt to sidetrack the matter by blaming the Communists. The State Branch of the Union has always argued that there is a distinct difference between a legitimate trade union dispute and a politically inspired dispute. . . We are not prepared to accept that the Queensland struggle 1s

anything other than a legitimate industrial issue, deserving of united support. !>8

The preparedness of the conservative NSW Labor Council to protest to the Hanlon government over its role in the strike, particularly its support of police violence, contrasts with the uneasy embarrassment of the McGirr government. The freight embargo caused the NSW Opposition to move to censure the government for ‘its acquiescence in the illegal ban imposed by a small group of industrial bosses’. The ensuing debate was remarkable for the lengths to which ALP members were prepared to go to avoid discussing the strike in Queensland. They expounded on the evils of communism, rejoiced that the NSW railways were still running but managed to avoid almost any mention of the strike itself.!>9 In Queensland the two sides appeared to stand firm in their positions. Behind the facades events were moving towards a resolution. The angry reaction of NSW unions helped make Hanlon more flexi-

ble in negotiations with the disputes committee and a major thaw also occurred on the union side whose major problem had long been the communications blackout which left workers in the more iso-

lated centres starved of hard news but fed a constant stream of government and media lies. In these circumstances some AEU

222 Division of Labour craftsmen, notably in Rockhampton and Bundaberg, began to think in terms of accepting the industrial victory which the government’s offer of 12s 4d represented and of abandoning the other claims which

had, of course, accrued inevitably as the dispute evolved. Immediately after the St Patrick’s day violence Cranwell, Rowe, Devereux and the disputes committee leaders felt that the union position was still strong enough to secure satisfactory settlement on all points, but in the eighth week of the stoppage three events shifted the balance.

On 24 March the AFULE decided not to support further the

black bans and the coalminers decided to lift all work restrictions. While its Queensland branch was led by ‘moderates’, the simultaneous decision of the miners’ federal council—which was invariably tagged by the media as ‘communist-controlled’—to reject a national sympathy stoppage again destroyed ideas of unions dancing to communist tunes. The third incident concerned the AEU’s Ted Rowe who refused to appear in the Industrial Court to answer a charge of contempt arising out of his action in destroying ballot

papers issued by the Registrar to ascertain whether forty AEU men at the Shell Oil depot wished to remain on strike. In his absence the Court fined him and sentenced him to gaol but police were

unable to execute the warrant because Rowe had gone ‘underground’. The AEU had good reasons to challenge the validity of the ballot!©°9—and a majority of Shell members willingly handed over their ballots for symbolic cremation—but this point was lost in the adverse publicity generated among AEU activists who had very firm ideas as to behavior becoming to federal officers of their esteemed

and ancient union. In their opinion Rowe should have ‘faced the music’ and this escapade had a definite weakening effect on AEU strikers’ morale which was not aided by indications that ARU members at Rockampton were on the verge of a return.

In these circumstances, and in the light of a more conciliatory approach revealed by Hanlon in a recent meeting with Cranwell and Jim Healy of the WWF, the disputes committee, on 1 April, entered final negotiations with the Premier to settle the dispute. Both sides compromised with, essentially, the government giving way on the industrial claims but standing firm on the ‘political’ issue. Regarding

wages, Hanlon conceded marginal increases to all workshop employees, retrospective to 18 September 1947, based around 12s 4d for a fitter and 10s ld for a labourer. The principle of weekend penalty rates was conceded—although the exact amount was to be left to the Court. The government also undertook to negotiate these issues with the unions representing purely railway grades as soon as their claims were lodged with the Court. No striker would be discri-

minated against nor would any leave or other accrued rights be affected. Where Hanlon refused to yield was on the ILA Act and

Victoria and Queensland 1947-49 223 associated prosecutions. This, he insisted, was solely a matter for the ALP caucus which would not meet for several months.

The terms of agreement were accepted by mass meetings on 2 April and produced a return to work on 6 April. When the Commissioner for Railways tried to reinterpret the margins agreement for the non-skilled around a mere 4s 2d increase for labourers, Hanlon stood by his word and the workship gains flowed rapidly on to all members of the railway service. Railway workers could thus afford to ignore

the torrent of lies issuing from che press concerning the strikers’ ‘defeat’ in accepting terms allegedly offered months previously. Communist rejoicing in their success in mobilizing working-class opinion against ALP rightists was, however, based on a serious misunderstanding of their party’s true standing. The industrial battles had been largely won but the unprecedented war of propaganda was, in reality, tilting public—and worker—opinion further and further away from the CPA. Some indication of CPA misapprehension was provided within days of the strike’s end. ‘Runaway’ Rowe reappeared to address the final Brisbane mass meeting on 2 April despite a police cordon surrounding the building. Afterwards he voluntarily surrendered to the police and subsequently refused to purge his contempt by apologiz-

ing to the Court. In Blackmur’s words, ‘As far as the [CPA] was concerned, Rowe could remain in jail as a living reminder of the oppressive nature of the arbitration system’.!©! His union thought otherwise and told him to apologize. Faced with conflicting instruc-

tions from his union and his party, the supposed red puppetmaster!©2 of the AEU had no choice. He obeyed his union and was released on 7 April.

The prosecution under the ILA Act of other communists produced more controversy. On 8 June Hanlon announced that the Act would be repealed—to the relief of all ALP-affiliated unions including the AWU. Charges under the Act had, however, already been heard in the Courts. On 4 August communists Julius, Englart and M. Healy were jailed for failing to pay their fines, followed two days

later by J. Esler and A. Graham. Again the CPA welcomed the publicity—but two weeks later the fines of the first three were paid

anonymously. Controversy raged over the benefactor’s identity which, at this distance, seems most likely to have been the government. Certainly when, on 1 September, Hanlon introduced the ILA Repeal Bull he made it clear that the government would release Esler and Graham and neither proceed with outstanding prosecutions nor collect outstanding fines. Clarrie Fallon, state ALP executive chairman and AWU secretary, made public his considerable displeasure at this decision but the storm eventually subsided and the anti-union legislation was quietly repealed. On one issue the ALP—AWU power brokers remained certain and

224 Division of Labour

united. The railway dispute had revealed the extent of the communist menace. Hence the Industrial Group machinery had to be im-

proved and consolidated. A powerful three-man co-ordinating committee was established by the ALP state executive from within its own membership, headed by R.J. Bukowski of the AWU. The Group structure within the ARU was given a powerful boost by the dispute and the railway militants’ cause was further damaged by the collapse of the CRU as a result of post-strike ARU body-snatching from the sectional unions. Nevertheless motions to reaffiliate with the ALP were defeated at every ARU state conference from 1948 to 1957, 163

The attitude of the Industrial Court changed little as a result of the 1948 strike.16+ Hanlon liaised often with unions in 1948 concerning

the Court’s operation. Legislation in 1948 enabled an increase in judges from three to four in 1949 but unions continued to complain about the Court’s two-speed reaction to union and employer claims.

Indeed in 1949, by adding to its 1946 decision on union ballots (above, p. 122), it seemed to render a legal strike a virtual impossibility. After tramwaymen agreed by secret ballot to conduct rolling strikes the Court declared that ‘the ballot did not preclude it from ordering [strikers] to resume their duties and from imposing punish-

ment on those who refused to obey. . . The court saw access to arbitration and any form of direct action, authorised or not, as being totally incompatible’.!©> In March of the same year the Court refused to extend weekend penalty rates to non-railway awards as a general principle. Rather, each case would be treated according to merit. To avoid fresh unrest in the public sector, however, Hanlon extended the concession to all Crown employees. In 1948 the Court refused to

hear union applications to increase the basic wage until the Commonwealth Court had reached a decision. It came as little surprise that, after the 1950 Commonwealth decision, the Queensland Court adopted the federal basic wage as the standard for all state awards. The major emphasis in Queensland would henceforth rest on attracting capital, rather than labour.

CHAPTER TEN

THE COMMUNIST PARTY AND INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS

We have seen that from 1945 to 1948 the question of the role of the Communist Party came to dominate public discussion of virtually every major industrial disputation. This debate reached its excited climax in the 1949 coal strike. Before discussing this traumatic event

it is essential to separate reality from the myths surrounding the CPA. All observers would agree that the 1940s constituted the most important decade in the party’s history in Australia. Both its membership and its influence reached their separate peaks. Davidson reveals that after a decline from 750 members in 1922 to a mere 249 in 1928 the attraction of the party grew during capitalism’s world crisis in the 1930s.! Membership mounted to approximately 4000 at the

time Menzies outlawed it in mid-1940. With the invasion of the USSR and the party’s about-face in its attitude to the war effort,

recruitment mushroomed. By October 1942 there were 15 000 communists and two years later membership peaked at 23000. Decline from this artificial high was rapid. By December 1945 the figure was down to 16000 and halfway through Chifley’s Prime Ministership it was approaching 12 000, at a time when total union membership was

around 1.2 million. As the Cold War and industrial controversies heightened, the party’s popularity nosedived, so that between 1948 and 1952 its membership halved.

Whatever the figures, communists, because of their missionary zeal and dedication, had a greater impact than their mere numbers would suggest. Indeed the party’s fighting trim may have actually been improved by the sloughing off in the mid-1940s of less dedicated recruits who had been temporarily attracted to it on various superficial bases during its wartime popularity.* Conversely, the fact that at this time ‘the Communist Party has a “‘bigger turnover”’ than the B.H.P.’3 meant that there was a surprisingly wide spread of former members throughout the community who might be expected to retain some sympathy for the party.

226 Division of Labour

Whatever the merits of these views it 1s clear on other grounds

that, despite the marked decline in membership, the party’s influence among unionists held up and indeed rose slightly during the first two postwar years. This occurred because, once its union members were freed from the restraints imposed by the party’s anxiety not to hinder the Allied war effort, their natural militancy ensured that they placed all their considerable talents and energy behind the spontaneous workforce drive for better wages, hours and conditions. As the Cold War worsened the party would have inevitably found it difficult to maintain its position in the face of the mounting tide of anti-communist propaganda and suspicion. In fact the party made things far worse for itself for two interconnected reasons. Firstly, it eagerly accepted overseas versions of northern hemisphere political economy tailored to Soviet preconceptions and self-interest. Without thought of relevance or fitness for local conditions these ideological

Straitjackets were immediately applied to the current Australian scene—which in fact bore increasingly less relationship to Moscow’s universal, one-dimensional model. A second factor, closely interrelated to the first, was the manner in

which the party leaders, including a number of its union officials, came to misinterpret the actual nature of the postwar upsurge in workforce militance. Spurred on by their own wishful thinking— and by the propaganda of their opponents—communists came to believe retrospectively that, rather than merely taking the opportunity to help lead a spontaneous wave of workforce unrest, they had controlled if not actually masterminded the upsurge themselves. They ceased being eager surfies, exulting in the unprecedentedly favourable industrial waves and by 1949 had become instead latterday Canutes, imagining themselves able to direct the changing sea at will.

There has been some disagreement over the degree to which the CPA was dominated by the Soviet Party through Comintern in the 1930s.4 The picture for the 1940s seems much clearer. Initially, thanks to win-the-war unity and perhaps also because of its enforced isolation from war-torn USSR, the CPA’s analysis of foreign affairs and its domestic policies were firmly planted in the mainstream of Australian labour opinion. The emphasis on finding an Australian way of achieving socialism was symbolized in January 1944 by the change in name from ‘Communist Party of Australia’ with its connotations of being but one branch of an international party, to the more independent-sounding ‘Australian Communist Party’. During this high tide of popularity the ALP government was enthusiastically supported and the CPA leadership talked in terms of working along ‘united front lines until the majority of Australians decided ‘‘peacefully and democratically, to change the existing social order and embrace Socialism”’’.°

The Communist Party and industrial relations 227

The period of independent nationalism ended with the advent of the Cold War. While remembering Morrison’s point that, thanks to the untrustworthy bias of the local media, Australian socialists had

always been prepared to accept the interpretations of foreign socialists,© Davidson seems correct in considering that, after 1946, ‘In the final analysis [CPA] policies emanated from Moscow’.’ When Cominform, consisting of the communist parties in the Eastern bloc

countries, France and Italy, was established in October 1947 the CPA leadership chose to follow its directions. In May 1948 the party’s first postwar national congress formally accepted the Cominform line. Australian alliance with Anglo-American foreign policy was increasingly denounced in the absurdly violent language which CPA officials were prone to adopt in imitation of ill-fitting, literal translations of slogans coined by mass parties operating in the old, divided

cockpit of Europe. Thus by early 1949 general secretary, L.L. (Lance) Sharkey, was declaiming to the CPA central committee, The A.L.P. leaders are in alliance today with the United States imperialists, with Churchill and his echo, Bevin, for war upon the Soviet Union and the People’s Democracies. . . That is the first thing we have to get into our minds. We are not fooling around with milk and water sentimental reformists, but people who, today, are the definite allies of warmongers and imperialist aggressors, who are just

as anti-labour as Hitler and Mussolini and the Japanese imperialists

were...

Whilst the Australian Labourites may not have gone to the extreme yet—

have not yet got the blood of the workers upon their hands as has Jules Moch in France—it is evident that they are prepared to commit the people to war on behalf of the imperialists. . . The activity of the Labour Government around the White Australian policy. . .can only fill any decent person with disgust. . . It is true that, as yet, they don’t burn half-castes in gas ovens or bash out

the brains of Indonesians and Malayans and Chinese, but, nevertheless, basically in their whole attitude to the race question they are aping Hitler and are undoubtedly serving imperialism in doing this, because it is imperialist policy to build up a white nation here as a bastion of British imperialism, aiming at the eternal enslavement of the coloured races of Asia.

By this time the die was cast for an all-out attempt by the CPA to ‘expose’ the ALP to the workers and to compete directly for their support in the forthcoming general election. This futile and disastrous progression has been clearly traced by other writers, including Davidson and Gollan. Of more immediate relevance to industrial relations are the CPA’s delusions concerning its role in the postwar strike wave. Communists were deluded for three main reasons. First of all they

were part—no matter how objectively insignificant a part—of an international movement which currently was approaching the peak

228 Division of Labour of its popularity and power. Revelations of the horrors of Stalinism lay in the future. In the late 1940s underprivileged people all over the world were turning to communism in large numbers. Backed by Soviet realpolitik it was marching to power in large sections of the globe. Australian communists felt themselves to be an integral part of this seemingly unstoppable wave of the future—and they felt this much more intensely than outsiders could ever imagine. This was particularly true of the CPA’s leaders. If not actually trained in Rus-

sia, most visited this Mecca and there, and at other international party conferences, they were flattered by their contact and occasional intimacy with many of the figures whose actions were determining the fate of nations. In reality tiny denizens of a rather small pond, Sharkey and other CPA leaders such as J.B. Miles and R. Dixon felt themselves attuned to the leviathans of the communist world. Many of the parallels which they sought to draw between the local and the excitingly turbulent international scene seem merely ludicrous at this distance in time. In fact references to ‘Kulak elements’ in NSW agriculture? or to Sydney being the ‘Leningrad of Australia, the cradle of the Australian Revolution’!® indicate the hallucinatory effect of CPA affiliation with powerful overseas parties operating in real centres of political gravity. One former communist union official later reflected that immediately after the war the whole party suffered ‘definite delusions of grandeur. . . because everyone [of us] thought that socialism was just around the corner’.!! Communists’ sense of reality was further warped by the unremitting propaganda of their domestic opponents. The exact degree to which the CPA’s various ideological enemies actually believed their own propaganda has yet to be fully demonstrated. The Movement and the Catholic Church seemed to exaggerate CPA power from genuine fear and misapprehension of international events. The manner in which conservative politicians and most sections of the Australian media attacked the CPA even in the days when 1t still sought co-operation with the ALP suggests ulterior motives.!4 Be that as it may, the upshot was that the insignificant figures of Sharkey, Dixon et al., were projected by the media against the backdrop of the red glare malevolently emitting from the communist parties fighting for the control of millions far to the north. The effects of this hysterical

presentation on the Australian electorate are not strictly relevant here. What matters is the insidious effect on CPA leaders’ conception of themselves. It was literally impossible to pick up a metropolitan daily in the mid-late 1940s without reading of the enormous power and influence of the CPA. Apparently it caused every industrial

dispute and lay behind every dangerous reform proposed by the ALP governments. Its leaders, spoken of in the same breath as giants like Mao, Stalin and Tito, were said to control the destiny of the unions, of the workforce, of the nation. !3

The Communist Party and industrial relations 229

Political activists naturally tend to exaggerate their own role and importance but it is an occupational hazard to which communists have proved particularly prone. Playford opens his analysis of the Australian party by pointing out that, in order to explain its failure, communist leaders have made attempts ‘to sustain historical myths which add an aura of significance to the party’s ups and downs’. He

refers also to the ‘mixture of realism and fantasy’ in the writings of Sharkey, E.W. Campbell and others which ‘reflects clearly the intellectual difficulties which have always beset Communism in Australia’.!4 Rank-and-file members were not immune. One disaffected comrade argued that “They exaggerate their importance and

their role in history sometimes to an extent that borders on group megalomania’.!° Illustrations of this tendency abound throughout

the party’s history. For example, readers active in the protests against the Vietnam War may be surprised to learn that, in the opin-

ion of a surviving member of the tiny, splintered and shrinking CPA, ‘it is doubtful if the massive moratoria could have occurred in

1970 and 1971 without the perspectives that the CPA introduced into the movement’.!© A half-century earlier J.S. Garden, leader of the infant CPA, boasted to the Fourth Comintern congress in 1922 that the party controlled 347000 unionists in New South Wales and Queensland. When he stood as CPA candidate in the next Senate

elections he received a grand total of 317 votes in New South Wales.!” At the Seventh Comintern congress in 1935, Sharkey conjured out of thin air the claim that the CPA had destroyed the semifascist New Guard.!® Morrison has also remarked on the traditional tendency of the communist—and earlier socialist parties—to measure their effectiveness by the amount of hostility displayed to them by ‘the ruling classes’ and to assume that their unpopularity among ‘capitalists’ was directly proportional to their popularity with the workers. !?

In the excited atmosphere of the 1940s it was more difficult than ever to keep a grip on reality. We will trace the exact nature of the CPA’s hallucinations about its role in industrial relations shortly. First, it is necessary to note that the notion of communist control of trade unions ‘from the top’ has been an error common not merely to authoritarian anti-communists but also to some otherwise very percipient students of the CPA. Even Morrison, amid his extremely subtle reformulations of the party’s role and experience in the 1930s, seems at times to fall into this trap.29 There are two main results.

First, there has been a tendency to assume, usually implicitly, that any policy supported by the CPA was its property alone—and any organization or individual also supporting that policy was under CPA ‘control’ 1.e., no industrial militancy, left-wing idealism or motivation existed independently of the CPA. This, for example, gave rise to such superficial observations as that the CPA ‘controlled’

230 Division of Labour the 1945 ACTU congress. Second, there are the assumptions, again usually implicit, that (a) once elected to paid office CPA members were free to implement party policy in their unions and (b) that in any single union or joint union committee a minority of CPA union officials could automatically ‘control’ a majority of non-communists. Playford and Rawson were among the first scholars to examine and modify the meaning of communist ‘control’.2! The study of individual unions? and of most major disputes in which communists were prominent have further demonstrated the folly of this simplistic approach to all but the sternest anti-communist survivors of the Cold War era. If we set aside the distorting effect of the Cold War the only objective importance of the CPA lay in its influence in the trade unions, which reached a peak in the Chifley years. But this source of the party’s strength, manifested by something like fifty full-time and 250 part-time communist union officials in the mid-1940s,7? also represented the major dilemma facing the CPA leadership. There can be no doubt that the party’s leaders wanted to direct union policy. At a time when the number of CPA union officials was miniscule, the new Sharkey—Miles leadership in 1932 actually expelled unionists ‘who contested the CPA’s right to dictate policy for their unions’.2+ Most

of those involved, including C. Nelson (Miners Federation) and E. Thornton (FIA), were readmitted after confessing the error of their ways. But, despite public acceptance of the supremacy of the party, communist unionists continued to present problems to the secretariat throughout the CPA’s rise in the industrial labour movement. The conflict rested on two factors: what might be called the ideological illiteracy of most rank-and-file communists and _ the demands made by each union on its communist members. Regarding the first point, while usually prepared to try and obey directives from above in compliance with the ‘democratic centralism’ of the party’s structure, the bulk of rank-and-file members were relatively unsophisticated intellectually: it is doubtful, for example, if

many grasped the subtle difference, much debated in CPA leadership circles, between a purely ‘economistic’ strike and one in which the party ‘revealed its face to the workers’. They were usually natural militants who saw themselves as dedicated shock troops in the vanguard of the workers’ cause, fighting with justice and history on their side. To most there was simply no such thing as a bad strike. As one former communist intellectual later remarked, ‘most communist trade unionists were militant unionists first and communists second’.2> Morrison analysed the dichotomy between the leadership

ideologues and the men and women in the industrial trenches. He correctly argued that ‘**Tactics’’, ‘‘lines”’ or the internal intricacies of the Communist Party of the

Soviet Union and the Comintern were subjects which only rarely entered

The Communist Party and tndustrial relations 231 into the consciousness of Australian communists. . . Such academic questions were treated with bemused tolerance or discarded as being of minimal

importance... In the same way, the faction fighting within the party which prompted interminable casuistry and later detailed scholarship seems very far from the ordinary member’s appreciation of party affairs. . . The tortured soulsearching [during the 1960s splits] was then, as it had been in the past, almost exclusively the response of those communists who held official positions with the old Communist Party. . . 26

The second problem for the CPA arising from the unions ran further

up the party hierarchy. It was rooted in the pragmatism displayed by communist union officials whose operations in the field often diverged from the party’s current line on industrial policy. This dichotomy between ‘pragmatic trade unionist’ and ‘idealistic propa-

gandising intellectual’? has been remarked by most scholars. It was fundamental—but unavoidable. To retain their positions and influence—and hence that of the CPA—communist union officials

simply had to keep in step with the wishes of their union membership. To do otherwise always eventually proved electorally suicidal. Playford, writing in 1962, summarized the problem. In one sense, the Communist Party is little more than an embattled faction in trade union politics, though a faction characterised by excessive discipline and doctrinal pretensions; most of its members are unionists, its best cadres man its factory branches, its tactics in trade union affairs are subtle and well calculated. Yet even here it has to serve the conventions dictated by the great mass of unionists; economism, strikes for economic ends, faith in a reformist ALP, reliance on the arbitration system, these are values which the Communists have either to serve or accept. Outside some of the Branches of the traditionally militant unions, such as the Seamen’s Union, the Miners’ Federation and the WWF, Communist control of a union remains a function of the Party’s ability to observe and exploit conventions which doctrinally it abhors.2°

Similarly Davidson argued that In a sense, the history of communism 1n the unions 1s something separate from CPA political history. Different factors were operative. Politically the adoption of Russian methods foredoomed the CPA to failure in an environment in which such methods were inept, unjustified, or lacked precedent. Industrially, communist policies were not without precedent in Australia, and success was met. Rejections were tactical rather than principled 1n basis. It should be noted that this meant that the gains were useless for communist purposes since they succeeded not because the workers approved of communist political policies, but because they approved of communist industrial policies. Hence they could never be a revolutionary weapon since the translation of union activity from industrial to political activity could not be made. In return communist union leaders tended to moderate their views, and this provoked clashes between the party and the union.2?

232 Division of Labour | Outsiders, particularly anti-communists, were often misled by the

apparent monolithic unity of communist delegates to ACTU congresses or Trades and Labor Councils. Even here, as we shall see, the dedication of certain members did not always fulfil party requirements. Nevertheless most communists relished the chance to demonstrate their loyalty and discipline in the glare of publicity surrounding these prestigious but insulated debating chambers. Back on their mundane industrial beats, however, union officials

faced another reality. Renowned for their dynamism and incorruptibility°°—a fact admitted even by their ideological opponents?!—most of them were not intellectuals. Some ‘hadn’t read a book’.?4 Indeed a small minority had joined the party in the first place not through any ideological conversion but rather to ensure they would become—or remain—union officials. One such confessed that, even after joining, he knew little about CPA politics.33 Other communists allegedly began to display arrogance and authoritarianism after reaching top union positions?+—although it should

be noted that some CPA functionaries were also open to this charge.3° Nevertheless all successful union officials had to nurse their electorate by attending to their constituents’ ‘economistic’ expectations. From a party viewpoint the best of officials such as Jim Healy liaised closely with the party leadership?®—but we have already seen that even he could not easily control his rank-and-file

wharfies and that his entire career is remembered best for its pragmatic moderation. In 1961 when death removed Healy after twenty-two years in federal office with the WWF the rank and file,

who had truly revered him, refused to replace him with another communist. ‘Once more the lesson was driven home [to the Communist Party] that its support in the unions more often reflected the

popularity and efficiency of its officers than the appeal of its ideology.’3’ Ted Rowe ranked high in party councils and was to the

fore among union officials in declaiming against the sin of ~ economism—yet his constituents in the AEU daily demonstrated their independent, pragmatic intent. Ernie Thornton probably took his union closest to the CPA ideal of virtual integration of policymaking between union and party leaders. The rather vainglorious publication of this fact during the CPA’s ‘left turn’ in 1948 (see below, p. 246) simply handed a strategic weapon to anti-communists in the FIA. Thornton’s attempt to set the pace from the top eventually isolated him from the majority of his rank and file and helped ensure the communists’ most resounding electoral losses in a bluecollar union.

The evidence of the problem which CPA leaders had with the heresy of economism is plentiful and well known to all interested students. In his highly publicized Cold War denunciations of the CPA, Cecil Sharpley acknowledged the economism of many ‘inno-

The Communist Party and industrial relations 233

cent and naive’ communist union officials. He said one of his early jobs was to keep tabs on the FIA’s Bert Flanagan ‘whom the Party regards as a good union leader but politically unsteady’. In general, ‘because Red union bosses sometimes resist the Party line, the Party had to be in daily contact with them. Some of them cannot be relied on even in days of crisis’.22 While the economism debate continued, the party leaders—though not so many of its trade union officials— steadily moved from an initial base firmly grounded in reality to one of almost total delusion regarding certain vital aspects of industrial relations. The speed at which the self-induced hallucination took hold increased from 1947 onwards. A survey of the Communist Review, of the party press and of the extant verbatim records of the meetings of the party’s national congress, central committee and political committee*? clearly reveals this. It also demonstrates that the major items on the communists’ domestic agenda were the stance and role of the ALP and the dangers which ‘economism’ posed for the CPA’s union cadres. At the same time the CPA’s records throw up strong evidence—if any more were needed—that postwar industrial unrest was hardly the manifestation of a communist plot. They also reveal that the CPA sometimes found it difficult to command the unquestioning obedience of its own members in the fashion imagined by most contemporary outside observers and critics. Easily the most ‘realistic’ of the CPA conferences was that of the central committee held between 16 and 18 February 1945. Meeting at the high tide of ‘win-the-war’ unity and popularity the committee members surveyed the scene with realism and caution. The keynote was a call for ‘concrete’ or ‘constructive’ criticism of the federal government. CPA leaders observed the government consulting with and reassuring employer interests while backing away from the more radical implications of the ALP platform and refusing to consult with its union allies on economic policy. Nevertheless, communists were urged to support the government and, in the interests of the war effort, to endeavour to block any union moves to dismantle the wage-pegging Regulations. Several leading communist union officials stressed how the ACTU and the union movement at large had been completely ignored on the matter of the wage peg. Tom Wright (Sheet Metal Workers) felt that the unions had been ‘treated more or less with contempt’ concerning both the Regulations and the question of preference for returned servicemen. Jack Hughes (Clerks) reported how Chifley and Evatt had revealed to him their firm intent to maintain the wages freeze. Harold Wells (Miners) declared that ‘After three hours discussion with Curtin and Chifley, I am convinced that these people have ceased to pay very much attention to the trade unions’. Yet although fully aware of the future central importance of the wage peg

234 Division of Labour

to union consciousness (Wright), particularly in view of the pinch arising from recent declining overtime work (Ted Rowe), the CPA’s win-the-war-first policy dictated support of the government. If the Regulations were removed the militant miners and metal workers might force a wage rise in the open market. ‘This would have bad results. We must ensure, then, that this did not happen’ (Wright). As always, it was the three secretariat members who set the tone of the meeting and the direction of policy. Miles, Dixon and Sharkey, while regretting the government’s preference for consulting capital rather than labour, adopted a markedly conciliatory approach in the interests of winning the war. Miles was not so foolish as to argue that CPA unionists must endorse a complete no-strike policy. Rather he offered the mild criticism that they must try to ‘do something effective’ before a dispute begins. In his keynote address he encapsulated the party’s conciliatory realism by observing that when Curtin spoke

of price control, ‘he has in mind also that wages will have to be pegged, so he does not envisage rising living standards along the lines of increased wages, at the most he has in mind full employment. . . Well that might lead to some advantage... .’. This basically co-operative approach did not change markedly with the advent of peace. Dixon told the central committee that the CPA must now engage 1n more constructive criticism on issues such as the

disposal of munitions factories, the tax burden on lower income groups and the modification of wage-pegging Regulations.*° The Dutch shipping ban was warmly supported but the Bunnerong dispute was the first purely industrial relations issue to capture Tribune’s headlines. Although the CPA understood and opposed more clearly than most Chifley’s blocking of the 40-hour week campaign,*! its public tone remained essentially conciliatory. The most important event discussed at the meeting of the CPA political committee in March 1946 was Churchill’s ‘iron curtain’ speech at Fulton, Missouri. As was usual for the CPA, the official interpretation, firmly based on the current Moscow line and issued at the out-

set by Sharkey, was not challenged by the remaining committee members. Rather, debate revolved around the ‘left sectarianism’ initially displayed by the Victorian branch leader, J.D. Blake. The Victorian deviation was firmly squashed by the federal leadership and Blake himself backed off at this meeting and dutifully retracted his errors completely at the May-June central committee plenum. In fact the Victorian call to drop CPA support for the Chifley government, to expose the ‘true role’ of the ALP and thus puncture ‘prevailing widespread reformist illusions’ among communists was not couched in particularly extreme terms and specifically called for the maintenance of the ‘united front’: all ALP members ‘even for the briefest period of time, can become allies’. Similarly, in repudiating it Sharkey accepted that Blake’s perspectives might apply at some

The Communist Party and industrial relations 235

future time—in which case the party would suitably review its tactics. For the time being, however, given the widespread belief in the government among workers, the party ‘as a matter of practical politics’ (Rowe) must support the return of the ALP. As Mules realistically admitted, the CPA would ‘be very glad’ if it had a single candidate returned in the general election. The masses would ‘have to see more and more the Labor Party in office before they came to realise the position’. Two lesser issues also emerged. Catholic Action, whose presence had been acknowledged by the Central Committee in 1945, received wider mention. Second, there appeared the first slight indications

of the CPA tendency to misinterpret industrial unrest. J. Slater (Queensland) displayed perhaps a pardonable exaggeration when he claimed that in the recent steel strike ‘the Communist Party on an Australian basis showed they [sic] were the real leaders able to lead the workers in struggle’. Chairman R. Dixon was rather more fanci-

ful when he claimed that the strike, through the struggle ‘against the extreme right wing inside the Labor Party. . . resulted unequivocably [sic] in its [sic] separation of very considerable sections of the workers from the Labor Party and considerable doubts in the minds of the workers about the Labor Party’. At the central committee plenum of 31 May—2 June 1946 discus-

sion was still dominated by overseas events, particularly those in Czechoslovakia. As a result there was considerable optimism concerning the imminence of a truly ‘revolutionary’ situation in Australia itself. In his keynote address Dixon was unable to exclude. the perspective that, as in so many other areas of the world, Australia may face a situation ‘in the not very distant future, in six months, 12 months, 18 months or two years’ where a ‘struggle for political power on the part of the working class will be the order of the day’. Other speakers confirmed this analysis. Among them Jack Hughes saw a ‘Left swing’ giving rise to the possibility of a ‘revolutionary situation in Australia in the course of 2, 3 or 4 years’. Such optimism was nonetheless accompanied by an essentially

realistic analysis of why recent domestic political and industrial events had not produced any swing to the CPA. Although relations with the ALP had deteriorated somewhat and delegates expressed open criticism of that party, they still accepted the overall need for a continued united front while simultaneously endeavouring to ad-

vance their own party’s status in the electorate. In this context Dixon again set the tone of the debate, touching on several points to be confirmed and elaborated by later speakers. Further reflection had cast both steel and meat strikes firmly in the mould of ‘boss-

provoked’, ‘defensive’ strikes revolving around ‘victimisation’. These and other major disputes had adversely affected middle-class

and farming opinion and had lessened ‘working class’ influence

236 Division of Labour

among these groups. CPA relations with the ALP operated on two levels. They had deteriorated as far as ALP leadership was concerned: if the latter had not stood with employers and arbitration tribunals the strikes would have ended successfully and without prejudicing neutral opinion. Conversely, the communist relationship with ALP workers had improved. The steel dispute in particular had ‘exposed’ the ALP’s right wing after the CPA had ‘waged the sharpest and bitterest fight against the right wing we have ever waged’.

In discussions about the industrial road ahead, two connected . problems surfaced for the party. First, the leadership felt that its union officials did not keep it sufficiently informed about industrial

events and thus were more likely to make tactical errors. The Queensland meat dispute was the principal case in point and the communist officials concerned were singled out for criticism by several speakers. Dixon urged, ‘if extension [of a dispute] 1s neces-

sary it should only be done in collaboration with the [CPA] State Committees or the Central Committee and when they consider that the extension of the dispute is essential in the interests of the trade union movement’. Queensland branch leader, J.C. Henry, in criticizing the ‘very bad’ tactics, pointed out that ‘In the first place we do

not decide the policy of the Meat Union which is not under Communist control although the leadership is shared by the Communists with other people.’ One result was that party members were too ready to compromise for the sake of unity. This specific criticism of tactics and lack of communication in the meat strike which, like most of the important recent disputes, in the CPA leaders’ opinion had brought no gains for the workers, ran on into the more general, endemic problem of the dangers of ‘economism’ among communist union officials. Essentially the topic arose when Thornton offered his opinion that the expected favourable 40 hours decision would undoubtedly hamper an advance on the basic wage front. Hence sectional wage campaigns offered the best chance of success. The rank and file was eager, communists should not hang

back. Rowe, in turn, accepted this scenario. Non-communist ‘progressive’ union officials were moving forward ‘under the workers’ restiveness’: for example, in his own union ‘Cranwell is making the sort

of statements I should be making’. He warned, however, against concentrating solely on the wages issue. Communists must not miss this important chance to promote the CPA. Hughes backed the other union officials and, like Rowe, argued that they must avoid shortsightedness and concentrate on ‘getting [the] masses interested in struggle’. Nevertheless he considered that the CPA’s central trade union committee did not sufficiently consider the idiosyncrasies of individual trade union situations. This rare implied criticism of the leadership was soon swamped by the heavy guns brought to bear on the incipient ‘economists’ by the party secretariat.

The Communist Party and 1ndustrial relations 237 Miles’ speech offers a glance behind the monolithic facade: [After the steel strike] we had much to do. . . to try to bring understanding to our members in N.S.W., particularly among the Miners, to help them see when a partial retreat is not a capitulation to the enemy, to help them to see the real issue which was the defence of the trade unions and that consequently we had a substantial victory.

A similar problem had arisen with the rank and file, particularly in South Australia, when the secretariat decided it best not to stand out against the ACTU decision to take the 40 hours issue to the Arbitration Court. Miles’ admonitions on these points and the subsequent lack of impact of his urging that communist unionists now agitate for a 75 per cent female basic wage, which if done properly, ‘ought to be

able to get strikes to maintain and improve women’s wages next January’ when the NSA Regulations expired, indicate some of the secretariat’s problems. Lance Sharkey raised his sights and focussed squarely on communist union officials. He picked up and emphasized Rowe’s point that, where possible, communists in unions must ‘show the face of the party’ and not ‘soft pedal on the communist issue’. The secretarlat’s opinion was that our national leadership in the trade unions have not so far measured up to the demands of the situation, that they have allowed themselves to be immersed in their own trade union affairs. . .Our trade union leaders have, if I may be permitted to say so, seen themselves as leaders of their own unions and not as leaders of the Australian working class as a whole. That is to say they work in too narrow a way to see themselves as a national leader of the Australian working class concerned with the problems of the workers as a whole.

The central committee plenum of 14—16 February 1947 took place almost at the height of the immediate postwar strike wave and general union hostility to the Chifley government’s industrial policy. The

tone of speeches and short-run prediction was confident, the criti-

cism of the ALP was sharper—although the party leaders were anxious to restrain the more eager spirits. Economism was again debated and, as in 1946, the restiveness of coal miners reported,

south coast.

with this time Edgar Ross pointing to the problems presented to the party by the emergence of a “blind strike psychology’ on the NSW The secretariat as usual provided the backdrop with an analysis of the international scene which to communists now pointed to an 1mminent downturn in world economic activity. The boom was slowing

in the USA but Miles’ completely static premise that a domestic slump would occur once domestic prewar production levels were re-

gained allowed him to proclaim that the ‘saturation point for the Australian market is not very far away. . . apart altogether from the

238 Division of Labour influence of the world economic situation’. On the industrial front all augured well. ‘The masses’ were on the move in militant vein. Conservatives such as the leaders of the AWU and the ACTU were being swept along by rank-and-file pressure not, as the media hysterically claimed, by communist influence.

Miles dealt with the view heard ‘here and there’ among ALP unionists that Chifley ‘is badly advised. That is absurd and must be rejected by us’. The Prime Minister knew exactly what he was doing and how best to carry out his policy of defending capitalism and restraining the unions. With this aim the government was ‘manipulating prices so as to cancel the workers’ meagre gains and to exhaust their savings’. The industrial front was the source of all advances, ‘arbitration and reformism are being exposed more widely and more fully than ever before. . . But. . . these bourgeois agencies are still strong amongst the workers both ideologically and organisationally’. In his turn Sharkey similarly sought to restrain the enthusiasm of fellow committee members, some of whom betrayed ‘a slight tendency to run amok’. It was true there was a ‘very serious situation in [the] Labor party’ over the current confrontation with the unions on wages policy. Indeed Sharkey saw ‘Ward and Calwell and their groups [forming] an anti-Chifley group in the Government’ with ‘Ward [having] suggested to our Party that what was wanted was greater struggle against the Chifley Government’. Yet the CPA must ‘be very very careful’ in its endeavour to lead the masses. It must do so “in such a way that we will not appear to be driving to the overthrow of the Labor Government’. The party must not ‘declare war’ on the ALP. Finally, Dixon added his weight to the argument. The imagined swing away from the ALP was not going to the CPA and the danger was that worker dissatisfaction might benefit the Liberal and Country parties. Certainly communists ‘should be bringing out the face of the Party’ and aim ‘to draw Labor Party workers into a struggle that brings the utmost pressure to bear upon the Chifley Government which has departed from the platform of the Labor Party’, but they must not place ALP governments electorally at risk by their indus-

trial policies. Hence there was a greater need than ever for close liaison between union leaders and the central committee. A specific example was the possibly dangerous implications for the Cain and Chifley governments of any future overtime dispute in the Victorian railways. Here Dixon criticized J.J. Brown (ARU) for his tendency

to act independently. He then went on in more general terms to admonish both rank-and-file communists for not regularly attending their union branches and CPA union officials for not attending sufficient party meetings.

Victorian branch leader, J.D. Blake, filled out the picture of unionist deficiences by emphasizing that during disputes commu-

The Communist Party and industrial relations 239

nists should not be concerned merely with the attainment of strike aims but should also endeavour to raise the awareness of the workers involved. Part of his lament demonstrated again one strange new implication of full employment which had been first confront-

ed during the steel dispute. Blake complained about the fact that during the foundry dispute FIA members were finding alternative employment—‘it does become a little trying after a while to conduct a strike without strikers’ .*2 Jack Hughes emphasized the level of workforce unrest—which at the major union conference leading to the ACTU decision to hold a national stoppage on May Day induced right-wingers to make ‘some-

times much more militant speeches than our own’. Hughes denounced the artificial manipulation of the ‘C Series’ index which, along with the wages peg, helped confirm the view that Chifley’s policy is ‘one of enhancing the profits of the capitalist class. . . [and] is the policy of the monopolists, of the Australian bourgeoisie’. In the second major unionist speech, Thornton began with a considerable overestimation of CPA influence on industrial events. While correctly observing that the current strike wave was offensive in nature, he claimed that the switch from defensive disputes that had marked the early postwar months of 1945-46 was due to the CPA central committee discussions and decisions on the issue. In discussing Chifley’s policy he observed that ‘Government leaders have a very deep contempt for people like Monk and King’ the latter being a ‘hopeless illiterate of the worst possible kind’ while the former reportedly brought a radio along on a recent ACTU delegation to the Prime Minister and ‘set it up in a room and listened to the races. He is often in a pretty hopeless state with grog. The Government feels these people do not represent anyone’. Nevertheless communists must still work to uphold the status of the ACTU over the ALP’s rival industrial committee. His version of the federal unions’ conference in Melbourne differed from Hughes’. According to Thornton ‘we were embarrassed’ because only the communists had a policy: “we were canvassing to get others to put up proposals. This indicates the confusion in the ranks of the reformists, their inability to tackle

the situation and certainly justified the editorials about the Communists taking control.’ More significantly, while endorsing the general condemnation of the recent defection of miners’ president, Harry Wells,*+2 Thornton defended fellow communist union officials in general. He voiced the resentment felt about unfair criticism from party functionaries and their “tendency to declare that Party Trade

Union officials are an inferior race, who need to be treated with suspicion [as] they are likely to run off the rails a bit’. The force of this argument was indicated by Dixon’s diplomatic reference in his own address to the main points raised by Thornton.

As relations between the federal government and the unions

240 Division of Labour reached their nadir in early 1947, the public tone of communist criticism of the ALP seemed often sharper than in their private councils. Tribune headlines such as ‘Chifley Tears Up Another Labor Pledge’ and ‘Chifley Ready To Fight Aust[ralian] Workers’*4 helped exacerbate Labor’s increasing resentment of the CPA. While demanding higher wages and lower taxes for workers, and correctly assessing the roadblock presented by Chifley’s economic policies, CPA analysis of Chifley’s motivation began to deteriorate. The allegation of price manipulation made by Miles at the February central committee meeting was publicly enlarged upon. In the March Communist Review Sharkey wrote that Chifley sought to delay the 40-hour week

‘in order to strengthen the position of capital’. In the next issue Dixon saw Chifley’s economic policy as aiming at ‘stabilising and

strengthening the position of Australian capitalism. . .[and] increasing the profits of the monarchs of industry at the expense of the workers’ living standards. . . Inflation of prices 1s the chief means of bringing about this result’.

After the wages breakthrough in the metal trades, the tone of criticism lessened. However, the passage of the Approved Defence Projects Protection Act in June was seen as an ‘infamous betrayal of the labour movement’*> and the ‘deplorable failure’ of Labor leaders to fight growing anti-communism was linked with the ALP’s general lack of enthusiasm for the bank nationalization campaign.*©

Extant CPA records for 1948 reveal the progressive marked changes occurring in communist outlook and policy. On 10 January Sharkey’s opening report to the political committee was once more dominated by overseas events—specifically the recent meeting of

Cominform and its decision that the communist response to the world division into two hostile camps must be to work in each Western country for a ‘People’s Front’ of workers, farmers and middle classes. Tito’s speech and Yugoslav methods were those most frequently cited as Sharkey and subsequent speakers sought as usual to fit the Australian political landscape to the official European model.

Sharkey depicted the ALP as being in crisis, having lost office in Western Australia and Victoria, failing to gain power in South Australia and likely to lose it soon in Tasmania. The most likely outcome

was a split in the Labor Party, with the right wing making undisguised attacks on working-class policy. He foresaw the main perspective of building a really mass People’s Front amongst the disillusioned trade union masses who will be flocking away in disgust from the Labor Party. . .On the other hand, I am not saying that we should not do

everything we can to maintain the Labor Government. We will give the same conditional, critical support, with an increase of our criticism, to the Labor Government as we have done in the past. We will do everything we have done in previous elections to return them to power.

The Communist Party and industnal relations 241

It would, after all, be hard to develop a People’s Front overnight—

particularly in such buoyant economic conditions: ‘The workers have just received, as a result of the struggles of our Party and the trade unions, the forty hour week’. In the process of arguing that a campaign to restrain price levels offered the most fertile ground for a People’s Front, Dixon cast a light on CPA ‘control’ of industrial disputation when he lamented miners striking over ‘futile issues’ and antagonizing ‘important sections of the people’ (see below pp. 268-9). Indeed all strikes must be judged for ‘their effect upon the development of the people’s movement’. Thus the current strike of sixteen BWIU members at Homebush Abattoir, which threatened complete cessation of Sydney’s meat supplies, was wrong—as had been a recent stoppage of 100 Sydney meatworkers. Dixon urged the need to develop political campaigns

in unions—the more so now that the ALP was supporting anticommunists. So far there had been a tendency ‘to laugh at’ the Industrial Groups but they would improve their organization and must be combatted. Particularly strong support for Dixon’s views came from Rowe who, along with Hughes, felt that a prices campaign must aim to disabuse workers of the validity of the wage-cost push theories of inflation. With regard to the Groups, ‘While in the main they are led

by vicious right wing people, in a number of factories there are

a number of good people who have become tangled up with them. . .[We should try to] pull the best elements. . . with us [and] isolate the very vicious people’. On the issue of internal discipline he singled out Victorian AEU organizer, C.M (‘Cup’) Southwell, who

was absent when the Melbourne AEU political committee was electing an entire right wing delegation to the ALP Easter Conference and on that [AEU] Committee there is a Communist majority. . . I believe that is symptomatic everywhere of our comrades in the Trade Union Movement. I know from my own experience you have to stay on their [t]ail all the time, to be continually checking and driving them. You should not have to do that if we were conducting a vigorous campaign and convincing them of the need for work inside the trade union movement in a proper Communist fashion.

Possibly acting with foreknowledge of the blast of personal criticism soon to be directed at him, the remaining unionist speaker, Tom Wright, delivered an astonishingly optimistic assessment of the com-

munist position in the state branches of the ACTU. In Brisbane a

majority position on the Council was secure. In Melbourne ‘it apparently would not take a great deal of favourable development . . .to give us leadership there’. The position in Adelaide was fiftyfifty ‘with a possibility of us getting the leadership’. In Sydney ‘we

242 Division of Labour have about two fifths of the delegates, while in Hobart communists had a ‘fairly good position. . . we have not got many people [but] leading officials work with us’. This national strength was reflected at the 1947 ACTU congress: ‘I do not say our relative strength is exactly according to [the] numbers but we directly showed that we had a very, very substantial minority, such a minority that we have

more or less caused panic among the reformists in regard to our position’. Among individual organizations, “We have leadership of many varying types of unions. . . and there does not seem to be any type of union, in my opinion, of which we cannot win the leadership now ’—although since he was considering only those unions operating democratically he specifically excluded the AWU from his calculations.

In concluding this rosy summary, Wright made two bows: the first to reality, the second to the party leadership. If communists actually were to achieve a majority on the metropolitan TLCs, the right wing would split the union movement. Second, despite the superb position they had already achieved there was undoubtedly a

need for communists to undertake more political work in the unions—and to be wary of the trap of economism. In closing the meeting secretary Sharkey briefly concentrated his fire on two individuals. One barrel he directed at Harry Pollitt, the

British party leader, for his over-optimism in assessing advances made in that social democracy. ‘Even if we were all in the D.T.s I do not think we could say Australia was in the process of transition to Socialism.’ The other was aimed directly at Tom Wright whose position in his own union was so well established that the Groups could

not gain even a toehold. Wright must, therefore, curb his economism, cut back on his concentration on bread-and-butter issues in the SMWIU and spend more time on politicizing his membership concerning the big national issues. By the time of the central committee plenum of 20—22 February 1948 the Queensland railway dispute had begun. The political com-

mittee’s recent analysis was naturally again repeated, with the keynote report by Dixon emphasizing primarily the official line that a serious economic crisis was developing in the Western world. At the local level the overall ‘move to the right’ was stressed mainly by reference to anti-union legislation—actual or contemplated—in

Queensland, Victoria, South Australia and Canberra (Approved Defence Projects Protection Act). Subsequent speakers as usual accepted the secretariat’s analysis and worked it into their own addresses. Members operating outside the unions reported on grassroots efforts to promote the ‘People’s Front’ in community agitations on issues as diverse as municipal ownership of buses in Townsville and black bans on certain Sydney pubs. Nevertheless unions and industrial relations dominated discussion of the domestic

The Communist Party and industrial relations 243

scene. In addition to the normal revealing comments on a host of work- and union-related issues there now appeared significant signs that a growing number of members were beginning, in retrospect, grossly to inflate their party’s role in the postwar strike wave. Eco-

nomism was barely mentioned, although J.J. Brown was again singled out, this time for his lack of consultation when negotiating the end of the Victorian tram dispute (above, p. 199). Ernie Thornton again provided a thought-provoking contribution. In discussing a further reduction in working hours he argued that communists should not demand more for workers than a ‘socialist’ government would offer. With the FIA’s troublesome Balmain branch in mind he pondered on the observed difference in attitudes towards work between the Sydney waterfront repair shops and the Newcastle and Port Kembla steel complexes. He noted that the former ‘permit of a considerable amount of loafing [and] that if we do not demand of the workers that they work reasonably, degeneration develops in the ranks of the working class’. Additional evidence for this Calvinist thesis was adduced from the fact that the CPA experienced more attacks in ‘slum areas’ like Fitzroy and Surry Hills than in

‘better working class areas’ like Bankstown. Finally Thornton touched on the CPA’s falling membership which, given his exaggerated view of the party’s industrial leadership and influence, left him baffled. After all, ‘our mass support is very great. . . Our prestige is

high, we are winning trades union elections, we are on top in the trade union movement, generally speaking. . . We are a tremendous public force, greater than in most countries. . .’. Tom Wright supported this view. While not generally in a majority in setpiece Labor Council ballots, the left was gaining widespread backing on day-to-day issues. Any setbacks were usually the result of communists’ weaknesses or tactical mistakes rather than

any growth in strength of the right. The ‘wave of militancy and ~ strike struggle in the trade union movement in my opinion is still growing’. Wright disagreed with the notion that workers were satisfied with the recent wages—hours gains: rather the ‘wave is becoming stronger’. Union officials must now look forward and plan for the

time in the near future when the international economic crisis hit

Australia. In reading such references to the imminent crisis, particularly those of Jack Hughes, communist expectations and optimism become almost palpable. Something like the 1930s Depression was envisaged, but this time the CPA had already gained a strong position in the union movement—and the workers had experienced full employment and the fruits of industrial action. From these launch-

ing pads a great leap forward away from outmoded capitalism seemed certain—1if only the crisis would arrive.

Jim Healy was concerned about certain industrial aspects of the campaign against higher prices. He questioned the wisdom of Syd-

244 Division of Labour ney wharfies’ recent decision to stop work for four hours, ‘but unfortunately we could not control the situation’. He was similarly critical

of a one-day stoppage on the south coast. More effective methods would be to organize wives’ stop-work meetings and boycotts of shops guilty of over-charging. Healy became yet another to complain

about the poor attendance of communist Labor Council delegates and one of the first to argue that the party should consider the question of unions affiliating directly. Miles’ address, while dominated by overseas events, touched on several points raised by the union officials. On the membership para-

° dox he agreed with the opinion of others that although numbers had fallen, CPA membership quality had risen. Sectional strikes were frowned on, as was Healy’s proposal of union affiliation with the CPA—although Dixon, in his final summing up, indicated that the secretariat favoured a recent suggestion by Thornton that individual unionists might be levied if agreeable to affiliation.

Yet in many ways the most significant speech was that of party intellectual, E.W. Campbell. While registering useful insights into federal government policy it was he who first set the tone of exaggeration and misperception which in future months was to be picked up by the secretariat. While rightly stating that the combined 194748 margins—hours gains were the biggest ever won by the Australian

working class, he then went on to claim almost sole credit for the party, adducing as evidence the very media whose mendacity and hysteria communists in particular had good reason to know. These struggles were planned, organised and led by the Communist Party through the Communists’ leading positions in the Unions concerned and no-one at the time could have doubted that the struggles were led by the Communist Party because the press certainly made it clear in their attacks on the Party and on the Communists in leading positions in the struggle.

Campbell next cast some useful light on the failure of the party to attract workers despite its supposed dominant role in their economic advancement. Workers had been deceived by the ALP’s public rhetoric. Chifley and the rest were able to appear to support the 40-hour case while helping delay its inception. On the margins issue the government’s exact role for most rank-and-file workers was hazy. The Arbitration Court was the instrument actually seen applying the Regulations, not the government—hence the chief judge correctly complained about being left holding the baby. Connectedly, the government’s image was boosted by the impression created during the

passage of the 1947 Arbitration amendments that a whole new method of wage settlement had been created which would break the

old logjam. But while accurately assessing the government’s role and policy, Campbell completely misinterpreted its economic

motives.

The Communist Party and industrial relations 245 The Labor Party’s struggle 1s to keep gains at a minimum and at the same time combat the influence of Communism. It has been holding the fort for the bourgeoisie until such time as conditions changed, in favor of a concerted attack on wages and conditions. Such a change in the situation is coming. The [economic] crisis is well and truly on the way.

Three months later at the CPA’s first postwar national congress (7-10 May) this analysis was being extended by the party leadership.

Members of the central committee essentially reiterated the line established at their February meeting—but the tone was usually sharper and the language more extreme. J.D. Blake in particular distinguished himself with a dramatic, invective-laden speech. Significantly he, together with another hardliner, J.C. Henry of Queensland, were now brought on to the secretariat. In summarizing postwar industrial relations Sharkey repeated Campbell’s exaggerated estimate of the CPA’s role. One of the decisive achievements for our leadership in the trade union movement was to turn back the [1945-46] capitalist offensive on the trade union movement and to transform it into a workers’ counter-offensive [in 1946—47] which gained the 40 hour week and substantial wage increases. The future may show how decisive this was. It proves we can smash the new offensives being prepared against the working class movement.

Dixon addressed the congress in markedly sharper tone than he had the central committee in February. Throughout the world, economic crisis, ‘reaction’ and imperialism threatened. Within Australia communists must get out among the ‘masses’ throughout society and isolate the ‘reformists’. The party was ‘strengthening itself’? amid

the definite ‘trend towards the left? among workers—‘The level of working class struggle is rising’ and the tide had obviously changed from the defensive struggles of the immediate postwar months to the great offensive movement of the last 18 months which reached its highest point in the Queensland [railway] strike. There is no sign that this strike movement is declining. . . The strike wave is not only beginning to embrace new sections of the working class and drawing them into active political life, but is also resulting

in exposing the role of the capitalist state, the Labor Party and reformist leaders and is opening the way to the passing of the masses over to the side of the Communist Party.

The Queensland strike drew reference from many speakers. The Hanlon government’s repressive legislation was linked with other recent anti-union legislation, particularly the Hollway Essential Services Act in Victoria, and it was commonly agreed that more of the same could be expected in the near future. Dixon was subtle enough, while criticizing purely economistic strikes and ‘bureaucratic tendencies’ among union officials, to draw the lesson that although priority should be given to ‘political’ aspects the party must still pay

246 Division of Labour close heed to workers’ economic demands. Other speakers, however,

were usually less restrained in their analysis. Claude Jones led the way in exaggerated estimation. According to him Queensland communists were supermen who, inter alia, were apparently solely responsible for the demonstration against the St Patrick Day bashings which brought a record 15 000 protesters onto the streets. Union officials were generally less carried away by the Queensland dispute per se. Jim Healy provided some interesting insights into the relationship between Hanlon and Chifley*” while Ernie Thornton drew dangerous morals concerning the supposed greater rank-andfile readiness to remain on strike. But Thornton at this congress is remembered mainly for his announcement of the decision to offer FIA members the choice of paying a political levy to either the ALP or the CPA and for his much-quoted references to the links between the FIA, its decision-making and the CPA. In at least partial qualification of his remarks it should be understood that he made them in the context of the recent history of leadership charges of economism

pervading CPA union officials and as an immediate preface to a strong defence of most of those officials. Nevertheless his remarks were excessive, particularly his view that if given a choice of political affiliation ‘at least 5000’ FIA members ‘can be convinced to nominate the Communist Party’. The decision to publish his remarks in the Communist Review revealed the strange combination of naivety

and arrogance which were coming to mark the CPA’s public relations.*®

Concerning economism, Thornton expanded on remarks made earlier by Elliott in defence of union officials. There are some Communist trade union officials who are being economist, there are some who are just plain reformists, there are some who have illusions about their own scintillating personality [yet not one would have been

elected if not backed by the Party]. But what is dangerous. . .is a stupid blanket condemnation of all our union officials, which is insulting and disruptive.

Perhaps the most significant information about the real world relationship between party functionaries and union officials was presented to the congress by secretary Sharkey in his ‘Reply to Discussion’. Ted Rowe, the most prominent CPA unionist in the Queensland strike, in his own speech had asserted the party’s leadership in the postwar hours—wages campaign but offered no analysis of the Queensland dispute (nor of Cranwell’s role). Sharkey, how-

ever, confirmed that in the clash of wills between the secretariat and the AEU over Rowe’s imprisonment (above, p. 223) there could only be one winner—the union. After the national congress the CPA hastened down the slope to its

confrontation with the ALP in 1949. En route communist leaders

The Communist Party and industrial relations 247

correctly analysed the federal government’s adoption of Beveridge and Keynesian policies as an attempt to ameliorate capitalism and to shore it up against future shocks.*#? The CPA nevertheless remained confident that world economic crisis was merely being delayed by rearmament and the Marshall Plan.°° Indeed it took heart from the short-sightedness of the local bourgeoisie who kicked away the props offered them by Chifley’s efforts to smooth economic management

through banking and price control.°! On the industrial front the leadership hammered the three-pronged campaign agreed upon at the congress; an increased basic wage; equal pay for women; and stable prices. While unionists approved of these objectives and of arguments against the cost—push inflation thesis, the leadership looked in vain for spinoffs from such ‘mass action’ in the political sphere.°? Instead CPA popular support declined—largely, it was thought, because of widespread illusions about the current ‘so-called prosperity’.°? The party approved Chifley’s 1948 budget with its tax cuts and pension increases>* but saw the federal government deliber-

ately joining with employers in ‘pursuing, even more vigorously, the policy of lowering standards of living by increasing prices’.°°

Yet ‘there is no way out for the capitalist order. . .signs of an approaching crisis are becoming clearer from day to day’.>® As the Cold War heightened, the growing ferocity of CPA attacks on the ALP was matched only by the determination of Labor leaders to be seen to take a firm anti-communist stand. The federal government was helped by the grandiose attempt by Sharkey to emulate the leader of the mighty French Communist Party in asserting to, of all

people, a reporter from Frank Packer’s ultra-conservative Daily Telegraph, that Australian workers would welcome Soviet forces pur-

suing aggressors into this country and that, if ‘fascists use force to prevent the workers from gaining. . . power Communists will advise the workers to meet force with force’.°’ Charged under the federal Crimes Act for uttering seditious words, Sharkey was sentenced in March 1949 to three years imprisonment (later reduced on appeal to eighteen months). He was soon followed by G. Burns whose utterances were more clearly seditious and were repudiated by the CPA.>*8

Next went McPhillips for his ‘contempt’ of the Arbitration Court during the basic wage case (above, p. 64). Finally came the coal strike which saw a true ‘boots and all’ contest between the two parties ending in clear defeat for the communist-backed miners, but, as we shall see, not necessarily in any lasting victory for the government.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

REGULATING MARKET FORCES: THE RUN-IN TO THE 1949 COAL STRIKE ‘Tf a threat to strike automatically brought an end to conciliation and arbitration there would be no antidote to Communism inside the industrial movement’.

F.T. Lang, Century, 5/8/49

In Australian popular tradition, industrial relations in the Chifley period are largely identified with the 1949 coal strike in which, it is believed, the federal government ‘took on’ the communists and their

plot to disrupt national fuel supplies. The startling actions of an ALP federal government endeavouring to starve the miners back to

work, jailing their leaders and sending troops into the mines to extract coal, embedded themselves deeply in the folk memory. The

anti-strike propaganda of the day has been widely accepted— notably in the TV series True Believers in 1988, but also among some professional scholars. In 1983 one historian stated that ‘Essentially there were no [industrial] claims [involved in the dispute]’.! In reality an attempt by the unions to use their bargaining power to gain concessions from unyielding employers was met head on by

an obdurate government. It is relatively easy to indicate why the miners, urged on by the communists, acted as they did. The reasons for the government’s refusal to compromise so as to avoid wholesale disruption of the economy over a two month period are not so immediately apparent. Earlier accounts’ have neglected to emphasise how the new administrators and arbitrator appointed in 1947 began, in 1948, to endeavour to curb the ability of miners to take advantage

of market forces. Increasing regulation of the industry met with approval from the federal government which feared a flow-on of union gains in this vanguard industry. The underlying economic motive was greatly fortified by the government’s increasing anger with both the miners’ incessant aggression and the increasing vehe-

mence of attacks on the ALP by communists who publicly pronounced the miners to be their class’s major industrial weapon. In the 1940s coal meant even more to the economy than oil does in

the 1980s. Few would have argued with the proposition that ‘the Australian standard of living rests upon coal production and. . . it

The run-in to the 1949 coal strike 249

varies with coal production’.* A notable feature was the concentration of output in New South Wales which, on average, accounted for 80 per cent of production. Next came Queensland (12 per cent in 1948) and Western Australia (5 per cent), with the remaining three states each producing little more than a percentage point of the total. Since coal stocks remained low throughout the 1940s, industries in Sydney, Melbourne, and Adelaide were very quickly faced with enforced shutdowns if New South Wales production or distribution were dislocated. Distribution of the 23 000 workforce roughly para-

lleled production, with, on average, 75 per cent of mineworkers located in New South Wales, 12 to 14 per cent in Queensland, 35 to 45

per cent in Western Australia and 1 per cent in Tasmania. The declining Victorian fields’ share fell from 65 to 35 per cent in the 1940s

while the Leigh Creek mine in South Australia, which opened in 1944, came to represent nearly 2 per cent of the total by 1950. Both output per miner and cost per ton compared favourably with most overseas producers.+ Employment at underground mines accounted

for 88 per cent of the mining workforce, including all Tasmanian and Victorian black coal miners. The coalmining workforce was almost completely unionized. The AWU organized the open-cut workers at Leigh Creek and Victoria’s brown coal deposits at Yallourn, but most miners belonged to the Australasian Coal and Shale Employees’ Federation (ACSEF) which organized some 78 per cent of all mineworkers in 1949. The remainder were members of five ‘craft’? unions: the AEU, the FEDFA, the Deputies’ and Shotfirers’ Association, the Federated Mining Mechanics’ Association and the Blacksmiths’ Society of Australasia.

A few government-controlled mines operated in Victoria, New South Wales, Queensland and at Leigh Creek, but ownership of Australia’s 263 mines (1948 figure) was overwhelmingly private. There was notable concentration of ownership. BHP owned thirteen large collieries; J.A. Brown and Abermain Seaham—whose biggest shareholder was the Adelaide Steamship Company—controlled ten; Howard Smith held shares in the Brown combine and controlled five

other mines. Most proprietors were organized into associations based on the major fields. In New South Wales there were three fields—Northern (66.4 per cent of state production in 1948), West-

ern (17.2 per cent) and Southern (16.4 per cent)—but four associations which came together loosely in the Combined Colliery Proprietors’ Association of New South Wales. To say employers’ personnel and industrial relations outlook was backward is to put it mildly. As Deery says, “The history of coalowners in Australia . . .was one of callous submergence of miners’ interests for selfish ends’.> That is not to say, however, that the miners did not make their own contribution to their industry’s traditionally disastrous industrial relations.

250 Division of Labour

In virtually all capitalist economies industrial relations in coal mining have been marked by abnormal levels of distrust, bitterness,

disputation and violence. Although uncertain product markets would seem a likely contributing factor, the reasons why mine owners universally proved so bloody-minded, greedy, and short-sighted in their relations with labour have seldom been investigated. More

attention has been given to analysis of the factors producing the characteristics commonly observed in the mining workforce in so many countries. The latter include intense group loyalty, particularly long industrial memories, readiness to strike, stubbornness, an

ability to endure great personal hardship in pursuit of common goals, distrust of outsiders, and a generally radical political outlook.

Explanations of miners’ outlook and behaviour have essentially rested on two factors: their usual physical isolation from the remainder of society and, above all, the nature of their work.® The isolation of miners in relatively small, coal-dominated communities made it inevitable that their thoughts dwelt on their work

problems which were held in common with their neighbours and social acquaintances as well as their workmates. Their grievances could not be diluted in the manner possible for employees living in larger centres with wider, diverse occupation structures. The way

in which miners in dispute were so closely supported by their families—and also usually by independent local shopkeepers and professional people—is a further indication of community preoccupation and singlemindedness. Then there was the work itself—which words cannot adequately describe. Even film and video do not fully convey the dangerous and

foul conditions in an underground mine. An actual descent into a colliery is probably the only chance an outsider has of gaining any insight into the miners’ internationally observed psychology.’ Working in claustrophobic gloom with the earth itself moving and groaning above their heads, starved of daylight and eating their very meals in dust, heat or damp, miners were truly a race apart. Ever fearful of cave-ins, fire, flood or gas, they were totally reliant on each other. They took back to the surface their occupational lung diseases, their

intense mateship—and their repressed fears of working underground. They were instinctively bitter about rich owners living away

from the dirt and the danger on the profits of miners’ sweaty toil. Fathers handed down to sons the details of past wrongs. All subconsciously welcomed any opportunity to avoid or to delay taking that daily plunge into darkness and danger. Australia’s coal industry in the early twentieth century replicated the classic pattern. With bargaining power and the state’s legal and parliamentary apparatus usually lined up on the owners’ side, 1ndustrial relations before World War II had been highly laced with antagonism and distrust. Coal accounted for something like 75 per

The run-in to the 1949 coal stnke 251

cent of all industrial disputes. Industrial relations were further complicated by the co-existence of traditional contract work alongside daily employment and the fact that the shift rates for the latter varied between districts. In addition to constant, relatively short-lived flareups, major widespread stoppages occurred in 1909 (eighteen weeks), 1916 (five weeks), 1917 (nine weeks), 1929-30 (sixty-four weeks), 1938 (six weeks). All were closely stored in the miners’ collective

memory which encompassed also the major conflicts on British coalfields from where most mining families were derived. Welling particularly close to the surface was the bitterness arising from the traumatic 1929-30 wage-cutting lockout by the northern district proprietors which produced bloody clashes with police. After fifteen

months of increasing hardship the craft unions cracked and the poverty-stricken miners had to follow them back to work. The miners’ basic distrust of the utility of political action and of arbitration was confirmed. While the conservative NSW government had

openly sided with the mine owners and encouraged scab labour, the federal ALP government, for all its promises, proved unable or unwilling to make the proprietors comply with the award. Resort to arbitration tribunals was equally fruitless. After the lockout, unemployment soared to record levels as the Depression worsened. Even in 1939 the size of the employed mining workforce was still 30 per cent below its pre-slump level. As the official war historians say, this ‘collapse in demand for lakour .. . allowed colliery proprietors to ride roughshod over awards and agreements’.® Nevertheless, as soon as the demand for coal bottomed out the miners began to fight back. In this they were aided by the emergence of new, more radical leaders. ACSEF led the trend among militant unions to elect communist officials. As Gollan points out, in political terms miners were ‘removed one step to the left of the rest of Australia. [For them] the Labor Party is the conservative and the Communist the radical party’.? In the 1930s and 1940s the naturally militant rank and file turned eagerly to candidates offering the most aggres-

sive policies. In ACSEF it is patently obvious that ‘Communists were the inheritors, not the instigators of miners’ traditions of militancy’.!° In practice they often failed to keep up with the inborn militancy of the rank and file. Nevertheless the new team, headed by

W. Orr and C. Nelson, helped reinvigorate the union, bring the

Western Australian miners into the Federation and restore relations with the craft unions. The threat of a state-wide strike in 1937 in New South Wales helped substantially restore the 1929 wage cuts. In 1938 a six-week stoppage induced important commitments from the NSW government on safety, health and pensions. The remaining

issues were consigned to the federal Arbitration Court where, in 1939, Judge Drake-Brockman, after correctly summarizing industrial relations in coal as ‘an unbridled and unregulated contest be-

252 Division of Labour tween employers and employees without restraint and actuated only by the rules of the jungle’,!! went on to abolish the Saturday morning shift, grant ten days annual leave and introduce a 40-hour week underground. The outbreak of war in September did not deflect the joint mining unions’ dissatisfaction with wages and with the exclusion of surface workers from the hours concession. A second general strike began in March 1940, lasted two months and engendered much more bitterness than in 1938. The CPA’s current anti-war stance allowed the

media to portray the strike as a communist plot. Indeed the coal strike may have helped sway Menzies’ view on the efficacy of ban-

ning the CPA.!* The successful German Blitzkrieg in France brought added pressure on the miners who returned to work on 16 May. The full court then provided some wage gains but rejected the surface workers’ hours claim. The final outcome of the miners’ postDepression campaign followed the report of the NSW Royal Commission on pensions which led in 1941 to state legislation providing compulsory retirement and pensions at sixty years of age. Given the crucial importance of coal to the national war effort, the federal government was forced to take steps to improve admunistration and industrial relations in the coalfields. The centralization of control occurred much earlier than in most other industries. At the time Curtin took office a Central Reference Board (CRB), vested with powers conferred on the Arbitration Court by the National Security Regulations, was able to consider any dispute. The CRB consisted of

three representatives from each side, chaired by Judge DrakeBrockman. Single member Local Reference Boards (LRBs)—all former miners—were able to conciliate local disputes and to report to

the CRB on industrial matters not covered by existing awards or orders. On the administration side a Coal Commissioner, N. Mighell,

controlled all aspects of coal production, distribution and use. He was assisted by production and distribution managers who came from the ranks of colliery management. It was not the advent of a federal Labor government but rather the sudden advance of the Japanese that saw the workers given some voice in the control of the industry. On 6 February 1942 Mighell became chairman of a Coal Commission which included an ACSEF representative.

ACSEF leaders accepted the cancellation of annual holidays, scaled down their outstanding claims, suspended compulsory retirement and agreed to extra shifts in certain mines. However, the inability of the ACSEF officials after the entry of the USSR and Japan into the war to reduce absenteeism or to prevent an increase in the number of disputes in each year after 1940 is a significant comment on the notion that they were able to manipulate their rank and file. Total working days lost did fall in 1942 but ‘disproportionate’ publicity of the miners’ ‘sabotage’ put pressure on the Curtin govern-

The run-in to the 1949 coal strike 253

ment to act.!3 It used its emergency powers first to give legal sanction to ACSEF expulsion of striking members and then gave the Coal Commission authority to direct that obdurate miners be called into military service. In May 1942 Curtin chaired a conference of all parties. Here ACSEF emphasized the role of management provocation in disputes but agreed to urge rank-and-file commitment to the first voluntary agreement for the avoidance of disputes. The grievance procedure ran from joint colliery committees through the district executives of unions and owners’ associations to the binding decision of the Local Reference Board. The failure of this “Canberra Code’ to reduce stoppages again demonstrated the deep-rooted nature of industrial unrest which neither world war nor official ACSEF pressure and pleas could greatly diminish. As the Japanese thrust was contained, production inevitably fell from its record levels of 1942 (Table 8). Government and media concentration on production problems ‘obscured the fact that the “‘coalcrisis’ of mid-1943 was the product of rapid growth in demand as well as of a fall in supply’.!4 Nevertheless the media lambasted the miners as greedy, lazy, unpatriotic—and communist dupes. Neither

declarations by Curtin that stoppages amounted to treason, nor government-prompted police investigations, prosecutions and fines

did much other than to raise resentment. In December the LRBs were given complete independence within their districts in dealing with disputes involving ACSEF members. A Central Coal Authority (A.C. Willis, a former ACSEF official) replaced the CRB (Drake-

Brockman)—who, however, continued to deal with matters con- | cerning the craft unions. Two months later a protracted strike at Coalcliff colliery led to the Coal Commission being again replaced by a single Commissioner (Mighell) who was given control of industrial relations with Willis and the LRBs being made officers of the commissioner. Mighell took control of Coalcliff but soon the major cause for concern was the large northern field. Disputes rose, output fell. ‘Whichever way the Government turned, whether to the imposition of severe penalties, to conciliation and concessions, to alterations of

the industrial machinery, or to exhortation and the offer to inducement, the end result was still a steady rise in industrial turbulence and decline in coal production.’!> The miners were not fighting the war to preserve the status quo or to boost owners’ profits. Despite the urgings of their leaders the rank and file, while feeling themselves to be as patriotic in their dangerous work as any Australians, sought, before the balance shifted again, to

use their enhanced bargaining power against their singleminded foe—the greedy and provocative coal owners. Outside the coalfields, the rest of the community tended to view the issue more simply. Led by the popular media they ignored both the turbulent past and management faults and inefficiencies. The economy needed more fuel.

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The run-in to the 1949 coal strike 255

For the rest of the decade the public focus would be on the need for miners to increase output to ease that crucial bottleneck. The miners’ fears and reservations and their readiness to resort to direct action came to be seen not in their true bitter historical context but in the harsh new setting of the Cold War and its attendant ‘communist plots’. The miners’ long-run solution for their problems was nationalization of the industry. The ALP federal leadership had no intention of pursuing so radical a policy!® but the crucial importance of coal to the postwar economy necessitated some reform. Along with a sepa-

rate health inquiry, the federal government established a board of inquiry under NSW Supreme Court justice C.G.W. Davidson who had, for six months prior to the creation of Mighell’s position in August 1941, chaired the board regulating the distribution and use of coal. His handling of the inquiry displeased ACSEF which withdrew because of the bias which the union felt was confirmed in his final report of March 1946.!’

While noting the excessive accident rate and the sub-standard amenities in the industry, Davidson essentially blamed the miners for the industry’s problems. ‘Discipline’ must be restored along with ‘confidence in the sanctity of agreement and the efficacy of the law’.

He felt that the government had been too weak with the miners and had eroded the status of the industrial tribunals. The use of former miners as conciliators should be ended, and tribunals should be staffed by ‘disinterested’ outsiders, trained in legal principles. Davidson subscribed to the theory that miners were misled by agitators, notably communists. He observed that living and social con-

ditions must be improved but rejected the recent and acclaimed analysis of Cessnock, the largest coalmining community.!® Rather,

Davidson was anxious to see dispelled the ‘fog’ of ‘maudlin sentimentality’ which surrounded mining. He drew a picture of overburdened owners helpless without acceptance of their right to hire and fire. He recommended continued government subsidy to stave off bankruptcy; the abolition of contract work and hence the associated and troublesome grey area of ‘customs and practices’; increased mechanization; introduction of an extra shift; compulsory secret ballots before strikes; and government enforcement of penalties against

stoppages. ;

While lauded by conservatives, proprietors and the media, Davidson’s recommendations were largely ignored by the federal government. After considerable agitation by ACSEF the federal and NSW governments announced in June 1946 that a joint federal—state authority would be established to control all aspects of the NSW industry. Simultaneous passage of legislation through the two parliaments ensured that the new Joint Coal Board (JCB) commenced operations in March 1947. ‘In broad concept the aim of the Coal Industry Acts

256 Division of Labour

is to regulate, assist and rehabilitate the coal industry within the framework of private ownership, with the proviso that where necessary the Board has power to step in and to control and operate coal mines and ancillary enterprises’.!? The JCB enjoyed considerable

autonomy. It had unlimited credit with the Commonwealth Bank and could only be directed if the Prime Minister and NSW Premier combined to do so. In 1949 Queensland established its own Coal Board with powers and functions identical to the JCB. In our period the Coal Comissioner continued to control the distribution and use of coal in the remaining states. Significantly, the JCB contained no union representative. Chair-

man K.A. Cameron had been manager of the North Broken Hill mine, R.P. Jack had been production manager for the Coal Commissioner and A.E. Warburton an official in the NSW Treasury. Even more significant was the JCB’s assessment of priorities: The Board considers that the fundamental objectives of the charter assigned

to it by the Coal Industry Acts of 1946 may broadly be regarded as threefold:—

(a) To provide sufficient coal. . .to meet the requirements of Australian

industry...

(b) To conserve coal resources and to ensure they are used to the best

advantage... (c) To ensure that Australia is provided with its basic industrial fuel at the lowest possible cost... . All of the other functions more specifically defined 1n the Coal Industry Acts (such

as, for example, those relating to the welfare of mineworkers and their families and communities) should properly be regarded as subsidiary to these three basic objectives.2° (my italics)

Events revealed that the ALP leaders shared the JCB’s priorities. Increased production was crucial to the postwar economy. Miners’ use of their bargaining power was resented by Chifley and the rest who, in practice, came to discount heavily the justice and, eventually, even the reality of the miners’ discontent over current conditions and their fears for the future. Not all communities were as dreadful as Catherine Hill Bay with its damp, crumbling shacks and lack of both electricity and running water. Nor were all mines as bad as that in Queensland where Jack recorded temperatures up to 132°F, necessitating miners at the face to be hosed constantly with water while they worked; or Hartley Main, near Lithgow, where ventilation was so poor that men’s ‘vision was obscured by thick vapour arising from their naked bodies’. But even the best were pretty grim. On average twenty-five miners were killed annually and the accident rate at the Wonthaggi field in Vic-

toria, for example, was calculated in 1947 to be 891 per 1000 workers.! A few short quotations from the JCB’s first annual report, issued seven months before the 1949 general coal strike, will indicate the realities of the situation.

The run-in to the 1949 coal strike 257 The industry is fundamentally inefficient and out-of-date. While there are some properly equipped and efficiently operated mines, many need drastic technical modernisation whilst others should be closed down. In many cases working and living conditions are primitive. . . The industry by and large is shot through with a bitterness and antagonism between owners and men which derives from its ruthless history and which is not paralleled in any other Australian industry. . . The Board’s task of rehabilitating and stabilising the industry cannot be regarded as complete until this attitude of mind has been eliminated as much from owners and managers as from workers and unions. (p. 7)

. . .In March 1947, the general standard of pit “amenities” throughout the industry was deplorably low. For instance, there were only three mines which had bath and change houses of a satisfactory standard. . .’ (p. 17).

Indeed the Board’s statistics revealed that, at the same date, none of the 140 NSW mines had crib (meal-break) rooms. Underground, only two had satisfactory sanitation, three satisfactory dust suppression, seven acceptable water reticulation and twelve personnel transport systems. ‘[M]ore than half of the mines did not have even a satisfactory supply of drinking water on the surface’ (p. 17). In the field of so-called pit amenities, the Board has had to contend with an attitude of mind on the part of most colliery proprietors which is entirely unreal. With their perspective clouded by the traditional low standards of the industry, many colliery proprietors have been unable to regard expenditure designed to improve working conditions and pit top efficiency as anything but a waste of money. (p. 20) One of the worst aspects of living conditions in the coalfields is the low standard of housing. This represents an enormous problem which can only be solved gradually over a long period of years. (p. 19) . . . local government authorities 1n coalfields areas have often lacked civic wisdom and have not been energetic in co-operating with the Board to develop their own community facilities. (p. 22) At the present time, the quality of many technical and managerial person-

nel in the industry is not of the standard which would be required in a modern efficient industry (p. 22)

The 1946 Coal Industry Acts also made provision for a permanent

arbitration authority for the industry. F.H. Gallagher, a relatively unknown junior lawyer in the NSW Railways Department but a pro-

tégé of one of Chifley’s closest political confidants, NSW Justice Minister R.R. (Reg) Downing, was appointed as Coal Industry Tri-

bunal (CIT) with jurisdiction over all industrial matters which affected ACSEF. The CIT was vested with all the powers of the NSW Industrial Commission when dealing with intrastate issues and those of a federal arbitration judge when dealing with interstate matters. The Act retained the one-man local authorities and Gallagher continued the tradition of appointing former miners. Provision was made for the imposition of fines up to £100 and imprisonment to six

months for individuals not obeying CIT directions. The craft

258 Division of Labour

unions, jealous of their separate identity, were anxious not to be swamped by ACSEF in arbitration proceedings: hence they continued to be dealt with under the wartime reference board system. In May 1947 Gallagher was also appointed chairman of the CRB, thus becoming the principal coal arbitrator but operating in two separate and legally watertight jurisdictions. The Western Australian government in 1949 made provision for a state tribunal to deal with intras-

tate coal disputes but in fact, throughout the Chifley period, the CRB and LRBs established by wartime regulations continued to operate in the five minor states, covering intrastate disputes involving both ACSEF and craft union members.?2 The proprietors’ views on the desired shape of the postwar coal industry were outlined in their submissions to the Davidson inquiry. In essence they called for rapid decontrol, penal sanctions against strikers, freedom to hire and fire and the right to alter work practice wherever profitable, including mechanical extraction of coal left standing in pillars behind the advancing face. This last issue had been a source of controversy since early in the century because of safety problems. In 1938 the NSW Coal Mines Regulation Act was amended to prohibit the use of machinery in pillars except with the Minister’s permission. Given working miners’ outright and emotional opposition, all subsequent applications to the Minister were rejected .73

ACSEF’s plans for peacetime were drawn up by a special national convention in September 1945. It backed the ALP government and the calls for increased output which ACSEF felt would be aided by greater use of power borers. It reaffirmed its objective of nationalization which would make possible a long-term agreement for controlled mechanization (pillars excluded) linked to guaranteed full employment and generally improved safety and health conditions as well as better hours, pay and holidays. Weekly pays and resumption of compulsory retirement were called for and, since surface workers had eventually gained the 40-hour week during the war, the call was now for a 35-hour week which had already been accepted at Broken Hill and in New Zealand coal mines. At a joint conference convened by the federal government ACSEF proposed a five-year agreement retaining the wartime code of discipline in return for a ‘first instalment’ of improved working conditions. Although miners had more things to agitate them—notably the

never-ending issue of health compensation—than employees in other industries, the first two peacetime years were relatively quies-

cent by coalmining standards. Working days lost were not much more than half the 1945 steel-affected figures. ACSEF backed the ALP governments and did its best to restrain the rank and file from ill-considered stoppages. Nevertheless, the miners demonstrated their traditional readiness to resort to concerted direct action in pur-

The run-in to the 1949 coal strike 259 suit of their claims. In May 1946 a general coal strike was threatened in New South Wales. This was averted by negotiations with Chifley

and other ministers which determined that the industry’s administration and arbitration would be reorganized—and not along Davidson’s recommended lines. Some improvements in sick and annual leave were next recorded but at the beginning of the 1947 ACSEF sent a general log to federal and state governments and the mineowners. Members were again warned to prepare for a general strike but aggregate meetings were postponed until the new Coal Industry Tribunal could consider the claims. The improvements offered in Gallagher’s early awards carried the miners forward on the general tide of union advancement in 1947. The employers challenged the CIT’s authority to determine hours but miners’ pay rose after the end of wage pegging. Sick leave was also improved. ACSEF, along with the rest of the union movement, was pleased with its overall gains which included increased pensions and compensation payments. The union’s emphasis now turned

to improvement of amenities, a policy backed by the new JCB but opposed by the owners who ‘believed that miners were already “treated extravagantly” and that the emphasis upon amenities for men who “‘are probably the most pampered employees anywhere in the world” was unreal and farcical’.2* As well as criticizing the employers’ backward attitudes on amenities the JCB assumed ‘control’ of several collieries to prevent closure for financial reasons. It also operated its own open cut mines. By mid-1949 it ran twelve collieries

producing 5.7 per cent of NSW output. The JCB also set out to rationalize the coal price structure and progressively to eliminate wartime subsidies. At this stage ACSEF worked closely with the Board, doing what it could to minimize stoppages and agreeing to the working of “back Saturdays’, with the JCB subsidizing the payment of penalty rates.° Despite considerable employer obstruction the proportion of NSW

underground mines completely equipped with power borers rose from 18 per cent in July 1947 to 100 per cent by mid-1949. Early in 1948 the miners at last achieved weekly hiring in principle and the district awards were consolidated into one. By now, however, the

honeymoon period was drawing to a close. The JCB, admittedly faced with ‘entirely unreal’ owner attitudes, was failing to meet miners’ expectations concerning the provision of amenities. In fact the JCB tended to be as interested in the longer-run issue of 1mproving community facilities whereas the rank-and-file miners were impatiently concerned with improvement in the primitive conditions in which they had to work daily. Further, the Board, the Tribunal— and the ALP—tended to take credit for the gains made by miners in 1947 and early 1948, and to see the miners as being greedy and ungrateful for demanding further improvements. The miners took a

260 Division of Labour

longer perspective and related their gains to the demand for their labour and their own organized determination. Nothing in their collective memory suggested that the good times were going to last. In any case, while they were able, like workers in other industries, to say that their postwar gains were probably the greatest in their history,7© miners could also demonstrate that even these improvements could not induce more than a trickle of newcomers into their work. In the first half of 1947, 56 per cent of those leaving the mines were in the 21-24 years age group. Of some 2800 persons leaving schools in the coalfields the number entering the mines did not exceed forty. In mid-1948 the New South Wales fields were still short of at least 1200 underground workers.¢’ There seemed considerable

weight to the view presented in the meat union’s journal that ‘If some calamity happened tomorrow to wipe out the present 23 000 miners in Australia, I don’t believe another single 1000 men could be found to go down into those dark, filthy, dangerous bowels of the earth to take their places’ .2° Thus the miners argued strongly that the prerequisite to continuity of work and greater output was greatly improved conditions. In opposition the owners’ position hardened. BHP collieries in February 1948 began to reject job applications from men whom the company considered to have poor industrial records. Calls increased for sanctions against absenteeism and wildcats. The JCB for its part began to argue that award conditions be pegged to regular attendance at work and Gallagher tried to prohibit stopwork meetings in work-

ing hours. In February 1948 the coalfields reached the verge of a general stoppage when he suspended a FEDFA award after a ‘no strike order’ was defied. In April Gallagher revealed that he was un-

impressed by ACSEF arguments in the first partial hearing of its claims for long-service leave. In June a one-day stoppage in the northern district over machine cutting rates was averted by a sixhour conference involving state and federal ministers. Employers blamed the ‘cussedness of a few beardless youths’ who, rather than ACSEF, controlled the industry.¢? Then, in July-August 1948, the industry again went to the very brink of a general stoppage. It did so because the JCB, exasperated by ACSEF’s and its own inability to prevent production losses from wildcat disputes, made a determined effort to discipline miners involved. In doing so the Board clearly stepped off the sidelines and became an active partisan in the industry’s century-old guerilla warfare. It was backed, almost to the hilt,

by Gallagher, the industry’s exasperated arbitrator. The owners, while wholeheartedly supporting the Board and the Tribunal, were relegated to the background as the union confronted the twin creations of the 1946 Coal Industry Acts. An industry-wide showdown was averted only by conciliatory intervention by state and federal governments. Union, Board and Tribunal all drew morals from this

The run-in to the 1949 coal strike 261

rehearsal, and applied them the following winter in what turned out to be the confrontation from which no party drew back and in which the governments refused to conciltate. At this point it becomes necessary to understand the structure of ACSEF, which was a federation of eight independent-minded districts, including Broken Hill metal miners. ACSEF was organized into three tiers. The rank-and-file miner was a member of his colliery lodge and elected local delegates to his district’s board of management and district delegates to the central council. Representation at the latter, which met in Sydney, ranged, depending on size, from one to five delegates per district.2° In addition to delegates, ACSEF members elected a full-time president, vice-president and secretary to both their district boards of management and to the central coun-

cil. Between meetings these officials constituted the district and federal executives of ACSEF, dealing with day-to-day business as it arose. In order to understand the 1948 dispute, which is such an impor-

tant key to the 1949 strike, it is necessary to go back a little. In September 1947 negotiations between ACSEF and the JCB ended with the Board agreeing to support the union’s application to the Tribunal that a third week of annual leave be made unconditional. In return, ACSEF agreed to work back Saturdays and to implement its 1945 national convention’s formula for wildcat dispute settlement. This essentially involved reference of unresolved local disputes to district officers, prevention of pit-top meetings other than on safety issues Or On matters agreed to by the district executive, and of all strikes unless similarly endorsed by the district executive. In granting the extra week’s leave unconditionally (over the proprietors’ objections) Gallagher made it clear that “The order operates for this year alone. I do not intend to create a precedent for granting paid leave without conditions relating to work performed’.?! As usual, ACSEF proved unable to restrain its members—who argued, with justification, that provocative management tactics often lay behind disputes.74 Negotiations in February 1948 failed to improve matters from the JCB’s viewpoint so, in April, it declared its intention of applying to the Tribunal for more stringent provisions to be attached to payment for public and annual holidays, for the extension of pit-level conciliation machinery and for the banning of pit-top meetings in working hours. In response, ACSEF threatened strike action. After two days of negotiations the parties compromised. The Board shelved its application: the union promised to do its best to get rank-and-file approval of its 1945 grievance formula and to recommend acceptance of pit-top conciliation committees. In fact the rank and file continued to battle it out with management in the traditional way and ACSEF’s western and southern districts rejected the idea of pit-top committees. In the major northern district indi-

262 Division of Labour vidual lodges were left free by their executive to establish commit-

tees if they wished but, by the time this decision was reached in mid-July, the Board’s patience had been exhausted. Winter meant peak demand for fuel as well as weather-induced

interruptions to production—particularly in the open cuts. On 22 June 1948, in order to save coal, the JCB imposed ‘the most severe coal rationing in history’. This involved a 24-hour midweek ban on the industrial use of electricity and a 30 per cent cut in coal allocations to most industries. The JCB’s aim was to save consumption of some 39000 tons per week but, in the first weeks, the actual figure

was only 20000 tons per week. Cameron blamed the shortfall on ‘frivolous strikes and the failure of the miners’ leaders to discipline irresponsible elements in the industry’.?? As a result the Board made urgent application to the Tribunal to penalize strikers by (a) extend-

ing the qualification for payment for a statutory holiday from the working of one day either side of it to working five days either side; (b) basing payment for annual leave on a formula of one day’s pay for each fifteen consecutive shifts worked throughout the year— instead of one day for each fifteen days worked. The Board also demanded immediate implementation of an agreement to end petty stoppages, increased output where mechanical borers had been introduced, two shifts in some open cuts, and work on alternate Saturdays. ACSEF’s response was indignant. It felt its members were subject to a constant one-sided campaign in the media in which the entire fuel bottleneck was blamed on them. The owners’ role was conveniently ignored—as was the mismanagement of Sydney’s power generation in the inefficient and poorly planned Bunnerong station.3+4 The JCB’s application—which 1n any case should wait in the queue behind ACSEF’s 35-hour week claim—would, by causing further unrest, actually reduce fuel production. One day before Gallagher began hearing the application Premier McGirr and Senator Ashley,

Minister for Fuel, convened a meeting between ACSEF and the Board. Strict secrecy surrounded the course of discussions which were intended to lower the tension between the parties. When Tribunal proceedings commenced, however, tempers ran high. Board secretary, N.F. Stuart, clashed with ACSEF’s president, I. Williams, calling him a liar—whereupon the one-legged Welshman invited him to step outside. At another stage Williams traded insults with the miners’ number-one bogeyman on the coal companies’ side, H. Gregory Foster of Northern Collieries Ltd.3> Gallagher refused to accept ACSEF’s argument that he not proceed with hearings. He further admitted as evidence JCB estimates of strike-induced pro-

duction losses based on employer information hotly disputed by ACSEF. When, in response, the miners’ central council decided to

call stopwork meetings throughout NSW, Gallagher declared ACSEF leaders were guilty of ‘conspiracy’ and ‘a serious crime’. He

The run-in to the 1949 coal strike 263

forced Williams to reveal the names of the twelve councillors who made the decision and then forbade any ACSEF official to ‘advise, encourage, induce or incite’ members to stop work. When Williams argued that it was a basic right of unions to hold stopwork meetings, Gallagher gave vent to his indignation: If that is your view as a union leader, it is time the law of the land is altered so that control is assumed from union leaders. . .[ACSEF’s decision to stop work if the Tribunal hearings of the Board’s application continued] amounts

to conspiracy to prevent the ordinary course of justice. That is a serious crime against the law of the land. In the case of an offence of that kind, it is open to any man in the State to go to a chamber magistrate and lay information to bring the offenders before a Court of law.*°

Inevitably, ACSEF decided to defy Gallagher’s order. Aggregate meetings were planned for Thursday, 5 August. Spontaneous stoppages erupted at eighteen NSW mines on Monday 2 August and at ten more on Tuesday. This was in addition to stoppages for other reasons at seven further collieries. At the Tribunal on Monday, Gallagher asked the Board’s and owners’ advocates if they were going to apply for any order in the light of the day’s stoppages, but was told neither had received such instructions. In evidence on the Board’s holiday-leave application Stuart brushed aside ACSEF secretary G.W.S. Grant’s suggestions that the current application was not merely provocative but also, in view of

both increased production and of the northern district’s decision on conciliation committees, foolishly premature. The Board felt, rather, that ACSEF was encouraging the increase in petty stoppages in 1948. This was being done by a sometimes ‘very dirty’ campaign against the Board conducted through ACSEF’s weekly, Common Cause. Stuart’s reaction to the miners’ behaviour typified those of

the new administrators and the arbitrator in 1948 and 1949. They

could not believe that the miners could meet their own well-

intentioned efforts so rudely. Century-old reflexes were being construed as conspiracy. At a special conference that night in Gallagher’s chambers, the Board proposed that miners working the full ten days in each fortnightly pay period should receive an incentive payment. ACSEF representatives, led by ‘moderates’ Grant and W. Crook, refused to discuss the idea until the Board’s application to penalize strikers was withdrawn. On the 3rd, with the Board’s evidence completed, Gallagher declared that ACSEF had a case to answer. That evening, with the general stoppage little more than 24 hours away, the rescuing cavalry arrived in the form of Ashley and McGirr who called the Board and ACSEF officials to a conference which lasted until after midnight. In the morning details of settlement were given to Gallagher. The Board would ask Gallagher to adjourn its application

264 Division of Labour

sine die. In return the aggregate meetings were cancelled. ACSEF would recommend to all unions that second shifts be worked at open-cut mines where possible. ACSEF also agreed to give effect ‘within three weeks’ to the undertakings on internal discipline which it had offered back in May and which the northern district had been

about to implement when the Board made its holiday-leave application. Arrangements would be made on a district basis. . Responses were predictable. J.P. Tivey, president of ACMA, claimed “The “‘so-called’’ settlement of the coal crisis made the position slightly worse than it was before. It was complete capitulation’. E.J. Harrison, Acting Leader of the Federal Opposition, saw it as a ‘flagrant defiance of arbitration’ resulting in ‘a complete victory for the Communist-controlled Miners’ Federation’. ‘Every time a Com-

munist wagged his wand. . . Mr Chifley went into a panic and was prepared to violate the industrial laws in favour of appeasement at any price’. Ashley denied putting any pressure on the JCB to settle with the miners. Chifley thought it ‘a public disgrace that men who talked of law and order should call aversion to industrial trouble a farce’ but government views received generally scant regard in mass media coverage of the authorities’ ‘capitulation’ .37 Gallagher, still smarting from the apparent failure to discipline the

unruly workforce, introduced on 5 August a new procedure to be adopted in coal disputes. In future, owners or employees could refer

to the Tribunal any strike or lockout. If Gallagher decided there should be a resumption of work, an order would be issued. If this were disobeyed, the aggrieved party could institute proceedings under the 1946 Coal Acts which carried heavy penalties. This procedure was to be a key ingredient of the 1949 combustion. The 1948 winter crisis receded with ACSEF trying to link agree-

ment to working back Saturdays and an extra open-cut shift with its outstanding long-service leave claims. Conciliation committees were quickly established at most northern pits. The Coal Board announced that the seven-week old fuel restrictions would end on 13 August. The revelation that coal production had actually climbed by something like eight per cent during the rationing period clearly ran contrary to the picture painted by the Board when it decided to make its controversial holiday-leave application. Neither the media nor the Opposition parties cared to dwell on the point. Indeed the Sydney Morning Herald seemed genuinely bemused that rationing could be dispensed with in the light of the Board’s recurrent recent theme of doom and gloom based on the great ‘losses’ associated with unofficial

stoppages. All parties drew morals from this confrontation. The owners saw it as ‘appeasement’.?? Gallagher and the Board saw that legal means

must be matched by political will. The miners saw their right to strike still under threat in the future. Further, Gallagher’s alleged

The run-in to the 1949 coal stnke 265 earlier declaration that ‘the basket is now empty’*® confirmed in the minds of many miners that he was going the way of prewar tribunals

and lining up with the owners. Most felt that in future, as in the past, only clear demonstration of the miners’ willingness to resort to co-ordinated direct action would secure for them justifiable improvement in conditions. In the background, conservative politicans and the media emphasized the unruliness of the miners and, of course, as the Cold War heightened, the supposedly sinister motivation of ACSEF leaders. Public opinion at any time is likely to be impatient with demarcation disputes. Towards the end of 1948 ACSEF became involved in a particularly messy one with the AWU. Apart from their obvious political differences, the two unions were rivals in both coal and metal mining. AWU capture of workers at Yallourn and Leigh Creek open cuts and its current threat to do likewise at the Blair Athol open cut added a keen edge to the 1948 dispute which, again, has been neglected by other scholars but which provides several important clues to the great 1949 showdown. It arose over the organization of sixty workers constructing the 2.8-mile ‘Kemira’ Tunnel between the Mt Kembla and Mt Keira collieries on the southern NSW field. The BHP subsidiary, AIS, employed contractors who preferred to use AWU

labour on a continuous three-shift basis. Under threat of ACSEF industrial action the CIT arranged a series of conferences. Gallagher considered the tunnel to be ACSEF work but suggested that the two

unions solve the matter by negotiated agreement. ACSEF meanwhile took retaliatory action by endeavouring to enrol the AWU’s Leigh Creek members as well as metal miners at Mt Isa and Captain’s Flat who were disenchanted with their pacific AWU lead-

ership. The AWU essentially accepted that Kemira fell within ACSEF’s ambit but stipulated that the men shouldn’t leave the AWU until ACSEF could provide equal conditions and pay. The two unions were unable to agree upon an arbitrator, and the contrac-

tor blocked ACSEF recruitment efforts. ACSEF southern district stopwork meetings on 6 October determined on a district-wide stop-

page to begin the next day. It lasted four weeks and resulted in a progressive slow-down of south coast industry and several thousand layoffs.*!

In conference with the JCB, ACSEF agreed that, if given the work, it would accept three shifts and contract work: otherwise it threatened to extend the strike. The JCB issued a direction to AIS to cease work on the tunnel temporarily. AIS refused. On 20 October

the ACTU organized a conference with the two unions at which ACSEF was represented by its three NSW district executives. The AWU agreed to hand over the tunnelling in return for ACSEF withdrawal of its organizing efforts at Leigh Creek and in the metal mines. The ACSEF central council, however, saw no reason why it

266 Division of Labour should make any concession and refused to endorse its negotiators’ compromise—whereupon the Board adjourned its prosecution of AIS. As the threat of a state-wide strike loomed closer Chifley, Ashley

and McGirr became more closely concerned but a conference arranged by Chifley between the ACTU and ACSEF failed to reach a

settlement. ACSEF by now was hoping that Gallagher would be allowed to make a formal ruling on the matter, but both he and the governments considered the jurisdictional problems were too great. In any case Gallagher felt he had disqualified himself through expressing his opinion during the original negotiations that the work belonged to ACSEF. On 3 November aggregate meetings in the northern and western districts decided by a two to one majority to accept their leaders’ recommendation to extend the strike throughout the state. This escalation, which threw 200000 out of work in New South Wales and necessitated crippling restrictions on coal consumption,*2 was roundly criticized by other unions. Once again the two governments made the decisive move to break the deadlock. On 5 November the miners were ordered to return on

Monday the 8th. In return, an independent arbitrator would be appointed to determine the issue. ACSEF tried to insist on Gallagher but discussions over the weekend convinced its leaders that the stoppage was not over-popular among the rank and file and the central council called off the strike. In a departure from ACSEF practice the men returned without first voting to accept the recommendation at aggregate meetings. More significantly in terms of the 1949 general

strike, the governments, sensing the lack of enthusiasm of many miners as well as the widespread hostility of other unions to the enormous ramifications of a mere demarcation dispute, threatened ACSEF with extensive sanctions if the strike continued. The press reported that the miners’ leaders were informed that the governments would take the following action: ‘Repeal of miners’ privileges. Freezing of [ACSEF] funds. Provision of heavy penalties including

imprisonment. Preventing other unions from giving financial assistance’.*3 Further, exasperated government spokesmen revealed a new acerbity, at times rivalling the press in the virulence of their

denunciations.*4 It seemed clear that the ALP had exhausted its patience. Acting Premier J.M. Baddeley declaimed ‘I want to say that we have reached a stage where we cannot continue to tolerate the anti-Australian and trade-union smashing tactics of people who. . . preach the gospel of a foreign country’. The press reported

that other Ministers ‘were convinced that the strike was ordered

from Moscow as part of a plan to disrupt industry in the democracies’ .*>

The federal and NSW parliaments swiftly enacted suitable joint legislation to empower Judge Kelly to arbitrate the issue. On 31

The run-in to the 1949 coal strike 267

March 1949 Kelly surprisingly determined that the AWU should have exclusive rights. ACSEF officials, with some justification, saw

this as ‘a judgement on the morals of the Miners’ Federation and not in accordance with actual facts presented. It is, no doubt, a poll-

tical judgement given by one who is completely biased so far as [ACSEF] is concerned’.*© Local protest stoppages followed and a black ban was imposed by all six mining unions. The issue festered right through the 1949 strike. Subsequent negotiations ended in final agreement that ACSEF members perform the work. This lengthy dispute confirmed the ‘irresponsibility’ of the miners in the view of many outsiders and the inherent bias of the controlling and arbitral

bodies in the minds of the miners. While ACSEF noted that the prospect of a general stoppage had again induced government involvement in finding a compromise solution, the governments felt the threat of drastic legislation had, for the first time, forced the union into a speedy retreat.

When the head-on collision between ACSEF and government finally came in 1949 it was widely seen as the result of a communist

plot. The first thing to recall when considering factions within ACSEF and its nineteen-man central council is Gollan’s point that miners operated in an environment several steps to the left of the rest

of Australia. Hence an ACSEF ‘moderate’ was considerably more militant than most workers in other industries. Second, miners were militant long before the CPA existed—and in the 1940s they often

proved to be far more aggressive than any of their communist

officials. In 1949 the central executive consisted of two communists and one ALP member. The latter, George Grant, had succeeded the worn-out Orr as general secretary in 1940. Grant was dedicated to the Federation and placed ACSEF unity before any occasional personal differences of opinion: ‘Grant. . . was a militant and often critical member of the ALP’.4” Welshman Idris Williams had become the revered favourite of the Victorian district before election to the presidency in 1947. Vice-president W. (Bull) Parkinson of the southern district had emigrated from Durham. Both these CPA members were instinctive industrial militants. Neither could be classed as a

theoretician: they were unionists first and communists second. In the districts, the Queensland, Collie and Tasmanian officials could be described as ‘moderate’ in ACSEF terms. The southern and western NSW districts were headed by militants. The executive of the largest, northern, district was ‘moderate’ but its board of management had a ‘militant’ majority. The central council broadly reflected the district pattern with the militants usually enjoying a majority.*® ACSEF’s leading ideologue was not a miner and held no elected position. This was Edgar Ross, son of leading socialist, R.S. Ross. After eleven years working on the Barrier Daily Truth, Ross became editor of ACSEF’s paper, Common Cause, in 1935. Articulate and

268 Division of Labour energetic, Ross soon became the foremost spokesman on miners and

the coal industry in CPA circles: ‘those union officials who were members of the . . .CPA invariably deferred to his analysis’.49 In 1946 he also became ACSEF’s amenities officer and his prominence was confirmed in February 1949 when he was co-opted to the central council to help organize the campaign around the log of claims which led to the general strike. By this time he was a member of the CPA’s political committee and one of the party’s leading ‘leftists’. A survey of CPA records and journals reveals that party thinking on industrial relations in the coal industry followed the overall trend outlined in Chapter 10. At first endeavouring to restrain the miners, by 1949 Ross and other communists saw the turbulent coal fields as the ideal place for the ‘exposure’ of ALP reformism to the workers.

CPA records also clearly reveal, however, that the rank-and-file miner was hardly the malleable dupe of cunning CPA malevolence. At the central committee plenum at the end of May 1946, Sharkey

felt that the party should criticize Chifley for his recent statement that he would not nationalize the mines even if he had the power to do so. The most revealing and prescient comments came, however, from A. Watt of South Australia: The coal shortage hangs continually like a black shadow over the South Australian economic life, there 1s never more than a few days supply on hand. This situation is being used with tremendous effect by reaction in its campaign against the [federal] Labor Government, against the Party, against the trade union movement. Coal is never out of the South Australian news-

paper. ..it is an issue upon which the labour movement itself can be weakened and divided.

In February 1947, at the height of general union militance and impatience with Chifley, Edgar Ross made a lengthy address on the coal situation to the central committee plenum. Although in reality 1946 had not been, and 1947 would not be, noticeably dispute-prone Ross claimed “The miners are in a state of extreme restiveness, which is growing. . . the basic thing is that the miners are itching to have a

go’. In the southern district there were signs of a ‘blind strike psychology’ which placed communists in the difficult position of not being militant enough for their constituents. Ross’s overall conclusion that ‘we must budget for a general coal strike in the near future’ was in line with ACSEF’s stance at the time of the birth of the JCB and the CIT (above, p. 259). It also demonstrates how misleading it could be to confer predictive certainty on the statements of the man

whom anti-communist outsiders alleged to be the all-powerful Machiavellian schemer within ACSEF. In January 1948 the inability of the CPA leadership either to ‘control’ rank-and-file miners or to appreciate their mentality was clearly demonstrated in Dixon’s address to the political committee:

The run-in to the 1949 coal strike 269 If the miners, who frequently put on stoppages over the most futile issues, were to hold a stop-work meeting now and again against increases in prices, they would win very much support for miners amongst the people generally, whereas some of the strikes they put on merely antagonise important sections of the people.

Of more significance was Ross’s assessment of the overall situation the following month before the central committee. He was talking in the party context of the need for an East European-style ‘People’s Front’ and on the very eve of the party’s swing left into ‘adventurism’, involving open conflict with the ALP. While his forecast of a showdown with the JCB and the federal government again proved

somewhat premature, his address casts considerable light on the ‘communist plot’ thesis of industrial relations in coal. Overall, Ross’s appreciation of the situation seemed coolly objective. He felt the JCB had reached the stage where all it wanted was greater production. It

was adopting a much stronger posture—including refusing to negotiate during work stoppages. Ross was sure that the federal government had handed the JCB its new brief. On the other hand, Ross

argued that Australia needed coal and communists must maintain discipline and prevent stupid, sectional disputes. Unfortunately, miners were spontaneously responding to the JCB’s harder attitude, producing ‘some return to all sorts of sectional, anarchistic actions of a strike character’. There were ‘plenty of examples in [the] Federation [of] how not to strike’. Communist policy should be to drive for

better amenities, link the issue of higher production to this—and raise sharply the question of nationalization. There was a need to

accept that the economy needed more coal—which should be achieved not by working harder, but by reorganization and better conditions. However, because of hardening JCB and government attitudes, ‘I think we all feel there is going to be a sharp showdown in the coalmining industry and it will pose some very serious questions’.

At the May national congress, where the CPA formally adopted

the Cominform line and drew dangerous conclusions from the Queensland railway dispute,°° Ross appeared to cross an ideological Rubicon. In assessing the current situation he referred to Gallagher’s alleged remark that ‘the basket was getting empty’, noted how the miners were difficult to deal with when in restive mood and appeared to challenge earlier decisions to restrain the rank and file and try to prevent sectional strikes. His main message came in his conclusion: We recognise the truth of what Comrade Dixon told us at the discussion yesterday, that coal may well be the key to the Party’s fight against reaction in this country; that coal is a weapon, and that we must see that it is our weapon in ensuring that the mining union of this country plays a more and more important, even decisive role in the big issues, against crises and war,

270 Division of Labour the defeat of reaction and, in the final analysis. . .in accordance with the best traditions of the mining industry.

Perhaps affected by the emotional atmosphere of a pathbreaking national conference held, for a communist, at such an exciting stage of world history, Ross’s speech leaves the reader with the impression

that he welcomed, almost exulted in, the opportunity to be in the very vanguard of CPA efforts to combat the imminent economic crisis and to ‘expose’ the reformists to the working class. In 1948 and 1949 ACSEF communists were, of course, blinded by CPA misreading of the economic and political situation. Spurred on by Ross, they were anxious to ensure the best possible outcome for workers—and for the party—from the imagined impending economic crisis. In defending workers’ conditions against the imminent

onslaught from government and employers and in exposing the

ALP’s alliance with capitalism, the bargaining power of the miners—who were the traditional class vanguard—must be deployed effectively now, while full employment still existed. This view dovetailed with both the rank-and-file miners’ aggression and with the pessimistic long-run expectations based on their collective experience which, in the 1940s, they shared with virtually all other sectors of the community. ‘For the mineworkers, the sands are running out. The historic moment of their tactical advantage 1s about to pass, and they have still much to achieve.”>! As ACSEF moved to press its major demands in 1949, Ross was confident that only good could result for miners and for the party.

Faced with the increasing intransigence of employers, Board and Tribunal alike, the miners are going to fight, and the important thing 1s that we select the battleground. The job then is to seize the initiative, to present a positive programme on the way to win more coal, expose provocation, expose the fatal limitations of the Coal Board... In this campaign there will be no need for any defensive approach. . . we have the strong points. Firstly, there are the sins of the coal owners. . . [Secondly,] the justice of the miners’ claims. . . we are still getting more coal per head, far more cheaply, than any other country in the world...

Our policy provides a very sound basis for winning the united front among the mineworkers and at the same time differentiating ourselves as a Party from the policy being followed by the current Labour [sic] Government.

I doubt if there is a miner in the whole of the industry who does not support nationalisation, and yet we have, of course, the position that the Labour Government is opposed to nationalisation, while being nominally pledged to it. Is not the Labour Party, too, sponsoring, in effect, the [industry] rationalisation programme which is going to threaten the livelihood of the miners of this country ?>

The run-in to the 1949 coal strike 271

Naturally this attitude did not endear the CPA to the leading ALP ‘moderates’ in ACSEF. The two factions remained essentially untfied behind the miners’ long-standing industrial demands but 1948 saw the outbreak of open hostilities between them on other issues. At the CPA conference in May 1948, Parkinson made reference to the internal dissensions within ACSEF which were to assume significant proportions—particularly in the public eye—during the 1949 strike. Parkinson trenchantly criticized the leading ACSEF ‘moderates’, George Grant and northern district president W. (Bill) Crook. Rather than Grant being ‘a clown’ as many coalfield communists imagined, Parkinson argued that he was in fact ‘a traitor’ both to the Federation and to the working class. Grant adopted ‘backdoor tactics of collaboration with Gallagher and the Coal Board’ and typically, had deliberately fudged his submission to the Queensland miners of the central committee resolution that they support the railway strikers.°? As for ex-communist Crook, ‘not only has he got to be fought on Central Council, but he has got to be fought on the [Northern] Board of Management and, above all, in front of the rank and file’.

CPA members were not, however, the only aggressors. At the northern district elections held at the end of 1948 an ‘ALP Publicity Committee’ printed and distributed how-to-vote cards for the vicepresidency, favouring F.H. (Harry) Cockerill over Henry Scanlon,

the prominent communist incumbent, who lost by nineteen votes out of some 9000 cast. Crook and Cockerill now formed a wholly

‘moderate’ northern district executive with Secretary J.B. Simpson—whose integrity as returning officer had been challenged

by some communists. An investigation by the northern board of management exonerated Simpson but unanimously condemned the ‘ALP Publicity Committee’ and requested both the ALP and CPA to prevent their members using propaganda to influence internal union affairs. This unanimity lasted until the prosecution of Sharkey in March 1949. When the three-man federal executive recommended a stopwork protest the northern executive immediately published a counter-statement arguing that it could ‘see no reason why members. . . should be used as a political football by any political party’. A request by militants that a special northern board of management meeting be called to discuss the issue was refused by the northern executive with the result that ‘For the first time since the Northern District lockout twenty years earlier, leaflets openly attacking District officials and sponsored by the Communist Party began circulating in the pits’.>4

When, in the following month, McPhillips was jailed, the communist-led unions endeavoured to hold a national one-day stoppage. In accordance with this aim Williams and Parkinson recommended a 24-hour coal strike without any consultation with either

272 Division of Labour

Grant, the third member of the federal executive, with the central

council or with the rank and file. Their excuse for this unprecedented behaviour was the need for prompt action but their arbit-

rariness led to a storm of protests. The strike went ahead but ‘Lodges in all Districts, particularly in the Northern District, refused to obey the. . . directive and continued working’ .>> The final flurry of vituperation between the right and left wings occurred over tactics on the eve of the general strike itself. When the central council decided on 1 June by eight votes to seven to postpone aggregate meetings (below, pp. 277-8), CPA members distributed a

leaflet attacking the eight councillors concerned. In response the northern executive issued a statement strongly attacking the CPA for its political interference in ACSEF internal affairs. On 11 June Wil-

liams’ casting vote was needed on the central council to defeat a motion damning the CPA for issuing such leaflets in the midst of a dispute.°© The CPA’s offensive against the ALP had served to divide the ACSEF leadership and to arouse old suspicions of communists’ true motivations in the coalfields. But much water was to flow under the bridge before these divisions resurfaced in the context of whether

to call off the general coal strike itself. Any disagreements on the central industrial issue of the miners’ outstanding claims were merely tactical. ACSEF industrial strategy was determined at a national convention in August 1948. This convention inter alia reaffirmed the right

to strike and to hold aggregate and pit-top meetings—but it also drew up a ‘code’ to penalize stoppages over ‘trivial’ issues. This involved a series of progressive fines followed by suspension and then

expulsion from the ACSEF for those persisting in such ‘disruption’.>’ In early February 1949 the annual meeting of the central council got down to the business of planning ACSEF’s campaign around the convention’s main decisions. Although Crook and Grant

demurred somewhat at William’s views that 1948 had seen no

progress at all and that hence a ‘new approach’ was required, there can be no doubting that the council’s ‘general feeling was that immediate and decisive action was essential’. The mood of the miners was stressed by several councillors: “The rank and file are waiting for a clear lead on major claims and will certainly follow when it is given . . .now is the time for a showdown’; ‘[I]f we do not do something . . .quickly, then the rank and file will take matters into their own hands’.*8

The three legs of the ‘new approach’ were: (a) that direct bargaining rather than arbitration offered the best route forward; (b) that an intensive campaign should be commenced among ACSEF rank and file to involve and prepare them for the struggle; and (c) that a campaign should be conducted outside the coalfields to win support for the miners among other workers and the general public. On the first

The run-in to the 1949 coal strike 273

point the fourteen claims of the 1948 national convention were broken down into four demands: long service leave, a 35-hour week,

a 30s weekly wage increase and a reorganization of pit and town amenities. After endorsement by the craft unions, the Coal Mining Unions’ Council (CMUC), consisting of two representatives from each of the six mining unions, on 19 April served this log on the federal and state governments, the JCB, and the Combined Colliery Proprietors’ Association along with a demand that a conference be held on or before 19 May. Given the drama, obfuscation and myths which were subsequently to surround the miners’ strike it is important to stress here that this

log could in no way be described as a radical document.°? Longservice leave schemes existed in other industries, particularly the public service—but including notably since 1946 the Victorian state coalmine at Wonthaggi. New South Wales had led the way and in 1943 had extended long-service leave to all government and semigovernment departments in the state, thus covering workers in the

railways, tramways, buses, power stations, fire brigades, water boards, municipal councils, hospitals and abattoirs. All employees of

the JCB itself enjoyed long-service leave. The miners’ claim had gone before Gallagher first in early 1948. On shorter hours, miners had long acted as pacesetters and the 35-hour week, already established for ACSEF’s metal mining members at Broken Hill and in the New Zealand coal industry, was the obvious next step now that all. workers had in 1947 and 1948 joined the coal miners on a 40-hour week. In fact, hearings on ACSEF’s shorter hours claim had begun in August 1948. Dissatisfaction with the protracted hearings fed the call for a ‘new approach’ of direct bargaining. On the eve of negotiations the case was formally taken out of the list (18 May) at ACSEF’s request and with the approval of Gallagher. The wages claim was in

step with ACTU and metal union basic wage demands—and ‘the average effective earnings of miners were not significantly in excess of the average earnings of similarly skilled workers in Australia’ .©° The fourth demand, for reorganization, was headed provocatively ‘Nationalization’ but was phrased quite moderately in terms of the

need to provide better amenities. This demand was central to the rank and file’s dissatisfaction but, because of its general nature and

the difficulty of precise agreement on the issue, ‘its inclusion . . .must be seen as both a tactical and a publicity consideration’ .®! The second leg of the campaign had begun in March with meetings of lodge delegates leading to the formation in April of area committees to disseminate information and mobilize miners behind the claims. Dozens of meetings and thousands of leaflets inspired rank and file support on the coalfields. By late April attention was also being given to other unionists, notably the steelworkers and those in the major Sydney workshops which were ‘blitzed’ by ACSEF propa-

274 Division of Labour ganda. Street meetings and mass rallies on the Sydney Domain also

publicized the miners’ case. Among unionists the reaction was generally favourable. The ALP leadership proved another matter entirely.

In March the CMUC wrote to the two workers’ parties seeking formal backing for its programme. The CPA, of course, responded enthusiastically, pledging total support for the miners’ claims. It was soon very much to the fore in the campaign to win public support. As prospects of a stoppage increased so too did CPA activity. “The CPA organised meetings in streets, factories and public halls, billeted miners who came to Sydney to speak to meetings, and disseminated propaganda. Efforts were co-ordinated after a special meeting of 800 leading Party members on 23 June was held to hear how best they could help the miners’.® For its part, the ALP federal executive on 11 May unanimously carried a resolution advising the CMUC that ALP policy called for

settlement of industrial disputes by conciliation and arbitration. Hence the miners should submit their log to the CIT which had been expressly created for the purpose of dispute settlement in the industry. Earlier, in April, the federal government had launched an advertising campaign in newspapers to improve ‘discipline’ in mining and urging the use of conciliation instead of direct action.® The most important questions about the 1949 coal dispute con_cern the allocation of responsibility for its occurrence. In order to reach any conclusions it 1s essential to analyse events in the five and a

half weeks preceding the strike involving in total some twenty-five important conferences and sessions between and among the parties. The first three phases are straightforward : bargaining (19-30 May), conciliation (31 May—6 June) and arbitration (6—9 June). At the end of the arbitration phase the issue of ACSEF’s right to hold stopwork meetings to consider progress so far, including the imminent arbitra-

tion award on the long-service leave claim, aborted the handing down of that award (9-15 June). Finally, between the stopwork meetings’ decision to strike and the actual strike some unavailing last-ditch efforts were made to head off the dispute (16—26 June).

The major direct negotiations took place in three meetings convened on 19, 24 and 30 May by the JCB. The proprietors’ formal response to the CMUC’s log considered each claim in turn.®* In simple terms the proprietors rejected the claims for shorter hours and long-service leave. The point concerning amenities was met by the statement that the proprietors were co-operating with the JCB, and improvements were ‘being made just as quickly as manpower and materials will permit’. Only on wages was there any possibility of improvement. The proprietors first pointed to the pending ACTU claims for an increase in the basic wage to which miners’ wages were automatically linked. They then declared their readiness to reach a

The run-in to the 1949 coal strike 275

three-year binding agreement if a suitable incentive payment scheme based on increased productivity could be worked out. In return for such an agreement the unions must accept mechanical extraction of pillars; agree to lift output where power borers were installed; suspend compulsory retirement at sixty years of age; and accept ‘an independent authority’ to enforce rank-and-file discipline by fines and suspension. Senator Ashley and the Ministers for Mines from NSW (Baddeley) and Queensland (W.M. Moore) attended the opening meeting. Significantly this was the only time in the entire run-up to the strike that government representatives would agree to participate in the negotiations. No verbatim transcript was prepared but Ashley was reported® as having emphasized that the miners must submit their claims ‘in a constitutional way’ and that the government could not countenance direct action. He called for lower absenteeism and an end to trival stoppages. Despite later denials Ashley also indicated that the federal government would provide financial assistance if any agreement on long-service leave were to be reached.® In negotiations the proprietors softened sufficiently to recognize the principle of long-service leave—provided it were tied to continuity of service, that it in no way interfered in the production of coal, and was made dependent upon acceptance by the mining unions of the employers’ conditions concerning pillar extraction, power borer output, compulsory retirement and enforcement of discipline.®” The

unions for their part indicated they could see little problem with lifting power borer output but were anxious to see discussion focus unconditionally on their own four claims which had initiated the

bargaining process. After these had been satisfactorily settled, ACSEF and the other unions would be prepared to consider the question of increased production. Behind the scenes ACSEF leaders admitted that they would eventually have to accept pillar extraction

but in the meantime it presented them with a major bargaining weapon.°®8 .

JCB chairman Cameron, presiding over the bargaining, saw himself ‘cast in the role of conciliator’ and at the second meeting put forward proposals to break the deadlock. In fact, while representing some advance on the proprietors’ position, the Board’s proposals rested squarely on the identical premise of increased production. On wages the JCB offered an attendance bonus—to be increased where and when pillar coal was extracted mechanically. On long-service leave Cameron argued that entitlement should be tied to continuity of

employment. Hours should not necessarily be fixed at 40 for the term of the proposed agreement as the employers demanded. Rather

they should be altered if and when the CIT or Arbitration Court should so decide. Cameron saw these proposals as ‘valuable conces- | sions’ in return for which the unions must yield some ground. On

276 Division of Labour

compulsory retirement, Cameron agreed wholly with the proprietors. He felt also that the parties should devote their energies to devising a grievance procedure formula ‘which will eliminate pit

top meetings or at least, reduce them to the irreducable [sic] minimum’.®? An ‘essential prerequisite’ to implementation of the JCB proposals was ACSEF agreement to mechanical extraction of pillars wherever approved by a suitably representative committee. When the unions refused to accept this ‘compromise’, the JCB and the government were successfully to publicize their action as unreasonable rejection of an honest broker. ACSEF consideration of the details suggested that the JCB’s production-cum-attendance bonus would produce great disparities in earnings between pits because of natural variations in local geology, managerial efficiency and mechanization levels. Cameron’s long-service leave proposals were

inferior to the Wonthaggi scheme (and most others) both with respect to retrospective entitlements, penalties for breaking continuity of service and in the basic calculation of entitlement.7° In discussions at the ACSEF central council a move to reject the JCB proposals out of hand and immediately call aggregate meetings

on 31 May to consider a general strike was narrowly defeated— allowing the press to hail ‘a victory for the moderates over the militants’.”! In fact the council sub-committee selected to analyse the proposals also saw them as useless and the full council unanimously adopted its recommendation that unless there was a breakthrough at the next negotiations, aggregate meetings would be called

on 2 June. The next day the CMUC endorsed this proposal. The second paragraph of its resolution went to the heart of the difference

between the parties. The CMUC suggested that the next meeting with proprietors and JCB consider a general wage increase divorced from bonus considerations, and that long service leave be considered on its merits as a necessary and desirable condition of employment in the Coal Mining Industry, and not conditioned by an acceptance of proposals repugnant to the majority of mining workers. Further, that the hours question be considered now and not in the distant future. ’2

At the last negotiations on 30 May the proprietors’ spokesmen also criticized the JCB’s proposals—but naturally in much softer tones. Cameon’s inability to understand the CMUC’s insistence that discussion centre exclusively on its four-claim log was connected with his apparently genuine belief that he was acting as a neutral conciliator between two opposing parties. In reality he was a very interested

party who had long considered that any advance in the miners’ conditions must be linked to higher output. ACSEF clearly saw this and, believing that an economic crisis lay just over the horizon, was intent on using its strong bargaining position to wrest unconditional

The run-in to the 1949 coal strike 277

wage increases, shorter hours and long service leave now, while the going was good. The production-linked wage proposals of the pro-

prietors and JCB would rebound on the miners in the imminent slump and the referral of shorter hours to arbitration was seen as an obvious delaying tactic. ACSEF leaders were aware that pillar extraction was inevitable in the long run but were intent on holding back formal discussions on this until after they had gained concessions. Despite Williams’ fears,’* the craft unions refused to be party to applying pressure on ACSFEF to yield on this point. At one stage in discussions Cameron claimed Grant had opened the door a crack but the official report of proceedings indicates no other evidence of union support for conditional discussions of the log.’* Direct bargaining thus ended in deadlock. While the ACSEF central council met next day to consider its recommendation to the aggregate meetings due 1n 48 hours, the Coal

Tribunal summoned it. Gallagher’s aim was to head off both the aggregate meetings and the threatened general stoppage. Williams several times told him that negotiations had not entirely broken

down, ‘It is only the method of procedure’,’> but Gallagher threatened that the aggregate meetings alone would endanger all hopes even of long-service leave which the JCB and proprietors had accepted in principle and which the federal government had agreed to finance. The subsequent exchange between the two men demonstrates clearly ACSEF’s determination to use its bargaining power to

cut through its opponents’ delaying tactics. All Gallagher’s arguments for postponing the meetings or at least holding them at the weekend ran into this brick wall. In the end he lost his cool: I have this to say: that, if you stop on Thursday and anybody in this country, the Government or any other authority, gives you long service leave, I resign immediately out of this Office. I shall never deal with your claims again. That is on the record now and I shall make that public. If the Government gives you long service leave after a stoppage on Thursday, it sells me—and that 1s going to be announced over every wireless station in this country. Take it on if you want to!76

Gallagher soon regretted his outburst and that evening recalled the

ACSEF councillors to express his regret. He then intimated that, given the proprietors’ and federal government’s position on longservice leave, if ACSEF would postpone the aggregate meeting and submit the claim to the CIT, “he could almost guarantee that, subject to proper safeguards for continuity of service, it would be granted, although, of course, not necessarily to the extent or in the manner sought by the Federation’.’” The council had only agreed to meet Gallagher again by eight votes to six. A motion next morning to fall in with his suggestion and postpone the aggregate meetings for two weeks to 16 June squeaked through by the even narrower margin of

278 Division of Labour eight to seven, with two known northern district ‘militants’, J. Comerford and H. Woods, among the majority. It was this decision that produced a CPA leaflet criticizing the eight majority councillors for being sidetracked (above, p. 272). Gallagher’s compulsory conferences were convened after he had specifically agreed to deal with long-service leave on its merits and without condition.’® His efforts at conciliation failed completely on 2 June. Here ACSEF made its first concession by offering to withdraw its wage claim and to continue working a 40-hour week for a year if

the owners would accept the ‘principle’ of a 35-hour week. The employers rejected this unless it were tied to union acceptance of mechanical pillar extraction and an end to compulsory retirement. When the long-service leave claim moved into arbitration on 6 June the militants’ case on the futility of arbitration was greatly strengthened. It was now revealed that (a) the proprietors completely withdrew their acceptance of the principle of long-service leave; (b) the JCB’s detailed proposal was even less acceptable to the unions than its original one and included a provision that even one unauthorized absence from work (including a strike) would preclude that whole

calendar year from being counted for long-service leave; (c) the federal government no longer agreed to support financially a longservice leave scheme. Stuart revealed that ‘All [the government] is prepared to do 1s to assist with appropriate financial and legislative action to ensure that the cost of the scheme should be borne by the Coal Industry; not that any part of it should be borne by the general taxpayer’.’? The proprietors and the Board defended their new position on the grounds that in the earlier, direct negotiations their proposals had been made ‘without prejudice’. This was despite the fact that the Board had just circulated each and every mineworker with a pamphlet®® summarizing the May negotiations and telling them of the owners’ acceptance of the principle and of Ashley’s declaration of government financial support. Gallagher considered the employers’ view that the long-service leave claim should be completely refused to be ‘absolutely fantastic and ridiculous’ and rebuked Stuart for endeavouring to ignore the effects of the circulation of the Board’s pamphlet. The proprietors’ obstructionist attitude was in fact demonstrated at the very outset of the conference when they moved to adjourn proceedings in the light of the unions’ intent to hold aggregate meetings on 16 June and of the fact that disputes were currently preventing production at six northern collieries. Gallagher temporarily sidestepped the issue by reminding the employers that, rather than relying on him to take the

initiative, they could apply for orders restraining a stoppage or directing a resumption of work. Ominously for the future settlement of the long-service issue, Gallagher promised to deal ‘immediately’

with any such application and indicated that any order resulting would be directed against ACSEF leaders.

The run-in to the 1949 coal strike 279

Chifley himself was involved in the discussions with the JCB and Ashley®! and he must have been aware of the likely impact on min-

ers’ opinion of the government’s withdrawal of Ashley’s earlier financial commitment. Chifley’s inflationary fears combined with a growing determination not to make concessions to the miners. An

indication of his attitude at this time emerged in answer to a parliamentary question by Menzies on 1 June before the CMUC had announced its decision to call off the stopwork meetings planned for the next day. Suggestion of such a stoppage seems to me complete and absolute folly, and perhaps something worse than folly. . . Many benefits have been conferred upon

the industry. A considerable amount of money has been expended by the Joint Coal Board [not only to increase production] but also with the object of improving the conditions of the employees 1n the industry. J admit that at one time those conditions sadly needed to be improved, but that fact affords no justification for a stoppage of coal production’.®2 (my italics)

The italicized passages suggest that the Prime Minister considered

that (a) some hidden motivation lay behind the miners’ policy; (b) recent advances in working conditions had been gifts from the government rather than reflections of miners’ bargaining power; and (c) while conditions might have been bad in the past there was no real need to improve them at present. On 8 June Gallagher continued his efforts, adjourned on 2 June, to conciliate on the other clams. Again the employers refused to yield

an inch, simply shunting the miners towards the arbitration stage. They continued to reject the proposal that if the owners accepted the 35-hour principle, the CMUC would accept working 40 hours for twelve months with payment at overtime rates for the extra time.®3 The further indication that the unions were prepared to withdraw the 30s wage claim to settle the hours claim was similarly ignored.®* Given the conspiracy theory of the strike’s origins it 1s highly significant that the proprietors’ insistence that their original ‘Statement’ of 19 May was the ‘bedrock’ of their position drew growing antagonism from conservative craft unionists and from ACSEF’s ‘moderate’

secretary, Grant. T. Herron of the Federated Mining Mechanics Association saw the unions placed in a familiar position, 1.e., “con-

fronted with the blank refusal—no, which has been the reply to every industrial approach that has been submitted to this industry over the past years. Ever since it has been an industry it has been a fight for supremacy—whoever has the whip hand for the moment shall be the winners’.8> When Gallagher exhorted the CMUC not to

consult members during working hours N. Hindmarsh (Deputies and Shotfirers’ Association) replied, It does not matter what the leaders of the union think, the rank and file have got to be considered. . . we called [off the original aggregate meetings] be-

cause we believed sincerely that the owners would be prepared to con-

280 Division of Labour ciliate. . . we got hell over the matter. . . This morning we met a blank refusal [from the proprietors]. On top of that we had the fiasco yesterday of the Coal Board repudiating what they said at previous conferences. When the rank and file get hold of this they will do one thing, and the leaders will have no power to prevent them stopping production. Nobody would have been any more eager than I was to negotiate or consult or do anything to get over difficulties. I do not want a tragedy on the coalfields where the country is going to be held up to ransom. But what can I do— What can Williams do— What can Grant do? We have been sold a pup, and sold one badly. . . Today [the owners] are adopting the same attitude as in 1928, and the rank and file will take it in their own hands.*°

These declarations were met by Gallagher’s insistence that work

should not be interrupted by aggregate meetings. He did seem, however, to be touched by Hindmarsh’s heartfelt declaration, and subsequently made a final appeal to the owners. Don’t you think it is possible to negotiate, even if you get no further? He [Hindmarsh] does understand the men—perhaps we do not. We do criticise union leaders and they are very often condemned, but they understand the rank and file and the psychology of their men and I suppose that is a big difficulty that they have got to deal with.87

The proprietors’ representatives were unmoved. The conference adjourned without any progress having being made. The next day, arbitration proceedings on the long-service leave

claim were continued with all three parties sticking to their guns. The employers simply refused to make any submissions and, as in the 1948 hearings, emphasized that the general rule was for arbitration tribunals to refuse to award long-service leave where it was opposed by employers.?® ACSEF attacked both the proprietors’ intransigence and the inflammatory effect on the rank and file of the JCB’s change of front. The JCB argued that it was impossible to take ACSEF seriously when it suggested that long-service leave would help alter miners’ industrial attitudes and behaviour. At the end of the day Gallagher gave the clearest possible indication that, given JCB opposition and government ambivalence, he would be unable to grant a Wonthaggi-type scheme®? when issuing his draft award on 14

June. The proprietors, at the close of proceedings, indicated their determination to take up Gallagher’s invitation, three days earlier, to apply for a no-strike order. On 10 June Gallagher began hearing the employers’ application.

Proceedings were adjourned until 14 June on the grounds that ACSEF’s central council had not met to consider its position since the employers decided to commence their action. On 11 June the council decided to go ahead with the aggregate meetings as planned, ‘to deal with a recommendation for a general stoppage on Monday, June 27th, failing satisfaction of our claims’.?° In the contemporary

The run-in to the 1949 coal stnke 281

hysteria surrounding the dispute this resolution, carried by ten votes to six, was widely portrayed as a wilful and provocative rejection

of the arbitral process. Viewed dispassionately across the years, ACSEF’s decision seems inevitable.

It will be useful briefly to recapitulate events as seen through ACSEF eyes. The proprietors remained industrial Bourbons. Amenities were generally appalling. As for pay, hours and leave, in 1948 ‘the basket was getting empty’ and the JCB and CIT were taking a noticeably harder line. An initial long-service leave claim had stalled before the Tribunal—as subsequently did ACSEF’s shorter hours

case. The rank and file were pressing for further advances and, together with their leaders, they believed the current boom had not

long to last. ACSEF’s national convention had set out the list of claims; the central council had prepared a course of action and determined on a ‘new approach’ which would bypass the hardening arteries of arbitration and allow free use of market forces. Negotiations

broke down but, on the eve of ACSEF turning to direct action to induce government intervention and bring the JCB to its senses, Gal-

lagher stepped forward with a promise that he would grant longservice leave. Reluctantly, ACSEF postponed its aggregate meetings and formally entered conciliation. There, the owners and the JCB

backtracked from their earlier negotiating stance and the government retreated from its financial promises. CIT proceedings ended with ACSEF certain to gain an arbitrated long-service leave scheme some distance short of that already enjoyed by Wonthaggi miners.

No progress had been made on hours, wages and amenities. The Federation had been sucked back into arbitration and faced the usual delays and prevarications—and the virtual certainty that the employers would legally challenge any hours gain which might conceivably be forthcoming from the 35-hour case still notionally before

the CIT. In the circumstances, ACSEF decided not to formally lodge its wages claim for arbitration.?!

En route to this highly unsatisfactory position ACSEF had refrained from direct action. The whole, closely recalled history of coalmining demonstrated that might proved right. The miners’ only gains had been achieved by industrial muscle. Pulling punches was fatal. In miners’ eyes the employer and JCB long-service leave retractions were certainly, and the government’s was possibly, connected with ACSEF’s decision to hold off the original aggregate meetings of 2 June.?2 By the end of the long-service leave hearings

the rank and file were in a turmoil.?? Aggregate meetings would demonstrate the miners’ power, and would allow the members to decide whether to continue down the obstacle-strewn arbitration path. Yet, outrageously, the very right to hold a stopwork meeting was now under challenge. The proprietors who had been allowed to use their bargaining power so cruelly in a fifteen-month lockout in

282 Division of Labour 1929-30, were being encouraged by the arbitrator and supported by the administrative authority to apply for an order to prohibit use of labour’s collective strength to secure justified advancement in working conditions before the economic bubble burst. This, I believe, is the key to the 1949 coal strike—the climax of the 1948—49 drive by the Tribunal and the Coal Board to counter market

forces by taking away from the miners their right to strike. Certainly, in the fuel-short 1940s, government and ACSEF leaders alike had

time and again sought to prevent ‘wildcat’ disputes on ‘trivial’ issues—but never once before 1948 had there been a serious challenge to ACSEF’s right to consult its members in stopwork meetings and then to follow the elected path of action. Yet, within a year of appearing on the scene, Gallagher had begun whittling away at the right of both ACSEF and the craft unions to take direct action. In June 1949, apart altogether from the bogging down of its legitimate industrial claams, ACSEF was forced by its tradition as well as its inclination to take a stand and to demonstrate its determination to retain the weapon which constituted its industrial strength. There

can be little doubt that virtually any other union with a militant tradition faced with a similar ultimatum in the 1940s would have responded in like fashion. One further point should be made. ACSEF could not see into the future. If its central council had known that the government would not seek to conciliate in the face of disruption of fuel supplies but

would instead adopt unprecedented punitive action against the

miners to crush the strike, then perhaps ACSEF would have adopted a different tactical position. In reality it believed it was acting from a position of unassailable strength for it had every reason

to believe that the government would be anxious to cut short the disruption. There is no need to bring in the communist plot thesis to explain the council’s decision of 11 June. The owners’ position 1s also perfectly explicable. In accordance with their long tradition they presented an unyielding front. As often happens in tight labour markets, the employers’ intransigence was concealed in public relations terms by the fact that the unions were the party seeking to upset the status quo. In the events that followed, the owners were able to sit back while the government, JCB and CIT did their work for them.

What really needs explaining at this point in the dispute is the attitude of Gallagher. His first response to the central council’s decision was to declare that he would not issue the promised draft longservice leave award on 14 June. This in itself was hardly likely to calm the troubled waters and lessen the likelihood of the aggregate

meetings deciding to take strike action. Gallagher was only flesh and blood of course, and his pride and emotions were obviously involved—as his outburst on 31 May had clearly demonstrated. The

The run-in to the 1949 coal strike 283

transcripts of May—June 1949 seem to convey a certain asperity on Gallagher’s part when dealing with Idris Williams, suggestive of a personality clash not conducive to the former’s role as conciliator. On 15 June Gallagher ordered all miners to work on 16 June, and

forbade members of the ACSEF central executive and council to ‘advise, encourage, induce or incite’ their rank and file to stay away

from work. The Tribunal’s decisions in July 1948 and June 1949 represented a dramatic departure for the mining industry. The communist plot thesis has prevented this fact from being clearly recognized. Indeed the proper way of looking at the decisions has been completely inverted. A study of the relevant transcripts reveals that Gallagher did not show any hesitation or reluctance in making his decision. He directly

challenged the miners’ right to strike. He clearly and explicitly accepted responsibility for all ramifications of his actions. He refused to accept proffered devices which would have allowed him to delay casting down the gauntlet on this sensitive issue while simultaneously not appearing in any manner to give way to the miners’ threaten-

ing posture. In brief, Gallagher met the miners head on. Far from acting as industrial fireman, he added to the intensity and spread of the flames.

The Tribunal first dealt with ACSEF (on 14 June). One possible contributory factor to Gallagher’s stance was that, immediately prior to these proceedings, he met the CMUC members and learnt of their decision earlier that day to recommend to their constituent unions that aggregate meetings be held on 19 June, 1.e., at the weekend. At this time the CMUC was composed of ‘four communists, four right wingers, and three left wingers’.?* Unknown to Gallagher, its decision had in fact been reached by the narrowest of margins, six to five. In discussion with the CMUC, Gallagher was warned by the craft union officials that their executives might well reject the proposal. Hindmarsh of the Deputies’ Association, who had actually moved the conciliatory resolution, specifically revealed doubts that his rank

and file would accept the recommendation.?° Nevertheless, Gallagher may have optimistically expected a split in the union front. There 1s no way, however, that this could have been thought to have affected ACSEF’s stance. In fact, before he issued his no-strike order

on the 15th, the craft union representatives had made it clear that Gallagher’s approach in the ACSEF proceedings had resulted in the CMUC switching its stand and unanimously recommending on the night of 14 June that all unions hold joint aggregate meetings on the 16th.”6

During the hearings on the no-strike application on the 14th Gallagher aroused further resentment by apparently encouraging the proprietors’ representative to call Williams, who was representing ACSEF, as a witness. The aim was to force him to reveal the names

284 Division of Labour of those supporting the central council strike resolution with a view to subsequent prosecution if the order were disregarded.?’ Later on Williams emphasized ACSEF’s right to consult the membership and argued, If the application is granted it can do no more than create bigger disunity than exists, create discord, and add chaos to the coal industry. . . I say in all honesty and all sincerity that we will never sell the right to strike. . . The Trade Union would become non-existent if we sold that right.

Here the essential difference between union and Tribunal crystallized: THE CHAIRMAN: You are asking me to authorise you to hold a stopwork meet-

ing on Thursday so that you can put a resolution to the men that they should go on general strike? MR WILLIAMS: I am not asking you to authorise anything.”8

Later, Gallagher accepted full responsibility both for inviting the proprietors to apply for an order and for its likely effects, I hate the thought of having to issue orders and prosecutions being brought against people, but I think the country has to be protected, and if the only way to protect the country is to enforce the law, it is absolutely necessary

that the law should be enforced. I take the full responsibility for these proceedings and of anything that may happen as the result of these proceedings’.??

If the country is going to be faced with ruination through making the order, that is not a proper ground for refusing to make it. If the community is going to be frightened to have its own laws enforced, then I am afraid we are not going to remain a stable community very much longer. !

In this mood the tribunal had no interest in casting around for means of drawing back from the brink. He rejected Grant’s arguments that since this was an interstate dispute he did not have the power to ban meetings. He also brushed aside reasonably credible arguments pre-

sented as to why aggregate meetings must be held on a working day.101

On the 15th Gallagher assumed his role as chairman of the Central Reference Board in order to deal with the craft unions. The striking

feature of these proceedings is the manner in which he genuinely could not understand the repeated pleas of craft unionists that his no-strike order was simply adding fuel to the fire. Hindmarsh, very much a ‘moderate’, put the case clearly: MR HINDMARSH: Right through this we have said it was possible to negotiate to

avoid a stoppage; we had in the back of our minds that we have the legal right, the right to withhold our industrial labour if we wish. . . and the mere fact that the Miners’ Federation were deprived of the right of determining things in their own way, well. . . it welded together the whole of the unions in the mining industry on the one point [i.e.] have we the right to determine

The run-in to the 1949 coal strike 285 when we shall go to the rank and file and what we shall say to the rank and file. We said yes. . .Any attempt to coerce the miners will only make the position worse than It is today, it is like throwing petrol on a fire that is just simply smouldering. THE CHAIRMAN: With your knowledge of the industry you might be able to understand that, but frankly I cannot. . . How can anybody feel affronted when he is just asked to do what an ordinary citizen does, go to work?!

The citation of instances where the rank and file had rejected his no-strike orders made no difference. We are left, with another ‘moderate’ deputy, W. Dutton, wondering at Gallagher’s motivation. I cannot for the life of me see how you are going to stop that [aggregate] meeting taking place. Is there anything known in this country that can prevent the loss of that 50 000 odd tons of coal tomorrow? If not, can we foresee

the future of any order you might make; if it is going to be futile, predestined to be futile, why make it. . . .!

Why indeed? It is difficult to provide confident answers to the deputy’s despairing question. Obviously industrial relations in coalmining would tend to make a saint swear—and Gallagher was an out-

sider. Certain parallels with his contemporary, Judge Kirby, who confronted the wharfies in April and May come to mind here. Both were recent newcomers to arbitration and both initially enjoyed a good run from powerful unions possessed of immense bargaining power in strategic industries at a time of labour shortage. Neither could be expected to appreciate fully the traditional bitterness and depth of feeling in their turbulent industries. Both considered that they were bestowing great improvements on the workers and came to resent the apparent lack of gratitude for these ‘gifts’ and the constant demands for more. Reasonable men, middle-class lawyers and ALP sympathizers, they viewed with concern the apparent failure of the unions to place themselves solidly behind the common goal of economic growth and full employment. In the growing tension and

hysteria of the Cold War they came to suspect the motives of the main union leaders. Assertions of the independent role of the rank and file in the turbulent 1940s doubtless appeared to them as fairly faint and largely incomprehensible static against the steady and strengthening pulse emitting from so many anti-communist beacons.

It was time to take a stand. In Gallagher’s case in particular, the federal ALP government agreed wholeheartedly.

The overriding concern with the strikers’ motivation and the general belief in communist manipulative powers distorted both contemporary and subsequent analysis of the final eleven-day phase before the commencement of the strike on 27 June. Asa result the very

significant concessions made by the mining unions in last-minute negotiations have been largely ignored—along with the continued intransigence of the proprietors and the far more suprising refusal of

286 Division of Labour

the JCB to explore further the real prospect of averting the total disruption of coal production. Indeed, on the eve of the dispute the Board spurned an opening on mechanized pillar extraction which it had previously seen as the key to settlement of the dispute. Mineworkers in all districts totally ignored Gallagher’s prohibition of their aggregate meetings and the well-publicized threat to prosecute their leaders. Very heavy rain, presaging widespread flooding, affected attendance in New South Wales. Overall, approximately 39 per cent of the workforce voted by 7995 to 882 for a general strike if no satisfaction was achieved on the log of claims. Every district ex-

cept tiny Collie in Western Australian voted in favour.!°* For reasons already emphasized, the overwhelming support for a strike was predictable. Deery, however, in his authoritative thesis makes two points about the meetings which require comment. He first perceives a dichotomy between the expectations of communists and other mineworkers. The former, he feels, must have known that the strike would not be ‘short, sharp [and] decisive’ as Williams, for example, claimed. The explicit basis for this view is the lessons provided by the 1948 Queensland railway strike. To this may be added the statements of CPA leaders in 1948 and 1949 regarding the likely

reaction of the reformist leaders of the ALP to future industrial disputation. !©

Three brief comments may be offered in ascending order of im-

portance. First, Deery’s argument conjures up a picture of farsighted and united CPA leaders. In fact there is evidence that CPA councils were divided on the wisdom of the stoppage itself, with Sharkey in particular opposed to the idea.!°© Equally, whatever their ear-

lier public declamations along approved Cominform lines about the likely ferocity of ‘reaction’s response, communist leaders seemed as taken aback by the federal government’s onslaught as any of the strikers. Second, and more importantly, concern with communist expectations raises the whole question of their influence with the non-communist majority. By implication Deery exaggerates it in this instance and suggests that had communists offered an opinion that the strike would be long and bitter, the outcome of the rank-and-file vote would have been different. There is little either in the miners’ history or in the run-up to the 1949 strike to support this view. As it was, all commentators agreed on the unity of purpose of miners, ALP and CPA alike. Finally, Deery’s view implicitly misinterprets ACSEF leaders’ understanding of the position. In my view William’s statements at the Adamstown aggregate meeting should be taken as the literal truth of his and other ACSEF officials’ perceptions of what was going to happen. We are not asking you for a general strike. If members demonstrate they are

unified and strong, I think the authorities will settle this within a week. Nobody wants a strike. . . If they are prepared to settle, we are. Eleven days

The run-in to the 1949 coal strike 287 [between now and the proposed strike] will give the authorities a chance to protect the community’s interest. !°

In other words, given the miners’ bargaining strength and the reasonable concessions which ACSEF leaders knew they were prepared to

make in negotiations in order to gain better long-service leave and the promise of a shorter week, the issues at dispute would, as in 1945, 1946, 1947 and 1948, be settled quickly as the government moved to avert a fuel-induced economic crisis. In all likelihood no stoppage would be necessary. If the authorities did take the dispute to the brink, they would eventually pull back before the ensuing general strike went on for very long. Even some anti-communist miners believed the ACSEF communists did not want or expect a general strike. !° Deery’s second point is more tangible—and easier to deal with. He says, ‘if there is some uncertainty as to whether the communist leaders actually deceived [ACSEF and other union] members over the nature of the struggle, there can be little doubt that they misled members over the basis of the struggle, namely the log of claims’. (emphasis in original).!°? His argument here partly concerns the ‘lopsided picture’ of the nature and course of negotiations which he alleges was presented by Williams and others in ACSEF’s Common Cause and at the aggregate meetings. Deery’s opinion concerning the ACSEF president’s ‘intransigence’ in negotiation and before the CIT seems to rest on the fact that few of the CIT transcripts were available to him.!!° However he sees the alleged misreporting of negotiations as being ‘less important than the speakers’ frequent failure to inform the rank and file that Gallagher did intend to grant long service leave’.!!! He offers no evidence for the obvious implication that the mineworkers did not know of Gallagher’s intention—which 1s surely an incredible proposition given the avalanche of media public-

ity. Rather he goes on to argue that the strike could have been avoided if aggregate meetings, held at the weekend, had been advised by their union leaders to postpone strike action at least until after the CIT handed down its long-service leave decision and had completed its 35-hour week hearings. Apart from its obvious tauto-

logical implications and the implicit wisdom of hindsight, this ignores the actual course of the negotiations, the incendiary nature of Gallagher’s no-strike order and the mood of the rank and file. Im-

mersed in a tradition of militance which included recent general strikes in 1938, 1940 and 1945, preparations for general strikes in 1946, 1947, 1948 and, most intensively, for the preceding four months, ACSEF members were convinced that direct action was the

only way to smash through the roadblock of employer and JCB opposition to miners’ advancement. ACSEF and craft union leaders of all political persuasions were, as we shall now see, quite prepared to call off the strike if any concessions were offered to them. Deery

288 Division of Labour

fails to place sufficient emphasis on this central fact which constitutes the final response to all who have argued that the communist officials wanted a strike, come what may.!!2 The day after the rank-and-file strike decision, the CMUC decided that, since ACSEF represented 78 per cent of mineworkers but only had two delegates out of twelve on the CMUC, the dispute should be

controlled by a committee consisting of the CMUC and ACSEF’s central council. During discussions of arrangements to publicize the

miners’ case it was noted that Sydney stations were refusing to accept miner-sponsored radio talks. The CMUC also reaffirmed its willingness to confer with anyone on the claims at issue. Thus, if the

general strike occurred, the onus must rest with the ‘responsible

authorities’. Surprisingly, in view of the impending consequences, no immediate attempt was made to bring the parties together. The federal government simply depicted the dispute as a communist plot, damned the miners, and declared that their claims could only be considered

within the arbitration process. From the outset the public debate was conducted in terms of a sinister communist plot to overturn

Australia’s natural, historic method of settling industrial differences—rather than, more accurately, focussing on how the arbitration system in full employment retarded workers from making gains otherwise inevitable if they were allowed free use of their market power. ACSEF calls for the federal government to bring the parties together were ignored. Chifley accused the miners of ‘base ingratitude’ and in a joint statement with McGirr referred the unions

back to the CiT: ‘No threats or strikes, however prolonged, will influence the Government’s policy in this matter’. Menzies offered full Opposition support for any legislation to defend the community against this ‘Communist organised threat’. Although a dozen militant federal unions sprang to ACSEF’s support, C.W. Anderson,

NSW Labor Council president, gained wide publicity when he voiced the line which was to become increasingly common in ALP and ‘moderate’ union circles, ‘I ask the decent elements within the [Miners’ F]ederation to prevent their organisation being smashed by a few working-class traitors who are called Communists’. !!3 The conservative media generally had a field day, gleefully pointing out the twin horns of the dilemma facing the ALP in an election year, publicizing charges of a communist plot, reflecting on the likely recessionary impact and emphasizing just how many other workers would be hurt by the stoppage.!!4 In public relations terms the worst aspect of these eleven days for the miners was the draconian restrictions On power usage imposed even before the strike began. Low coal stocks and widespread flooding hampering coal transport may have justified the decision but, as CMUC complaints suggest, the restrictions proved damaging to the miners’ cause among the

The run-in to the 1949 coal stnke 289

general community. A later commentator, unsympathetic to the strikers, viewed the restrictions as ‘seemingly provocative’ and ‘premature’.!!5 By 22 June 130000 workers had already been stood down in NSW industries and cuts in cooking, lighting and transport had been imposed. Finally, ACSEF leaders laboured under the enormous disadvantage of not being able to reveal the nature of the concessions offered on pillar extraction. Fearful lest they appeared to

their rank and file to be selling out on this emotive issue, ACSEF successfully excluded the press from this part of the eleventh-hour conference.!!¢

Six whole days passed after the aggregate meetings before the

ACTU leaders appeared in Sydney to offer their services as mediators. Clarey and Monk were accompanied by NSW executive members King, J.H. Shortell and Anderson. After reminding them of the full ACTU executive’s endorsement in July 1948 of ACSEF’s

hours and long-service claims and nationalization objective, the CMUC made clear the minimum concessions which would allow the stoppage to be averted: (1) A Long Service leave Scheme no less favourable than that now applying at Wongthaggi [i.e. six months for twenty years service].

(2) The acceptance of the principle of a 35-hour week with Unions continuing to work 40 hours for a period of twelve months. Additional hour each day to be paid for at penalty rates’.!!’

The seasoned ACTU negotiators ran into the proverbial brick wall when they approached the JCB. The initial response was in accordance with the general line pursued by Board, Tribunal, governments and media alike i.e. the CMUC should return to the arbitration sys-

tem: direct negotiations could not settle the dispute. When the CMUC insisted, a conference with the JCB was arranged on 25 June

but, although the unions made further concessions, Cameron refused to concede an inch. No transcript exists but the pattern of negotiations is clearly revealed in references in transcripts at the compulsory conference convened by the CIT next day at the formal

request of Cameron who was acting in response to the urging of Monk. At these last-ditch conferences the unions reiterated that they —

would drop their wage claim and would work a 40-hour week for considerably more than a year if the shorter week were accepted in principle.!!8 Even more significantly they now offered to get down to formal and serious discussion of mechanical extraction of pillars, and

of ending compulsory retirement at sixty years if their two basic claims were conceded.!!? Since in earlier negotiations Cameron and Stuart had both indicated that pillar extraction was the central issue

on which they required ACSEF concessions!?°—and in an allstations broadcast on 22 June Cameron had described it as ‘the rock upon which [negotiations] split’?!?!—the JCB’s obduracy on 24—26

290 Division of Labour

June is most surprising. It simply argued that the disputed claims should be resolved by arbitration.

During the final negotiations the employers rejected outright union compromise proposals which went far to meet their demands at the conferences between 19 May and 2 June. Hindmarsh, the moderate deputies’ leader, felt that, 1n traditional fashion, they were taking the union concessions as a sign of weakness.!22 Although sooled on by the Daily Telegraph, the owners had avoided the potential public relations trap of prosecuting ACSEF leaders for holding the aggregate meetings (see below pp. 293-4) and were now able to sit back behind the protective wall provided by the Board’s well-publicized calls for the miners to return to arbitration. The blacksmith’s rightwing leader, D. McLelland, pleaded in vain for some recognition of the conciliatory impact of recognizing the ‘principle’ of a 35-hour week as when the Commonwealth Court had accepted the principle of the 40-hour week fourteen months before it was inaugurated. !23 Gallagher’s position at this eleventh-hour conference is of significant

interest. He made relatively little attempt to keep the discussions going or to wrest a concession from the Board or the proprietors. He certainly displayed no desperation to avert an industrial catastrophe. His attitude could be summarized as ‘I’m always prepared to arbitrate formally. Please call off the strike and let me do so’. Thus the intransigence of the JCB and the proprietors was ‘protected by Mr Justice Gallagher’s attachment to a strict interpretation of his quasi-

judicial role in which the Tribunal became the only effective and legitimate means of settling industrial disputes’.!2* In effect it seems that, secure in the knowledge of government and public support for

his stance, Gallagher was prepared to let the miners stew in their own juice. This is an understandable, human response—but hardly that expected of a professional conciliator. The Prime Minister, too, displayed a much-publicized unconcern. As negotiations teetered on the brink of collapse and informed estimates circulated of 450000

workers being laid off immediately and the speedy exhaustion of power and transport supplies other than for emergency services, Chifley was reported to have followed ‘his usual weekend practice by going to bed at 5.00 p.m.’.!4° In his memoirs, Edgar Ross reveals that he used his long-standing

association with JCB secretary, Nevil Stuart, to offer a last-minute

major compromise whereby ACSEF would accept the Board’s ‘rationalisation measures’ if the 35-hour week was accepted in principle—to be implemented ‘only when output was fully meeting

demand... The reply was negative: “‘Chif is determined to ‘pull you on’’’. It became known later that Chifley had told the Caucus: ‘““The Reds must be taught a lesson’’’.!26

CHAPTER TWELVE

‘BOOTS AND ALL’: MR CHIFLEY AND THE MINERS

The main events of the seven-week coal strike of 1949 can be quickly

summarized. On 29 June the Commonwealth parliament rushed through, in a single day, retrospective legislation of a type more commonly associated with a totalitarian regime than with a Labor government. On 2 July, union officials considered guilty of the elemental union practice of proposing to provide financial support to men striking on legitimate industrial issues were brought before the Arbitration Court. On 5 July they were ordered, under pain of im-

prisonment, to lodge the money with the Industrial Registrar. Simultaneously the High Court, with surprising speed, rejected a

union appeal against the emergency legislation. On 7 July the Arbitration Court began gaoling union officials for refusing to obey its refund order. It did so under contempt of court provisions which effectively required those charged to prove their innocence rather

than for the Crown to prove their guilt. Proceedings in these contempt hearings which, from 8 July, were presided over by a one-time

left-wing socialist, were conducted in a highly biased fashion. Attempts by the defendants to justify their position were cut short on the grounds that they were bringing politics into a purely legal issue. In contrast, prosecuting counsel were allowed repeatedly to make completely political charges against them concerning their motivation and the ‘real’ reasons for the strike. These unproved assertions were seized and embroidered upon by the metropolitan press which conducted an hysterical and vicious campaign against the miners and the CPA which had supposedly orchestrated the dispute. In a fashion soon to be made internationally famous by USA Senator McCarthy, the campaign was rooted in smear and innuendo. A government raid on CPA headquarters—which in fact produced no material evidence—was somehow presented to the public as proof of the media and government charges. Organizations very re-

292 Division of Labour motely connected with the strike were smeared by association with communists or communism. By the end of July a federal Cabinet Minister was talking of putting communists and their sympathizers into concentration camps. In the union world widespread layoffs combined with loyalty to the ALP to leave the miners with progressively fewer supporters. On 13 July the NSW transport unions agreed to move coal mined before the dispute and currently standing ‘at grass’. The government next dallied with the idea of abandoning another fundamental trade union tenet by bringing AWU members in to work the mines. It discarded this notion in favour of another, even more sacrilegious to labour tradition—that of using members of the armed forces to perform the work. On 28 July 13000 troops entered the NSW fields and on 1 August began working the open cuts.

Faced with the full powers of the state, lacking funds and deprived of their elected leaders, it is not surprising that by this time rifts were appearing amogg the strikers. On the periphery the Collie miners had returned on 16 July, and the Tasmanians nearly followed suit. In Queensland some 20 per cent of strikers also drifted back. But, as always, New South Wales was the key. There, the realization that the strike could not succeed first began to register in the northern district. Muswellbrook, the open-cut centre which had commenced production only in 1944 and which lacked the traditions and outlook of the underground workers, proved to be the lever. The ‘moderate’ northern district executive was barely able to stop the Muswellbrook men from breaking the strike front in their anxiety to forestall AWU members or troops taking their jobs. This experience set the executive along its course to calling a meeting of northern lodge delegates on 3 August. From this eventually flowed the reluctant ACSEF central council decision to call aggregate meetings on 9 and 10 August. These rejected by a large majority the council’s recommendation to continue the strike. The defeated miners returned to work on Monday, 15 August. The 200000 or more employees thrown out of work for up to two months followed them back as the ALP and the media hailed the defeat of the deadly communist plot.! The legislation of 29 June was unprecedented in Australian industrial history. With only Independent MHR Doris Blackburn dissenting, all individuals and trade unions were retrospectively prohibited from giving the strikers financial support at any time since 16 June. / Any funds whose use was challenged by the authorities were deemed to have been used to aid the strike unless proved otherwise. Not even miners’ families could be offered relief and one Queensland miner was actually prevented from withdrawing money from his own per-

sonal savings account. The Commonwealth Act was backed by a

Mr Chifley and the miners 293

NSW Emergency Powers Act authorizing the state government to proclaim regulations for the maintenance of essential services, acquisition of property and the entry and search of any premises.

Upon application by the Commonwealth, Chief Judge Kelly granted an injunction requiring that funds, withdrawn before the Act became law by ACSEF (£19500), the FIA (£25000), WWE (£6000) and AEU (£3715), be returned to the Industrial Registrar on 4 July. When union officials refused to disclose the whereabouts of

the money, a court order was issued directing them to produce it. Union officials were now summonsed before the Arbitration Court and, upon refusing to reveal the location of the funds, were sentenced for contempt of court. Beginning on 6 July with J.H. King, ACSEF western district secretary, eight men were gaoled, and five officials and three unions were fined.? Those imprisoned for twelve months were King, Williams, Grant, Parkinson, M.M. Fitzgibbon

(ACSEF southern district secretary) and Healy and Roach of the WWE. McPhillips of the FIA was given six months. The gaoled men

were handcuffed as criminals and no clemency was shown for Grant’s stomach ulcer or for Williams having only one leg. Indeed Williams’ British war pension for his disability was stopped for the

duration of his imprisonment. The prisoners were allowed each month to receive only one personal visitor and to write one letter.* Their acting replacements in ACSEF were not allowed to consult with them on strike tactics or settlement terms. Deery argues that the federal government did not expect its legislation to result in prosecutions.> The evidence for this is the fact that, before the legislation was introduced, Chifley persuaded the Proprietors’ Association not to press charges against CMUC officials for contravéning Gallagher’s order forbidding the aggregate meetings of 16 June.® On 28 June, in response to Menzies’ urging of the use against the strikers of the Crimes Act and/or the penal sanctions of the 1946 Coal Acts, the Prime Minister stated that prosecutions had never solved industrial difficulties and that ‘almost invariably, a government that has prosecuted industrial leaders during a period of industrial disturbance has been rejected by the public within a few months’.’ The tenor of this speech made the impact of the National Emergency (Coal Strike) Act rushed through next day all the greater. Obviously Chifley was influenced by ACSEF’s withdrawal from the brink the previous November during the Kemira general strike, when the two governments threatened similar punitive sanctions; but given the very different circumstances in June 1949, particularly the issues at stake and the whole-hearted rank-and-file commitment to ACSEF claims, it is straining credulity to imagine that Chifley, with his excellent industrial contacts, expected his ferocious legisla-

tion to produce an instant cave-in by ACSEF and its allies, thus obviating the need to prosecute. As it was, investigation into ACSEF

294 Division of Labour and supportive unions’ financial transactions began the day after the

Act became law. Proceedings against them commenced only two working days later, at a special session of the Court on Saturday, 2 July. Had Chifley’s public sentiments of 28 June been genuine then he could at any stage have ensured that the investigations or proceedings were halted. A more plausible deduction than Deery’s would be that Chifley, for very good public relations reasons, wanted to keep the proprietors and their backwoods attitudes as far from the public focus as possible. The battle was not to be seen as one between the despised colliery owners and the oppressed miners. Rather it was to be the elected government and the rule of law versus the communist wreckers of the economy. His response to Menzies was designed to differentiate, in Labor supporters’ minds, the government’s impending course of action from folk memories of prewar conservative misuse of the Crimes Act and persecution of strike leaders. All accounts testify to the central importance of Chifley’s personal

commitment to breaking the strike. Without his determination that not an inch would be conceded a compromise settlement would have

been reached. In Caucus Chifley put all of his formidable personal authority behind the fund-freezing legislation. It became a virtual vote of confidence in the Prime Minister. Few cared to join the small

band of opponents headed by Ward. Holloway, who had himself been imprisoned in the 1929 timber strike, was deeply disturbed. Despite his public denial, it was widely believed that the illness which kept Holloway out of the Cabinet sub-committee handling the strike was more diplomatic than real. Senators Katz, O’Flaherty and Morrow, some MPs with coalfield constituencies and possibly Postmaster General Senator Cameron were also opposed.® Of them all,

Ward included, only Alan Fraser made his uneasiness publicly known. On 3 July he attacked the fund freezing in a radio broadcast to his Eden—Monaro electorate on 2CA: ‘If the Government had information that this is a Communist conspiracy. . . then let it act on that and freeze their funds, rather than send the miners’ children to

school hungry’. Despite Chifley’s known displeasure Fraser, two weeks later, again voiced opposition on air, this time criticizing the gaolings. The remainder of the parliamentary party found it easy enough to swallow the legislation. The 1947 Approved Defence Projects Protection Act (see above, pp. 62-3) had helped carve the way and the ALP had not traditionaly proved over-concerned with civil

rights issues—at least where communists were concerned.? ALP speakers in the parliamentary debate—from which the Ward group absented themselves—varied in their rationalizations. K.E. Beazley explicitly noted the curtailment of civil liberties which the Bill entailed, but justified it in terms of self-defence: “The Government prefers to coerce the community on the coal-fields rather than to allow

the community at large to be coerced by Communists’.!9 L.C.

Mr Chifley and the miners 295

Haylen, one of many Labor members who, in the 1947 Arbitration Act debates, had ardently denounced both the use of penalties and

compulsion in industrial relations and recourse to the military,!! now painted a picture of striking miners enjoying leisurely fishing at

Lake Macquarie while (as a result of fiendish communist timing) people in Sydney lived ‘like Kaffirs in a Kraal, or like Eskimos in an igloo’.!4 After 29 June the parliamentary party was not consulted about any aspect of government strike policy—including the introduction of troops. Outside parliament, Labor unease with the legislation was more common. At least eight ALP branches in New South Wales recorded protests and, despite Chifley’s participation in the debate, the ALP district assembly in his own electorate on 3 July recorded its ‘strong

opposition’ to the legislation. In the wider labour movement, the

Prime Minister’s inveterate enemy, J.T. Lang, inevitably denounced fund freezing but misgivings were voiced across a wide section of the political spectrum. One of the last articles ever written by H.E. Boote, the grand old custodian of labour conscience, attacked the legislation. The Catholic Worker came out solidly against it, along with a phalanx of militant unions. Even on the right wing there was

caution. News Weekly which, by its standards, had so far proved relatively objective about the dispute, sought to deflect criticism expected from labour supporters: ‘Some will criticize freezing of union

funds but surely all will agree that for a Labor Government it is a

courageous action’.!3 In the Melbourne Trades Hall Council, Grouper Lovegrove argued that there was ‘general regret at the necessity of the legislation’ but ‘doubted whether the freezing of funds would have any material effect on the conduct of the strike’. !4 Two factors combined to verify Lovegrove’s prediction at least in the early weeks of the strike. The proprietors decided that, by defying Gallagher’s no-strike order, the miners were terminating their employment. Hence on 8 July they paid all back wages and holiday money. In addition it was estimated that at the start of the strike over three-quarters of NSW miners had the equivalent of three or four weeks credit with stores. Although some grocers retreated before

newspaper claims that they were liable to prosecution, George Booth, the only speaker in the NSW Legislative Assembly to support the miners, in his role as president of the NSW Cooperative Wholesale Society advised stores in the group to trade with members in the usual way.!> Thus, while expressing their genuine outrage at

the fund freezing, the miners had breathing space in which to wait for the fuel crisis to take its toll on the government’s resolve. Covert attempts by NSW ALP leaders like Jack Ferguson and Jim Kenny to hive off ‘moderate’ officials in ACSEF’s northern district and on the CMUC were, despite optimistic media reports, unlikely to succeed without some concessions to the miners on hours.!© The gaoling

296 Division of Labour of ACSEF leaders outraged all miners, including the most “‘moderate’ of officials such as Bill Crook. The seamen stopped work for 24 hours. News Weekly was forced to admit after Williams and Grant were sentenced that ‘Since the latest gaoling things appear to have swung against the Government. Even loyal Labour union officials at the Trades Hall have become somewhat despondent’.!7 Deery argues that Judge Foster performed his task of gaoling union officials with great reluctance and accepts the view, retailed in later years by Foster’s close friend, that Chief Judge Kelly maneouvred him into the role.!® A reading of the relevant transcripts—to which Deery does not refer—casts doubt on this version. Foster may have subsequently ‘suffered much remorse. . . and tried [unsuccessfully]

to patch things up with his victims’.!? The transcripts, however, reveal that his conduct during court proceedings smacked more of anti-communist zeal than the tortured liberalism which Deery suggests. Foster’s role was more intrusive—and excited—than that of Kelly, who withdrew as a result of illness after sentencing King on 6 July.2° Foster was convinced that the stoppage was CPA-inspired.7! He debated the strike’s origins with Williams and berated him for his views in a manner that caused G.T.A. Sullivan, ACSEF’s coun-

sel, respectfully to point out an error, common among laymen before, during and after the strike, but unforgivable for a judge: MR SULLIVAN ‘. . . the strike itself is not illegal, nor is any other strike. HIS HONOUR It is anti-social.

MR SULLIVAN This is a Court of law, Your Honour’.?2

There can be little doubt that the accused’s positions were seriously jeopardized by use of contempt proceedings against them. This was made possible by the 1947 amendments declaring the Arbitration Court a superior court of record. Apart from the onus of proof switching from the Crown to the defendants, the latter were not allowed many of the rights which would have been theirs in criminal proceedings. In a criminal case they could not have been forced to take the stand and thus to convict themselves (of contempt) out of their own mouths.?? Similarly, they were refused the right to be dealt with separately.24 Whereas the Emergency Act specified a

maximum gaol sentence of six months, no maximum existed for contempt—and Foster showed no clemency. Their counsel repeatedly objected to Foster’s own line of questioning as well as to his rulings on the Crown counsels’ method of procedure. Sullivan, for

example, felt Foster and the Crown tried to force the ACSEF trustees into contempt by asking hypothetical questions along the lines of “if you knew where the money was, what would you do?’.25

Defence lawyers also objected in vain to the Crown’s polemic remarks, uttered certainly with an eye to the press gallery which daily served up to the public the more juicy unproven allegations of com-

Mr Chifley and the miners 297 munist deviance and guilt.2° After the propaganda damage had been

done, some of the more outrageous remarks were withdrawn in court2” but retractions received scant publicity. Attempts by defendants to demonstrate the political nature of the Crown’s case were almost invariably cut short by Foster.28 Sullivan, who had been refused the right to make a final plea for mitigation in the case of Grant and Williams2? insisted on his right before Parkinson and Fitzgibbons were finally sentenced. In doing so Sullivan, who proclaimed himself ‘conservative in politics and religion’, accurately conveyed the cumulative effect of Foster’s jurisdiction. Some remarks Your Honour has made from the bench from time to time seemed to imply that the offence these men have committed is not only what Your Honour has considered in passing these sentences but other matters which are completely irrelevant to what they are being tried for before you.

They are being tried for contempt of Court, for not paying money into Court—not for being on strike—not for putting the rights of their members forward. They are being tried simply for not having paid a miserable £4500 into Court. My submission is that the sentences should bear some resemblance to what they are before your Honour for. Your Honour is a lawyer and your first duty is as a lawyer, whether a Judge or an Advocate. I say that with the greatest respect. I do say that any lawyer

in this Court during the last few weeks must be surprised at the course British law has taken in these proceedings. ?°

Sullivan’s advocacy was in vain. Both men were given twelve months. Foster’s anti-communist zeal was typical of the fever which swept the nation at this time. The Victorian Royal Commission into Communism was sitting and its ‘revelations’ too were emblazoned on the billboards. On 8 July CPA headquarters in Sydney were raided in spectacular fashion by twenty-four Commonwealth Security officers with hundreds of police as back-up. Marx House was left in a shambles. The CPA leaders were hauled before the Arbitration Court and

questioned about fund withdrawals and their own role in the coal strike. Good propaganda mileage and media headlines followed— particularly since the CPA was caught neatly in a dilemma. If it refused to produce the money alleged to be allocated to the miners this would be represented as proving the thesis that the strike was a communist plot—as well as bringing about the decimation of its leadership through gaolings for contempt. If, as in fact it did, the CPA decided to produce the money, its officials were triumphantly portrayed as deserting their poor dupes, the miners, at the first whiff of personal danger.*! In addition to the mass media’s spontaneous attack on the strikers, and the general refusal to allow the miners to present their side on radio, the federal government undertook an unprecedented advertis-

298 Division of Labour ing campaign to promote its case. Beginning on 30 June, it placed an expensive series of advertisements in a total of eighty-one newspapers across all states.32 The theme was typified in a full-page Argus adver-

tisement on 30 June in which Chifley declared “This is a strike against arbitration! . . . It is a communist inspired strike!’. ACSEF complaints and pamphlets issued by it and its allies? did little to counter the effect on the general public of the avalanche of antistrike publicity. In the hysteria surrounding this heresy hunt it was asking a great deal of journalists to be objective. When Clive Turn-

bull of the Herald endeavoured to be fair he was immediately sacked .34 Only the fading Melbourne Argus, under new British ownership, offered some objectivity—although the ABC refused, on the

grounds of neutrality, to broadcast an appeal to the miners by Queensland Premier Hanlon carried by commercial stations.*° As the strike continued the labour press, too, strayed into Orwellian ‘newspeak’. This was true not merely of anti-communist organs like News Weekly. Labor Call, which originally recognized the incendiary

effect of the mass media,2© was later to relay, with nary a blush, Clarey’s audacious sortie into logical inference as he yet again sought

to demonstrate communist control: ‘. . .a peculiar feature of this dispute was that it was the first coal strike in which the coal owners had been left alone. The whole venom [of the striking unions] was concentrated against the Commonwealth and NSW Governments’.?” The propaganda war had little effect on the NSW miners. Their unique psychology and sense of separateness bonded them together in adversity.28 They had fought alone before against the odds. The great disputes of 1929-30 and 1909 were well remembered and as much referred to as those of 1938 and 1940.39 Honest observers, including the Coal Board’s public relations officer, J. Ormonde,*° found ALP miners just as unyielding as their CPA mates, despite the unremitting efforts of a small, dedicated minority of anti-communist mineworkers. When the majority eventually decided to call it a day they did so for reasons far removed from the government propaganda campaign, which even included an air drop of leaflets on 8 July and, from 14 July, teams of ALP speakers touring the coalfields and addressing public meetings. After the gaolings began, mass meetings held at six centres on 10 July overwhelmingly voted to continue the strike and to make the

release of the prisoners a prerequisite for settlement. On 11 July ACSEP’s central council replaced its gaoled central executive with an acting executive consisting of R. Hamilton, president, J. Comerford, secretary, and H. Woods, vice-president. Fear of further government

prosecutions seems to have influenced these appointments. Bill Crook, the most prominent official outside gaol, apparently refused to act as president on the grounds that he too might soon be gaoled.*! Between 20 and 22 July unofficial aggregate meetings were held in

Mr Chifley and the miners 299

the key northern district. ALP leaders’ confidence that they had by now succeeded in getting their message across to the miners proved totally unfounded, as these well-attended meetings voted overwhelmingly to continue the strike. The western, southern and Victorian

districts remained equally solid. In fact, for three weeks at least much of the well-publicized efforts of the ALP speakers touring the

coalfields under heavy police protection were counterproductive. Meetings often turned into slanging matches, with the audience and ALP parliamentarians hurling abuse at each other. Courage was needed to face such hostile audiences but allegations of communist plots and threats of more big stick from Deputy Premier, J.M. Baddeley, Fred Daly MHR, J. Chalmers MLA and J.J. Maloney MLC had little chance of success with miners. Early in the piece, George Booth MLA struck the right note but he participated only under pressure—and in fact, unknown to most ACSEF officials, he was hiding a large part of ACSEF’s missing ‘frozen’ funds in his office in Parliament House, Sydney.*? Over time the language of denunciation became ever more intolerant. S$. Wyatt of the Land Transport

Group of unions threatened to cut off all food supplies to the coalfields. News Weekly called for deportation of British-born communists. On the Sydney Domain Arthur Calwell threatened to place all communists (‘human scum’) in concentration camps.*3 The first cracks in ACSEF came not in the NSW strike core but on the periphery. Queensland collieries were scattered and few distinct coalmining centres of the NSW type existed there: hence the cohesive bonds of community and regard for the union were not as

strong. Non-unionism had long been a problem in the Rosewood district where miners were recruited from the surrounding agricultu-

ral area. After barely a week on strike, 200 Rosewood miners resumed work. Workers at Tanny Morel and Blair Athol open cut were not far behind. The emergency legislation seemed to bite hardest in the sunshine state, where the militant Brisbane TLC was unable to translate its enthusiastic support for the strike into effective financial relief. On 24 July men at Ipswich decided against returning by only two votes. In all some 500 Queenslanders had returned before the end of the strike.*4

In Western Australia, miners at Collie had never wanted the strike—as their vote at the 16 June aggregate meetings had demonstrated. They had entered the Federation only in 1940. As did so many Westralians, they felt isolated and neglected. In late 1945 they voted to disaffiliate and only an urgent visit by Grant and Crook prevented secession. While the local media attributed the low dispute level at Collie to the absence of ‘agitators’, there were in fact three main reasons. Coal could not be stored, hence before the war the owners were not likely to accumulate supplies and then put men off as a means of industrial discipline as eastern mine owners did.

300 Division of Labour Collie coal was wet, hence ‘dusting’ was not a threat to health. Most important, the largest purchaser was the state government: thus conditions of work were subject to a greater degree of state influence.*>

Although the ALP was in opposition in 1949, its state disputes committee entered into discussions with the Collie men as soon as the strike commenced and was instrumental in persuading them to return on 16 July. The miners’ decision was not reached without considerable debate. The final vote of 246 to 188 was only registered after Gallagher accepted that W.J. Wallwork, of the Local Reference

Board, should hear the Collie district case for the ACSEF log of claims.4© ALP parliamentary leader, A.R.G. Hawke, in lashing out at The West Australian for criticizing the ALP for negotiating with strikers, inadvertently contradicted the Prime Minister. [Members of the ALP disputes committee] did not entertain any stupid, infantile idea that negotiations with the executive of the union or with the rank and file were in opposition to the system and principles of arbitration [or] could in the slightest degree undermine the principles of arbitration or do anything that would injure the rule of law and order and constitutional authority.*’

In the Tasmanian district, where hydro schemes meant coal was less important to local industry than on the mainland, ACSEF curtly refused all offers of help from the CPA. Considerable pressure was ap-

plied to ‘moderate’ president, W. Haas, and secretary, L.J. Maney, by the ALP government and the Hobart THC. The news that the miners at Collie and the Queensland open cuts had decided to return persuaded the Tasmanians to hold aggregate meetings on 22 July. Speakers included Acting Premier R.F. Fagan and other ALP politicians. The rank and file, by 86 to 36, voted to return to work and, as at Collie, to refer the 35 hours and long-service claims to the Local

Reference Board which would report to Gallagher. Their return lasted a single day. A FEDFA engine driver refused to provide haul-

age and was backed by his state executive. Much to the ire of the local press, the miners refused to work without him. When the federal executive of FEDFA instructed the driver to return ‘if local miners decide to resume work’, ACSEF members, on 3 August, infuriated both ALP and media by reversing their earlier decision and voting to stay on strike by 52 votes to 29. Unlike the Collie district the Tasmanians were not, on second thoughts, prepared to cut themselves adrift from the protection of the national union. Seven days later, at the aggregate meetings called by the ACSEF central council,

Haas strongly urged his members to vote against continuing the strike. Only two out of 267 disagreed with Haas. One of them, J.R. Bound, a communist, was severely manhandled as a result.*® The main battle was, however, fought in New South Wales. There the actions of one non-mining union and the threat posed by another

Mr Chifley and the miners 301

did more than anything to defeat the miners. The NSW branch of the ARU presented a considerable contrast to its smaller Victorian equivalent in the postwar years. Unlike Victoria, the NSW ARU, dealing with secure ALP ministries, seldom found it necessary to take official strike action. State secretary, Jack Ferguson MLC, an ex-communist and confidant of the Prime Minister, ‘was the dominating figure of the [NSW ALP] branch in the later Chifley years’.49 Compromise rather than confrontation was the keynote of ARU-—

government relations. At the time of the coal strike Ferguson was president of the NSW ALP and had left behind a militant past in

which the Groupers had sometimes suspected him of playing a double game. The NSW ARU council was so dominated by ‘moder-

ates’ such as W. O’Neill and L.P. Austin that, for a time, the leftwing faction boycotted its annual elections because of the alleged lack of impartial scrutineers and returning officers.°° The militants enjoyed more success in the workplace: their growing strength in the extensive railways shop committee network was to provoke bitter

opposition from Ferguson et al. in 1949 and helped explain the ARU’s role in the coal strike.

The NSW branch had not remained isolated from the general problems facing transport workers. In October 1946 it became involved in the growing discontent with wage pegging but, beyond a ban on Melbourne expresses, the Victorian transport strike did not flow across the Murray. As in Victoria, NSW railworkers’ were discontented with weekend penalty rates but the ARU did not join Sydney tramworkers in their strike in January 1947. Instead it patiently awaited the Arbitration Court’s favourable decision of 31 March.°>! Transport workers’ perennial problems with rosters erupted in July 1947 with the state-wide introduction of the 40-hour week. This time the ARU banned overtime and endorsed proposals for a 24hour stoppage on the 14th but mediation by McGirr resulted in an amicable settlement. At the end of the year another overtime ban was threatened because of the lengthy delays in deciding ARU wage

clams by commissioner Murray Stuart. Chief commissioner Mooney speedily intervened and averted the ban by promising prompt judgement.>2

Occasionally Ferguson did flex the ARU’s industrial muscle. In November 1947 he threatened economic sanctions against states opposing bank nationalization. In 1948, as we have seen, the branch

disappointed the media and other anti-communists by imposing strategic bans in support of the Queensland railway strikers. In February 1949 the ARU’s potential ability to disrupt fuel supplies was clearly revealed. In the past this power had been occasionally demonstrated by brief local stoppages induced by rank-and-file dis-

content with the fact that ARU men hauling coal received lower penalty rates than the miners producing it. On this occasion, South

302 Division of Labour

Maitland Rail Company employees struck for almost a week on a seniority issue and immediately threatened Sydney’s gas supply by preventing 17 000 tons of coal a day being hauled from Cessnock.>?

There was, however, little chance that the ARU would use its latent power to support ACSEF in the big 1949 strike. Ferguson, the

state ALP president, naturally resented the growing communist attacks on his party. Further, communists and other militants were making an increasing impact on the railway shop committees. In May, at the ARU state council meeting, Ferguson launched into a vigorous attack on the CPA.°*4 He began by applauding what he described as the dismal failure of the strikes protesting at the Sharkey and McPhillips prosecutions. He went on to say that the com-

munists had launched a new offensive to regain working-class favour: ‘With fanatical fervour and characteristic cunning, legitimate and popular issues are being raised. A challenging attitude is being applied in the mining and waterside industries. The NSW Railways are also receiving special attention’. The state council unanimously carried a resolution repudiating the politically inspired suggestion of union neglect of railwaymen’s claims. We expose the methods employed by the Communist Party in making 1mproper use of the rightful claims of railway men and using the Central Council of Shop Committees and the Combined Railway Unions Committee to promulgate policy inimical to the interests of railwaymen and deliberately designed to usurp the functions of bona fide trade unions.

Ferguson’s concern with the growing influence of the increasingly

assertive shop committees was shared by most moderate union officials, who too often tended to view rank-and-file participation in decision-making as a communist plot.>> At a special meeting of the Labor Council on 9 June, the ETU moved to condemn the commit-

tees but Ferguson amended the motion to make it much stronger. The amendment, which was passed 129 to 67, was almost identical to

the resolution passed by the ARU state council. Speaking to his amendment, Ferguson said that the shop committees were exceeding

their rights and endangering a state Labor government which had given decided benefits to railmen.>®

On Sunday 12 June 5000 railworkers marched through the city demanding better pay and conditions. Afterwards they held a rally at the CPA platform in the Domain. Various speakers attacked Ferguson and were loudly applauded. A. Wilson, a former shop committee leader in the railways and now both AEU councilman for NSW and secretary of the CMUC, said that the Labor Council motion showed that the right wing was afraid of the rank and file. “They tried to use

redbaiting to spoil this demonstration today—you men in your thousands have given them their answer’.>”

In these circumstances it is no surprise that the ARU leadership

Mr Chifley and the miners 303

moved against the communist-backed miners. Indeed Ferguson’s role was recognized as a decisive one, as he threw all his energies behind the government cause.*8 On 12 July Chifley, McGirr, federal

and state ministers and industrial and political labour leaders conferred in Sydney. The following day the Land Transport Group of unions (LTG) of the NSW Labor Council announced that union labour would remove 36 000 tons of coal at grass or already in trucks

at pitheads. The decision was reached in the knowledge that the federal government’s sub-committee on coal, with the Minister for the Army, C. Chambers, present, had decided that if union labour would not shift the coal in trucks, troops would be used to do so. At

the LTG meeting, both the ARU and the AFULE supported the decision to move the coal. ACSEF said the decision ignored the black ban imposed by it on coal at grass and pitheads and was a strike-breaking action. McGirr and the rail unions, on the other hand, claimed that the coal was ‘white’ since it would have been moved before the strike began had it not been for the floods. Following the LTG decision the ARU state council met and in-

structed all members of the union to move coal in trucks and at grass. At this meeting Ferguson said that within a fortnight the strike had caused another man-made depression. ‘A new tragedy 1s being born out of this struggle, a tragedy based on the widespread working class hatred towards the miners.’ The council declared in a resolution that while it supported the miners’ claims it considered the strike indefensible. It declared its support for the governments

but deplored the need to freeze union funds and the gaoling of union officials.°? In response the mining unions recalled past solidarity: We. . . appeal to trade unionists not to be influenced by any strike breaking action by a small coterie of political aspirants; in particular we appeal to railwaymen in whose interests miners stopped work in the railway strike of 1917. We declare that it is as in the interests of railwaymen to smash the campaign of intimidation against the trade unions as it was in the interests of miners to help the railwaymen in 1917.©°

The appeal fell on stony ground. Hopeful predictions that the decision of the LTG to move coal at grass would ‘precipitate widespread rank and file revolt against the right-wing’®! were proved wrong. Sub-branches at Newcastle, Port Waratah and Broadmeadow voted to begin the coal lift on 16 July. Only the Maitland sub-branch of the ARU decided against moving the coal. Twelve stationmasters of the

privately owned South Maitland Railways accepted suspension rather than lift the black coal. Apart from that, only one or two isolated incidents of individual ARU and AFULE members ‘refusing to scab’ were reported.®

At a meeting on 15-16 July the federal council of the ARU

304 Division of Labour

pledged its full support for the miners and denounced the government’s policies. Since Ferguson and the three other NSW delegates walked out after two hours of often heated debate the resolutions were carried unanimously but had no effect since the NSW leaders claimed that council decisions were not binding on the branch.® When the federal government declared its intention to use the army to mine open cut coal the Land Transport Group agreed to carry the coal produced, ‘Keeping in mind that this is not a strike for legitimate industrial means but a political conspiracy’.©+ This decision met with opposition from the ARU shunters’ section® but Ferguson’s state council decided overwhelmingly to handle open-cut coal.®

In November 1949 state Cabinet finally granted railmen three weeks annual leave. The decision followed a one-hour stopwork meeting by 4000 men at Chullora the previous day. The CPA’s Tnbune was sure that the promptness of the Cabinet’s reaction was due to the railmen’s ‘show of fight’.°” Ferguson, who in 1952 became

chairman of the NSW Milk Board, would have been justified in viewing it as part payment for considerable services rendered. The other union which played a major role in defeating the miners was the AWU. Indeed it was the threat posed to their jobs by this old

enemy that was probably most persuasive in the minds of miners when they decided the strike was lost. The great strike over Kemira had been but the latest and largest of a series of ongoing battles between the two rivals. The AWU had succeeded in taking over the Victorian and South Australian open cuts and posed a constant threat just offstage in NSW and Queensland. It represented a most desirable replacement for the militant ACSEF in the eyes of government, Coal Board, owners and conservatives. Chifley, who, inciden-

tally, became an AWU member himself after his expulsion from AFULE in the 1930s Lang faction fight, made clear his preference in South Australia. There he had directly intervened behind the scenes

to persuade his political opponent, Premier Playford, to throw his weight behind the AWU in the battle to organize the workers at the new Leigh Creek open cut.®

The first call to bring the AWU into the NSW open cuts came from Menzies on only the second day of the strike. Two weeks later, on the same day that the transport unions announced their decision

to move coal stocks, the government floated reports that AWU labour would move into open cuts ‘within a fortnight’ if the miners did not return. Simultaneously, Clarrie Fallon, Queensland AWU state secretary, announced that his executive ‘would not hesitate to throw its weight on the side of the nation [to] save Australia from Communist domination’. Federal secretary Tom Dougherty later made it clear that, once undertaken, AWU entry into the open cuts would not be temporary: ‘If we go into the mines, we will be in them for all time’.©?

Mr Chifley and the miners 305

These reports did affect morale among open-cut strikers but this was insufficient to induce moves for a general return to work. ‘Moderate’ ACSEF officials joined in an angry chorus of denunciation. On 20 July the press headlined that Chifley and McGirr would that day consider asking the AWU to work the open cuts permanently. On reflection the government decided not to take up the AWU option. The major factor influencing their decision to use troops was that they could be quickly withdrawn once the strike ended. A permanent AWU presence would undoubtedly give rise to continual dis-

ruption of coal supplies through never-ending demarcation and jurisdiction battles. ”°

The employment of troops in the open cuts is probably the bestremembered incident in the coal strike. Evatt’s correspondence reveals that the use of troops, at least to guard the movement of coal ‘at

grass’, had been contemplated by the government from the very outset.”1 While seeming to outrage all the traditions of the labour movement and directly contravening the ALP platform, it should be remembered that during the war military personnel had been used by Curtin to move vital cargoes during wharf disputes.’* Chifley had been able to resist conservative suggestions that troops be used in the

1945 steel dispute,’* but the 1949 fuel crisis approached the war crisis 1n intensity. Further, in the third week of the coal strike the Attlee Labour government introduced troops to the British docks to combat another ‘communist-inspired’ stoppage. In addition, on 21 July, naval personnel began unloading the Haligonian Duke in Melbourne. While helping ease the Victorian fuel shortage this decision, fully supported by the ACTU, was aimed just as much to prevent the Hollway government from confusing the issue with its provocative

call for ‘volunteers’ and its threat to prosecute the Wonthaggi strikers (above, pp. 211-12). As it was, press reports of 21 July gave the miners twelve days informal notice of government intention to operate the open cuts with troops. The formal ultimatum was issued on 27 July after a joint meeting of the federal and NSW Cabinets had accepted the proposal over Ward’s almost lone objections. When the miners failed to return to work on Monday | August, the Army began working on

a three-shift, six-day-week basis. The vast anti-strike propaganda machine made great play of the superior production of the troops— who were paid at union rates. In fact the Coal Board itself later reported ‘very heavy losses’ subsequently incurred in the open cuts as a result of damage associated with this unskilled emergency work by the military. For their part ACSEF officials were certain that part of the damage was due to servicemen sympathetic to the miners sabotaging production.”> It was in the open cuts that the NSW strike front began to crack.

Muswellbrook workers, lacking the underground miners’ outlook and tradition, had opposed the original strike decision on 16 June.”6

306 Division of Labour

The AWU job threat concentrated their attitudes and they relayed their fears in no uncertain terms to ACSEF officials at a meeting on 21 July. At a key meeting on 23 July, addressed by two ALP politicians as well as five union officials, the militant K. Bowles (FEDFA) was heckled while Bill Crook was applauded when he publicly ad-

mitted for the first trme that he too had opposed the original decision to strike. Moderate W. Blair (FEDFA) promised to place the meeting’s overwhelming opposition to the strike before the CMUC. Knowledge of the Muswellbrook situation contributed to a split which emerged on the CMUC on 27 July at a meeting convened at the request of the ACTU and attended by Crook as an observer. The ACTU, with Clarey to the fore, had thrown its full weight behind the government just as soon as it was industrially respectable to do so. By 4 July Clarey’s allegations of a communist plot against arbitration and basic trade union principles were being emblazoned in full

page newspaper advertisements. On 15 July the ACTU recommended to the CMUC a formula which was universally depicted as an important compromise.’’ A return to work would be followed by:an application for the release of the gaoled officials; an application to Gallagher for his long-service leave decision; resumption of negotiations on hours and wages, to be chaired by Cameron; if no agreement were reached claims would be arbitrated by the Tribunal. After hearing ACTU argument, the CMUC, by the casting vote of its

acting chairman, called for aggregate meetings in all districts to decide whether the dispute should be continued. Three days later ACSEF’s central council rejected the CMUC decision by ten votes to

five, largely on the grounds that it implied support for the ACTU proposals and that the rank and file had indicated their determination to continue the struggle at aggregate meetings little more than a

week before. ACSEF’s council insisted that a return could only occur after the gaoled men were released and a conference on the original claims arranged.

On 31 July five moderates, Hindmarsh, Dutton, Herron, Crane and acting chairman Blair, walked out of a CMUC meeting on the grounds that it was ‘farcical’ to continue the meeting once the representatives of ACSEF, the AEU, the Blacksmiths’ Society and Blair’s

own union, the FEDFA, had reported that their executives had decided not to accept the CMUC recommendation to call aggregate meetings. This crucial split was eagerly seized and enlarged upon by the anti-strike propagandists. There is no doubt, however, that the moderates’ highly damaging action breached all convention. It will be recalled that on 17 June it was agreed that direction of the dispute be placed in the joint hands of ACSEF’s central council and the CMUC. Further, the CMUC had no power to direct its constituent organizations—only to advise. The fifty per cent of delegates who remained represented overwhelmingly more mineworkers than those

Mr Chifley and the miners 307

who left—and Blair had been repudiated by his own union. Even if ACSEF 1s removed from the calculation the only two unions accepting the recommendation of the 27th, the Deputies and Shotfirers and the Federated Mining Mechanics, accounted for only a minority of craft unionists. But truth was an early casualty in the 1949 strike. Press photographers were waiting to capture the walkout from the CMUC and, as the troops prepared to move into the open cuts, the media trumpeted a gigantic split in the union ranks. The major unions’ decisions against aggregate meetings were convincingly presented as a denial of rank-and-file rights to be consulted. Combined with a growing gut feeling among many mineworkers that they could not win this battle against all the forces of the state, this issue became the lever whereby the back-to-work movement reached unstoppable proportions. In Muswellbrook the arrival of troops, while preferable to AWU men, had not lessened the local desire to return to work. At a very wellattended meeting also held on 31 July, Crook and Cockerill were barely able to hold their members back. As a compromise, the meeting unanimously called on the northern executive to convene a lodge

delegate conference to consider the need for district aggregate meetings. 78

The following day a large public meeting at Cessnock overwhelm-

ingly backed the call for aggregate meetings. The majority of the audience appeared to be miners and they gave a good hearing to moderate F. Cresswell who had been in the minority of five at the ACSEF central council meeting 48 hours before. None of the ten councillors in favour of the decision spoke at the Cessnock meeting. Smaller public assemblies at five other northern district centres also called overwhelmingly for aggregate meetings as did branch meetings of the Federated Mechanics and Deputies and Shotfirers. More

significantly, on 2 August AEU shop stewards in the northern district—the major NSW stronghold of anti-communists in the union’?—unanimously joined the call for aggregate meetings. In response to the observed seachange in local opinion, the three-

man northern district executive of Crook, Cockerill and Simpson determined a lodge conference should meet on 3 August. In an attempt to regain the initiative the militants called area meetings for Bulli and Wollongong in the southern district on the same day. The scheme backfired when a motion condemning the northern execu-

tive’s ‘splitting’ moves was defeated by an estimated five to one majority at Bulli and only narrowly passed at Wollongong (268 to 248).

The document, circulated at the lodge delegate conference as a preamble to the northern executive’s motion to call aggregate meet-

ings and to support acceptance of the ACTU proposals, correctly listed the three expectations of ACSEF at the outset of the strike—

308 Division of Labour that the stoppage would be short; that the government would intervene to ensure settlement; and that the trade union movement would

support the strikers. Each expectation had proved groundless. Instead ACSEF districts in three other states had abandoned or weakened their support and the Muswellbrook area of the northern

district itself was on the verge of a return to work. The two-day conference heard extensive reports from individual lodges, from the

other NSW districts and from the central executive, including acting general secretary Comerford who revealed that a way now seemed open through Eddie Ward for a compromise settlement with Chifley. In the end the northern executive scored a narrow (31 to 27)

victory. The northern district board of management pointed out, when it immediately rejected the decision by six votes to five, that the minority of twenty-seven lodge delegates represented about one third more miners than the thirty-one supporting the northern executive motion. But there was no way of stemming the groundswell of opinion in favour of aggregate meetings. On 7 August ACSEF’s central council held a long and acrimonious debate on what to recommend to these meetings. By nine votes to six it rejected putting forward the ACTU proposals as a basis for a return. Instead it decided to recommend rank and file To direct the Central Executive to immediately consult the Government with

the objective of giving them a final opportunity for repairing some of the great damage their policy has done to the cause of Labor by seeking from them undertakings concerning our claims for a 35-hour week, long service leave, 30/- wage increase and assurances on the release of union leaders now in Jail and the withdrawal of all troops from the mines.

It was also recommended that further aggregate meetings be held five days later to hear reports on these discussions. Since ACSEF rules did not allow amendments to be introduced at

aggregate meetings, the council recommendation meant that the rank and file would not be voting on the straight-out issue of whether

or not to end the strike. Their response on 9 and 10 August was,

however, quite unambiguous. ‘For the first time since 1929 a union recommendation was rejected, and. . .by a large majority [6974 to 2378]’.8° Only Victoria voted for the recommendation. The acting central executive recommended, and the central council and CMUC ratified, a return to work on 15 August. The great strike was over.

As Deery demonstrates, the miners did not return because the media and the ALP had persuaded them of a communist plot. The ALP coalfields mission continued to be resented by most miners even after enthusiasm for the strike itself was declining. At all the meetings, however, concern was voiced about the menace of the AWU getting into the open cuts after the strike. Indeed, only two

Mr Chifley and the miners 309

days before the aggregate meetings, W.H. Nichol, federal president

of the AWU, said his union was considering seeking permission from the Arbitration Court to work black coal. Earlier Senator Ashley had indicated that the government would not oppose such a move. Given the authorities’ manifest capacity to break every rule in the industrial movement’s book, Ashley’s decision on 4 August to move troops into the eight fully mechanized underground mines was seen as a threat to ACSEF jobs in the long run.®! The known secessionist mood of Muswellbrook miners also posed a threat. Together with Singleton men, they had determined to call a meeting of all

north-western miners if the aggregate meetings failed to point towards a return. Such a breakaway would loosen ACSEF’s grip on open-cut work, the sector wherein most employment growth could be expected. For these reasons, and with the crucial realization that,

in isolation, they could not succeed against the full power of the state, the rank and file bowed to superior force and ensured that their over-optimistic federal leaders accepted the inevitable. There can be no doubt that Chifley’s iron determination carried the government and the ALP through this traumatic dispute. He was re-

sponsible for government refusal to become involved in the lengthy pre-strike negotiations and for its withdrawal of financial guarantees on long-service leave. The Coal Board was fully aware of his views

and thus adopted a similarly unyielding stance. Once the strike began the Prime Minister refused to budge an inch and did not agonize

over trampling on the most cherished conventions of the labour movement. In his famous words, he took the strikers on “boots and

all’82-and seldom consulted grassroots or backbench opinion in doing so.

He totally rejected suggestions that he call the parties together, that he chair a conference, that he visit the coalfields. He ignored the

arguments, best presented by Lang—as ever, his most persistent critic—that it was a Prime Muinister’s duty to ensure the quickest possible end to this extraordinarily disruptive dispute and that the best way of doing so was by talking with the miners and following up their concessions on mechanization and pillar extraction.*? Throughout the strike there was only one, secret, indication that Chifley was prepared to consider compromise. Some time ‘in the first week’ after

Comerford’s appointment on 11 July as ACSEF’s acting general secretary, he was invited to lunch with J.P. Ormonde, the Coal Board’s public relations officer. Ormonde was a former miner and recent editor of the ALP’s Standard Weekly. He informed Comerford that Chifley would like to see him—but stressed that the invitation

did not extend to Hamilton and Woods. Fully aware of his relative inexperience, Comerford insisted that before deciding he must first consult with his two colleagues on ACSEF’s acting central executive.

Acting president Hamilton, virtually unknown outside the Victo-

310 Division of Labour

rian district, took the proposition to the CPA fraction. There the distrustful Ross, still confident of victory—particularly amid the

general backlash against the gaolings, threw his considerable weight against the idea. Without his colleagues’ support—and prevented by the terms of their imprisonment from consulting the ori-

ginal central executive in Long Bay Gaol, Comerford allowed Ormonde’s proposal to lapse. Hindsight renders Ross’s stance mistaken, if not arrogant.8+ The essential point here, however, is that this indirect approach was apparently the sole effort made by the Prime Minister to talk with the miners. When definite peace feelers were put out to ACSEF they came not

from Chifley but independently from Ward and Evatt. Ward approached Comerford immediately after the CMUC split and walkout. At a meeting in Sydney Comerford indicated that a release of the gaoled officials might produce compromise from ACSEF. Ward promised to relay this view privately to Chifley in the hope of inducing some concession from him. The convening of the northern lodge conference on 3—4 August crushed any chance of success.®> For his part, Evatt twice met secretly with Thornton of the FIA at the property of J.W. Burton, permanent head of External Affairs. On both occasions, seven to ten days apart in July, the initiative came from Thornton. After the second meeting Evatt felt confident that a settlement could be reached. His optimism did not survive the relaying of his views to Chifley. Significantly, although a strong character in his own right, Evatt emphasized to Burton that Chifley must never learn of the premeditated involvement in peace talks of his Deputy Prime Minister.®©

There seem to have been a number of factors behind Chifley’s decision that refusing to compromise with the miners was worth slowing the economy to a crawl, throwing over 200 000 out of work for seven weeks and being forced to pay £8m of his precious federal funds in a special relief grant to the states.” At one level he may have been misled by the miners’ backdown over Kemira when threatened

by tough legislative sanctions. At another, he had simply taken enough from ACSEF. Government intervention, while ending or averting general stoppages in each year of his Prime Ministership, had not halted the miners’ demands for more. Concessions seemed

rather to bring further claims. In 1949 Chifley’s patience was exhausted. There is little doubt also that he could not accept that the miners’ non-stop aggression was spontaneous. By 1949 he appeared genuinely to believe that the communists were manipulating ACSEF—

although he still publicly excepted the northern district from this charge.°® Mr Justice Reed, Director-General of Security, kept Chifley closely informed of assessments of communist tactics.°? Apart from his many public statements about the miners being

Mr Chifley and the miners 311

duped by the CPA,”° the Prime Minister was seized by Cold War fever to the extent that allegations received from a private citizen about certain individuals’ communist affiliations were passed on to the Security Service over his signature.?! A belief that imprisonment of manipulative communist leaders would allow the miners to regain their senses may help explain why, despite all their other extreme actions, the authorities made no great effort to prevent the distribution to the strikers of the ‘illegally’ withdrawn ACSEF funds and donations made, equally illegally, by other militant unionists. In addition to the perceived Moscow influence, the miners’ industrial claims had significant implications for the economy. As the miners were the traditional union vanguard, conceding their longservice leave and especially shorter hours?? demands might be expected to generate a new round of across-the-board claims by the union movement similar to that before which Chifley had so reluctantly retreated in the first two and a half years of his administration. Last, but by no means least, 1949 was election year. Chifley must have believed that ‘dealing firmly with the communists’ would prove

electorally popular. During and immediately after the strike this view was presented by a variety of his supporters.?* Had Chifley thought otherwise he would surely have compromised with the miners until after the election. It is, of course, impossible to ascertain the exact reasons why Labor lost office in December 1949. Petrol ration-

ing, child endowment and electoral redistribution have figured importantly in many estimates. Bank nationalization moves in 1947 gave a definite boost to Opposition fortunes. The Privy Council

decision against the government was announced on 27 July near the climax of the coal strike. This allowed Menzies to resurrect the socialist bogey immediately by speculating on the possible response

of a re-elected Chifley government. Nevertheless the trauma of the coal strike was undoubted. The six-weekly Morgan Gallup Polls

detected a marked swing back to the ALP at the beginning of 1949. Its analysts felt this was due to ‘fading memories of bank nationalization. . .or to tax cuts’. On an arbitrary two-party preferred vote basis the polls seem to show a decisive shift to the Opposition during the strike period with Labor making no headway in the run-up to the election. (Table 9) TABLE 9 Federal voting preferences (%) 1949%°

Feb. March May June July Sept. Dec. Election

ALP 50 50 51 50 48 48 48 48.3

Opposition 47 47 46 48 50 50. = 50 50.2

Source: Australian Public Opinion Polls

312 Division of Labour The polls did reveal that at the height of the crisis Chifley was more

popular than ever among ALP voters and that 73 per cent of all respondents approved of his fund-freezing legislation. The point was, however, that when it came to anti-communism, the Opposition parties could claim to offer an older, stronger and more consistent brand than did the ALP. Indeed the Liberal and Country parties found themselves in a no-loss situation during the dispute. Their leaders were not slow to point out, nor the media slow to publicize,

that the Opposition had always said that the communists were behind the major industrial disputes. The government’s past reluctance to admit this and its readiness instead to appease red-inspired union demands had strengthened the communists and whetted their

nefarious appetites. ALP support for the ‘right to strike’ and its reflex rejection of Opposition arguments in favour of compulsory secret strike ballots and other tough legislation to regulate and to control the unions had sown the ground for the 1949 catastrophe. Menzies, Holt, Anthony, McEwen, Spender and the rest hammered these themes in parliament, taunting the government benches with stealing Opposition policy, including the principle of freezing striking unions’ funds set out in Menzies’ 1946 policy speech. At the end of it all the Opposition even felt able to criticize the use of troops—

alleging that only government timidity had prevented the AWU being given a permanent hold on all open-cut work.?© While trumpeting ‘we told you so’ to the electorate, the conservative parties pointed to the continuing communist threat in other unions such as the FIA, WWE and SUA. They and the media left little doubt as to

which type of government would be best fitted to deal with such subversive threats. When elected to office—at least partly on the anti-communist platform— Menzies continued to make skilful use of

the wonderful reversal of ALP industrial attitudes in 1949. In the debates on the Communist Party Dissolution Bill, for example, Liberals were always more than happy to quote Chifley’s national advertisements proclamining communist ‘control’ of the coal strike.?”

The ALP response to the Opposition seemed lame, embarrassed and sometimes simply ludicrous. After the strike Evatt and Calwell tried to puncture Opposition illusions by revealing that they had not forced a secret ballot on the miners because, despite all their public pronouncements, they were secretly confident that the rank-and-file miners would vote to continue the strike. Calwell even tried semantics. The coal strike had not been an industrial dispute, but a communist conspiracy. Hence normal ALP industrial relations policy and principle did not apply: hence the government was guilty of no inconsistency with past practice or argument.”® Only slightly more absurd was the argument advanced by several

backbenchers. The coal strike had simply been a joint torycommunist plot, backed by the banks, to destroy the Chifley

Mr Chifley and the miners 313

government.?? In such an hallucinatory atmosphere ALP rank-andfile dissidents, distressed by government action against the miners,

received short shrift within their party. They either immediately

stepped back into line or they were expelled. Four ALP subbranches, concentrated in Eddie Ward’s East Sydney, had their charters withdrawn. In Chifley’s own electorate an ALP investigation ended in a number of expulsions and resignations. Less than a week after the return to work 200 ALP members formed a committee ‘for the Defence of Labor Principles and Platform’. Its executive officers were from East Sydney and support came from Lithgow and several militant unions including the AEU, whose federal chairman and NSW ALP stalwart, Joe Cranwell, sent a personal goodwill message. With the federal election imminent the committee made no headway. Its leaders were expelled from the ALP and connected ALP branches were reformed. !°° Communists naturally welcomed any such evidence of dissatisfaction in the rival workers’ party. They had, in their own terms, been proved totally correct during the strike. As predicted, the ALP governments had sided with the capitalist coal owners. The full power of the state had been ruthlessly deployed against the miners’ legitimate industrial claims. The ALP had thus been completely ‘exposed’. The only problem was that the workers did not draw the expected conclusion. No swing towards the CPA was observed. Rather its decline was hastened. The strike itself had placed the party clearly

on the defensive and the onslaught continued as the Cold War worsened. CPA membership fell. Virulent diatribes against the ALP

and heroic bombast from the secretariat proved increasingly irrelevant to the electorate. Communist candidates polled less than

one per cent of the 1949 general election vote and the anticommunist siege on party strongholds in the unions tightened as Menzies took office and the Industrial Groups expanded their influence. Not until the party abandoned its confrontation with the ALP and sought a pragmatic alliance with Labor’s left wing would the tide be stemmed. Elsewhere in the union world the return to work was naturally greeted with relief. Not merely were members’ jobs regained as power returned, but most officials were thankful that they no longer

had to support fund freezing, gaolings and the use of troops. The ACTU executive won a handsome majority for its strike policy at the biennial congress in September but miners’ leaders sensed considerable relief among NSW union officials when ACSEF subsequently made it clear that it would take the pragmatic course of not nursing its grudge.!°! The ARU, for example, seemed particularly pleased to be able publicly to disabuse Menzies of any thoughts that the NSW

railwaymen would support Liberal government action against the miners as they had when Chifley asked them. !°

314 Division of Labour Although their union soon indicated its preparedness to work with other unions for common goals, the history—conscious miners were hardly likely to forget the ALP’s attack on them. Resentment existed for many years.!93 In the shorter run, ACSEF’s western, southern and Victorian districts decided to disaffiliate from the ALP.!° In the

northern district the four ACSEF parliamentarians, Baddeley, James, Cameron and Booth, were hauled before the board of management to explain their conduct. A motion to expel them was defeated ‘but a lengthy censure motion was easily passed’. ! The return to work itself took place with relatively little incident. The NSW open-cut men were forced to agree to shifts and some 220 Queensland men faced initial victimization!©* but the alleged desire of Coal Board chairman Cameron to victimize strike leaders such as Comerford was firmly vetoed by Ashley.!®°” An application to the Arbitration Court for the remission of the fines levied under the Emergency Act was rejected although Kelly and Kirby outvoted the hawkish Dunphy in deciding on 24 August to release the gaoled officials. Dunphy’s view was that only Grant should be freed.!° The next ACSEF central council meeting was a bitter one as the militants accused Crook and other northern district moderates of

splitting the strike front and ensuring defeat.!°9 The key to this faction fight rested with rank-and-file assessment of the debate. Their

verdict would be delivered in the forthcoming district elections. State ALP headquarters worked closely with the moderates to ensure their success. Two weeks after the strike C.W. Anderson and J. Kenny of the NSW Labor Council, R.R. Downing, NSW Minister for Justice, close confidant of Chifley and Gallagher’s original patron, and J. Stewart, NSW ALP branch officer, conferred with Crook, Cockerill and other Northern moderates.!!° It was agreed that public meetings, radio broadcasts, the services of an ALP organizer and an ALP-subsidized weekly newspaper were essential to ensure a good turn-out of supporters at the elections. In addition the ACSEF men made it clear that the moderates’ chances of success could be greatly helped by the Coal Board and the Coal Tribunal. The Board must demonstrate to the rank and file its determination both to improve mine amenities, particularly bathrooms, lavatories and underground transport, and to tackle outstanding safety issues.

As for the Tribunal, ‘Mr Gallagher would need to give an early decision on the Miners’ Claim and such decision must provide material gains and long service leave on a 35 hour week question [sic] if the position in the North is to be held’.!?! In acknowledging receipt of Downing’s account of the meeting, Chifley thought it unlikely that Gallagher would ‘give them everything they want’ unless the miners offered considerable concessions on mechanized pillar extraction.!!4 In fact Gallagher on 15 July had indicated that the end of the strike would not automatically be fol-

Mr Chifley and the miners 315

lowed by the granting of his initial, unrevealed long-service leave award. Instead, if work were not promptly resumed the whole case would be re-opened to permit of evidence being called regarding the capacity of the economy to bear the additional financial burden in the light of losses from the coal strike. However, only one day after the meeting between ALP and northern district officials Gallagher announced his decision to begin hearing such evidence from the proprietors and the Board in a weeks time. After a mere two days he issued his findings. A surprisingly rapid recovery of the economy had been detected and Gallagher felt there was no indication that the community could not bear the cost of long-service leave for the min-

ers. The punishment for the strikers (excluding the Collie men) would be the deduction of one days leave for each of the seven weeks of the strike. The award, as Idris Williams and the CMUC had fore-

cast before the strike, did not come up to Wonthaggi standards. Leave was to be related not to length of employment but to continuous service, with ; shift allowed for every five consecutive shifts worked. Back credit of 80 per cent was granted for past employment with the first leave not to be taken until 1 January 1954. Those retiring earlier would receive a lump sum in lieu. In the northern district, Groupers worked long and hard, canvas-

sing and pamphleting. Their new weekly, the Miner, attacked the militants incessantly. On 8 October Crook himself was elevated to state parliament in a Cessnock by-election. !!3 His only opponent was a communist campaigning on strike issues who obtained 21 per cent

of the vote. In the ACSEF ballots the northern miners came down heavily against the militants. News Weekly!!4 reported gleefully that the position of three militants to one moderate Northern representative on the central council had been exactly reversed. The 7:4 ratio of delegates on the district board of management had swung to 2:9.

Among the casualties had been Woods who had acted as national vice-president after the gaolings. Comerford survived only narrowly.

In the later election for Crook’s replacement as district president, Comerford was defeated by G. Neilly, a relatively unknown candidate backed by the Group.!!> For a time this trend was apparent

nationally. The 1949 elections left the central council evenly balanced. In 1950 Williams, unopposed in 1947, narrowly fended off a Group candidate. ‘Within a year, and for the first time in seventeen years, communists and their supporters were being outvoted on the Central Council’.!!© It took several more years before the communists bounced back, aided by growing anti-Grouper sentiment within the ALP, by the CPA’s own swing back towards pragmatism and by the rapid structural change in the industry. After the strike the rank and file continued to demonstrate its tra-

ditional readiness to stop work (Table 8) and moderate ACSEF officials continued to prove more militant than most other union

316 Division of Labour leaders. Nevertheless, on the central issues, proprietors, Coal Board and Coal Tribunal now held the upper hand. In December the 35-

hour week claim was finally rejected, leaving the miners to wait another twenty-one years to achieve this goal. In January 1950 Gallagher set aside hearings of ACSEF claims in order to hear the prop-

rietors’ application for the unrestricted right to extract pillars mechanically. In response to the inevitable protest strikes Gallagher invited the proprietors and the Board to apply for the imposition of penalties in the form of reduced holidays. He reminded ACSEF how in 1949 ‘certain people did a stretch at Long Bay’. If another general strike ensued ‘it is my considered opinion that they will do a longer stretch’.!!” In April he granted the proprietors the right to mechanical extraction. Miners’ opposition was such, however, that Gallagher did not try to implement his threat and the award remained a dead letter for some time. Greater potential for confrontation flowed

from the Tribunal’s award, later in 1950, of an attendance bonus similar to that suggested by the Board in 1948 and again by Board and proprietors in the 1949 pre-strike negotiations. ACSEF protest stoppages saw its central executive brought before the Arbitration Court to be charged unsuccessfully with a breach of their undertakings when released from gaol. In the longer run the rank and file decided to accept the bonus and soon also bowed to the inevitable on pillar extraction. From 1952 the decade-long coal bottleneck began to disappear. By 1955 the problem was overproduction and ACSEF

was fighting pit closures and retrenchments among a declining workforce. The defeat cf the 1949 coal strike did not represent the victory for

conciliation and arbitration over the law of the jungle in the sense that all of the miners’ opponents so loudly proclaimed. Rather the opposite had been demonstrated. Might had, yet again, proved to be right in the coal industry. As the American observer, Mark Perlman,

wrote five years after the event, the strike had been broken by ‘starvation, the absence of secondary boycotts, and immobilization of left-wing union leadership’.!!8 In the longer run though, the traditional centralized wage-fixing system was the victor. As the culmination of his consistent postwar policy, the Prime Minister had used the naked power of the state to prevent a powerful union from harnessing favourable market forces to make potentially inflationary gains through direct bargaining with their employers. The irony in this case was that, apart from the miners, the greatest loser may well have been the Chifley government.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CONCLUSIONS

Textbooks on industrial relations often begin by evaluating the various hypotheses which have been offered as explanations of the endemic conflict observed in advanced Western economies. The first to be considered are usually the simplistic ‘unitary’ theories which

see the natural state of industry to be harmony and co-operation between capital and labour. These can be dismissed by academics as irrelevant because they invariably explain conflict in the very naive terms of either a failure of management to communicate clearly with their workforce or by the presence of agitators deliberately stirring

up trouble in the ranks of labour. Yet every student of industrial relations knows only too weil how powerful is the grip which the latter version of this ancient thesis maintains outside the classroom. Professional scholars and practitioners may well subscribe to ‘pluralist’ and other sophisticated explanations of industrial conflict—but the topic need only be raised at virtually any social gathering to reveal the widespread public belief in the notion of a natural harmony of interest being upset by greedy union troublemakers. At the end of World War II, majority popular opinion was different. People were moved by egalitarian sentiments to a degree not often observed in Australian society. Perhaps the years around the

end of World War I offer a comparison but World War II had proved more unifying than divisive and this time the ALP was clearly and comfortably the majority choice as the party to usher in the brave new world in which the ‘little people’ would achieve their long-postponed economic advance. Certainly, Australians in the mid-1940s were far more tolerant of industrial stoppages than they are today, and were generally supportive of the union drive to improve conditions of employment. This is not to suggest that popular opinion in the 1940s was informed by sweet reason or that the main industrial relations actors

318 Division of Labour behaved in a transparently obvious way. We have seen that excited allegations of plots abounded and that propagandists of both capital

and labour vastly overestimated their opponents’ foresight and powers of co-ordination. Thus while this Depression-conscious generation was at first quite ready to believe charges of a deliberate employer plan to ‘smash’ unionism, as the Cold War progressed it was increasingly susceptible to claims that the communists were seeking

to disrupt the economy. Paranoia was endemic and befogged the judgement of even the most analytic: employer leaders attributed inflation to deliberate communist policy, while the CPA saw it as an equally explicit government plan to cheat the workers in favour of capital. If nothing else, the preceding chapters have demonstrated that, in the real world of the 1940s, industrial relations were not explicable in terms of any simplistic thesis of cause and effect. No masterplan, communist or capitalist, explains these complicated and turbulent events. The main actors, while certain they knew what lay in their own best interests, often found themselves merely reacting to events

in this dynamic environment. One could, however, confidently predict that if market forces had been unimpeded, both private and public employers would have conceded improvements in wages, hours, leave and the rest more rapidly than they did. It was the ALP which, headed by the federal government, devoted much of its energies to blocking and diverting the spontaneous forward surge by the workforce. The Chifley government fulfilled the classic integrationist role of social democrat ministries. Fearful of the effects on the economic and social status guo and hence on the political milieu in which the ALP had recently become so dramatically successful, the

government sought to restrain labour market forces. Instead of fulfilling its platform and legislating for shorter hours and higher wages, it chose the opposite course. It sought to hold down wage costs in a variety of ways. These included moral suasion; direct emergency Regulation; manipulation of the cost-of-living index; conservative amendments to the centralized wage fixing system; the use of special tribunals to regulate the most strategic labour markets;

increased regulation of trade unions; and eventual deployment against labour of repressive legislation backed by the naked power of the state.

Such efforts were closely supported by ALP state governments and by the professional arbitrators. The latters’ role in the 1940s constitutes a fairly unambiguous contribution to regulatory literature and theory. Without exception—whether old hands or new, whether officiating in the state or federal sphere, whether coming from employer, legal or union backgrounds—they wholeheartedly accepted

the government canons of conservatism and caution. There was a spectrum of course: Cantor or Dunphy occupied somewhat different

Conclusions 319

positions on the grid than, say, Kirby or Mooney—but all subscribed to the principle of frustrating the application of labour’s new-found bargaining power.

The regulators’ natural instincts were fortified by the wellpublicized role of communists in the militant unions. As the Cold

War heightened, the real roots of workforce aggression were obscured. The fact that communists did not initiate militancy but rather were elected to union leadership because of their militancy was

buried under an avalanche of propaganda. The CPA itself, despite constant internal wrestling with the heresy of economism, contri-

buted to the distortion of industrial reality through its own increasingly warped appreciation of both the recent past and the immi-

nent future. The anti-communist chorus was heightened by the voices of the union moderates controlling the ACTU and most of the state peak councils. Distrustful of virtually any threat to the status quo in the union world and ever-fearful of electoral damage to the ALP, they emerged publicly to denounce industrial militancy in increasing numbers. At first only the autocratic AWU, with its close relationship to the ALP machine in so many states, offered a public

counterpoint within the labour movement to the across-the-board

militancy of the union rank and file. Then the ALP Industrial Groups were created specifically to counter the growing communist popularity. The divisions which emerged within the labour camp in

the early disputes in the three eastern mainland states gave the Groups an enormous boost. Soon, in terms of labour movement protocol, they were providing the respectability which allowed the moderates openly to reveal their congenital distrust of industrial mulitancy. Affected also by the growing virulence of communist diatribes,

ACTU and other moderates did little more than go through the motions of protesting against either the continued restrictive centralization of the wage-fixing process, or the passage through state and federal parliaments of legislation reducing unions’ freedom of action and more closely regulating their internal affairs. Presiding over the official labour movement was the redoubtable Mr Chifley. Singularly unaffected by any desire for popular plaudits but displaying an instinctive understanding of his party and of the

moderate majority of union officials, the Prime Minister astutely manipulated them both in pursuit of his overriding economic ends. No simple ‘great man’ theory of history applies here. Chifley was a product of his times. Had he not led the party, another social democrat Prime Minister would doubtless have sought to restrain the postwar grassroots surge. Yet it 1s difficult to see anyone else in contemporary Labor’s ranks (or indeed anyone among later ALP lead-

ers) who would have had the determination, strength and skill to stand so firmly against the tide in 1945—47 or to confront the miners

in such a controversial way in 1949. For different reasons, neither

320 Division of Labour

Forde, who contested the vacant leadership in 1945, nor Evatt, Deputy Leader from 1946, seemed equal to the task. The question remains, was Chifley’s labour policy correct? Despite their other criticisms of his government, employers must surely have thought so and, along with conservative politicians, must also have privately appreciated that Chifley’s success was far greater than any non-Labor government could have hoped for. However, given the electoral mood in the mid-1940s, the central question must be,

did the expectant and unusually militant workforce benefit from Chifley’s efforts to constrain and divert labour market forces? There is no doubt that the Prime Minister was acting in the best

interests of the working class as he saw them. The same thing, of course, can be said of the policies of Lance Sharkey or Bob Santamaria. Any judgement, therefore, is determined by the premises of the assessor. Chifley’s own test would have been the degree to which inflation was checked. By the time of Chifley’s defeat at the polls in December 1949 an inflationary spiral was well under way. Table 5 seems to offer support for the government’s stance by revealing an accelerated price rise from 1948 onwards, after both wage and price controls had been dismantled. The government could further argue

that this inflation might have been even greater had it not been for the largely successful obstruction of union efforts to bypass the arbitration system by direct bargaining on basic conditions of work. But, of course, in addition to wage costs there were other very 1mportant ingredients in the inflation. The most notable on the external side was the great commodities boom. Internally, in addition to the natural backlog of demand, there was the considerable and ironic impetus provided by the artificial way in which the dismantled price stabilization scheme had actually worked. The dynamic intrusion of such variables makes it virtually impossible to weigh the various inflationary ingredients and the effect of government policies. Almost inevitably we are left considering the imponderable mighthave-beens, with any hypothetical conclusions resting essentially on the individual observer’s subjective assumptions. The major coun-

terfactual question, perhaps, is what would have happened if the government had shared its union supporters’ main premise. The government’s labour policy was explicitly based on the assumption that there should be no major redistribution of income from profits to wages. In the years when price control was effective such a redis-

tribution was exactly what most unionists implicitly expected as their due in the new postwar world. From almost any point of view, of course, this expectation would appear to demonstrate the political naivety and lack of understanding of the contemporary ALP among Australian unionists. The Chifley government’s plans simply did not

encompass so daring a notion. The unions’ failure to identify and clearly publicize this fact was compounded by the moderates’ in-

Conclusions 321

creasing distaste for direct action and made it so much easier for a variety of Cold War warriors to weave their own beguiling and divisive myths around the real reasons for the industrial upheavals of the immediate postwar years.

NOTES

ABBREVIATIONS ANU Australian National University CAR Commonwealth Arbitration Reports

CCCA Commonwealth Court of Conciliation and Arbitration CPD Commonwealth Parliamentary Debates NMH Newcastle Morning Herald NSWAR New South Wales Arbitration Reports NSWIR New South Wales Industnal Reports

OPD Queensland Parliamentary Debates

RCCP Royal Commission into the. ..Communist Party in Vic-

toria...

SAPD South Australian Parliamentary Debates

SMH Sydney Morning Herald VPD Victorian Parliamentary Debates WAPD Western Australian Parliamentary Debates

1 The setting 1 G.T. Powell, The Role of the Commonwealth Government in Indus-

trial Relations, 1923-1929, MA thesis, ANU, 1974; C. Nyland, Worktime and the Rationalisation of the Capitalist Production Process, PhD thesis, University of Adelaide, 1985, pp. 353-436. For further background to industrial relations in the 1920s see A. Wildavsky and D. Carboch, Studies in Australian Politics (Melbourne, 1958); G. Sawer, Australian Federal Politics and Law 1901-1929 (Melbourne, 1956), pp. 268—70; K.J. Hancock, ‘The First Half-Century of Australian Wage Policy’ Part I, The fournal of Industrial Relations 21,

1, March 1979, pp. 1-19; Part II, zbid. 21, 2, pp. 129-60; T. Sheridan, Mindful Militants. The Amalgamated Engineering Union in Austraha 1920-1972 (Cambridge, 1975), pp. 63—112; F. Farrell, [nternational Socialism and Australian Labour (Sydney, 1981), Ch.6 and passim.

2 For further details of these disputes see Powell, op. cit.; Wildavsky and Carboch, op. cit., pp. 124, 128; Sheridan, op. cit., pp. 101-9;

Notes 323 W.J. Brown, ‘The Strike of the Australian Waterside Worker: A Review’, Economic Record 5, 1929, pp. 22—33; M. Dixson, “The Timber Strike of 1929’, Historical Studies of Australia and New Zealand 10, 40,

1963, pp. 479-82 and ‘Stubborn Resistance’ in J. Iremonger, J. Merritt and G. Osborne (eds), Strikes. Studies in Twentieth Century Austrahan Social History (Sydney, 1973), pp. 128-42; E. Ross, A History of the Miners’ Federation of Australia (Sydney, 1970), pp. 325—44; R. Gollan, The Coalminers of New South Wales (Melbourne, 1963), pp. 17799. 3 C.B. Schedvin, Australia and the Great Depression (Sydney, 1970), pp.

108-10. :

4 Details of the Port Kembla and aircraft disputes are provided in Jon White, ‘The Port Kembla Pig Iron Strike of 1938’, Labor History 37, November 1979, pp. 63-77; Len Richardson, ‘Dole Queue Patriots’ in Iremonger et al., pp. 143-58; Sheridan, op. cit., pp. 140-3. 5 For the effects among Catholics of the Spanish War see G. Henderson,

Mr Santamaria and the Bishops (Sydney, 1982), pp. 14-17; P. Ormonde, The Movement (Melbourne, 1972), pp. 5-10; B.A. Santamaria, Against The Tide (Melbourne, 1981), pp. 33-8. 6 Metal Trades Fournal, 1/12/41. 7 J.A. Merritt, A History of the Federated Ironworkers’ Association of Australia: 1909-1952, PhD thesis, ANU 1967, pp. 303-4. 8 In January 1944 the CPA formally changed its name to the Australian

Communist Party and this lasted until 1951 when it reverted to its original title. The traditional initials CPA will, however, be used throughout this book. 9 B. Fitzpatrick and R.J. Cahill, The Seamen’s Union of Australia 18721972, A History (Sydney, 1981), pp. 153-6; Sheridan, op. cit., pp. 146-50, 168; S.J. Butlin and C.B. Schedvin, War Economy 1942-1945 (Canberra, 1977), pp. 443-50. 10 During 1943 the federal government initiated arbitration procedures in several industries such as dairying and grain harvesting which had not previously been covered by an award. The result was an increase in pay for the workers involved: Butlin and Schedvin, op. cit., p. 556. 11 1bid., p. 371; Merrit, op. cit., pp. 316-17.

12. AEU organizer, J.F. Newman, AEU Monthly Journal and Report, January 1943, p. 13. 13. These measures did not cover such special cases as seasonal work and stevedoring. 14 For details of the Women’s Employment Board see Butlin and Sched-

vin, op. cit., pp. 557-61; A.W. Foster, ‘The Experience of the Women’s Employment Board in Australia’, International Labour Review 52,6, December 1945, pp. 632—42; minutes of full ACTU executive meeting, 9/10/45; C. Larmour, Labor Judge. The Life and Times of Fudge Alfred William Foster (Sydney, 1985), pp. 161-72; D.H. Plowman, Compulsory Arbitration and National Employer Co-ordination 1890-1980, PhD thesis, Flinders University, 1986, pp. 265-8. 15 Butlin and Schedvin, op. cit., pp. 542, 558. 16 See for example E.C. McGrath [Federal secretary of the Printing Industries Employees Union of Australian], ‘The Future of Women In Industry’, Australian Quarterly, June 1943, pp. 39-45.

324 Division of Labour 17 Merritt, op. cit., pp. 314-15. 18 Butlin and Schedvin, op. cit., p. 559. 19 Daphne Gollan, “The Duly and Hansford Strike 1943; Find the Strikers’ in M. Bevege, M. James and C. Shute (eds), Worth Her Salt. Women at Work in Australia (Sydney, 1982), pp. 309-18; see also Lynn Beaton, “The importance of women’s paid labour. Women at work in World War IT’, zbid., pp. 84-8; Gail Reekie, ‘Industrial Action By Women Workers in Western Australia During World War II’, Labour History 49, November 1985, pp. 75-82.

20 For full details see Butlin and Schedvin, op. cit., pp. 13-47, 140-9, 348-90, and passim.

2 Ben Chifley: background, character and approach 1 See for example Liverpool Post, 23/4/46; Birmingham Post, 24/4/46; Daily Mirror (Sydney), 6/5/46. For similar reactions from a distinguished scientist far removed from the political arena see S. Cockburn and D. Ellyard, Oliphant (Adelaide, 1981), pp. 145-6. 2 The major source of the ensuing biographical details is L.F. Crisp, Ben Chifley. A Political Biography (Sydney, 1961). Other sources include C.A. Hughes, Mr Prime Minister, Australian Prime Ministers 1901-1972 (Melbourne, 1976), pp. 137-47; F.C. Green, Servant of the House (Melbourne, 1969), pp. 129-32; K. Tennant, Evatt. Politics and Fustice (Sydney, 1970), passim; Don Whitington, Twelfth Man? (Brisbane, 1972), pp. 104—16 and Strive to be Fair (Canberra, 1978), passim; Dame Enid Lyons, Among the Carrion Crows 2nd edition (Adelaide, 1977), passim; H. Breen, ‘J.B. Chifley’, Twentieth Century, Au-

tumn 1974, pp. 226-45. 3 Asa final public blow in their long feud, during the 1949 federal election campaign J.T. Lang accused Chifley and his wife of being moneylenders during the Depression and charging usurious rates of interest to Bathurst borrowers. In response Chifley demonstrated to most neutrals’ satisfaction that the loans arose out of his role as executor of deceased estates for which he received no fee—although communists would not have been the only ones in the labour movement who, while denouncing Lang and his motives, felt that workers’ leaders should not involve themselves in any way in money-lending. Crisp, op. cit., pp. 113-15; Fred Daly, From Curtin to Kerr (Melbourne, 1977), pp. 80-2; J.T. Lang, The Turbulent Years (Sydney, 1970), pp. 209-10; Century, 9/12/49; Tribune, 10/12/49.

There can be little doubt about the depth of feeling between the two NSW Labor leaders. In addition to Chifley’s emotional response to the 1949 charges, Fred Daly reports Chifley as claiming that he only returned to politics in 1940 in order ‘to get rid of’ Lang (pp. 54, 82). Lang himself declares that, although they were both present at one mass meeting at least, he never met Chifley face to face until elected to the federal parliament in 1946. He than firmly rebuffed Chifley’s single attempt to be friendly. See The Turbulent Years, p. 202; I Remember (Katoomba, 1980), p. 258, The Great Bust (Katoomba, 1980),

p. 6l. 4 Crisp, op. cit., p. 168.

Notes 325 5 For evidence of the mutual respect between Lewis and Chifley see H. Breen, ‘Essington Lewis’, Twentieth Century, Winter 1974, pp. 293303; G. Blainey, The Steelmaster: A Life of Essington Lewis (Melbourne, 1971), p. 177; A. Trengrove, What’s Good for Australia. . . ! (Sydney, 1975), p. 185; Crisp, p. 134. Chifley also thought highly of Keith Butler, BHP’s manager in Newcastle, CPD, vol. 199, p. 3123. 6 Canberra Research Group, ‘Commonwealth Policy Co-ordination’, Public Adminstration 14, 4, 1955, p. 198.

7 Crisp, op. cit., p. 4; Lyons, op. cit., p. 101; Dame Mabel Brookes, Crowded Galleries (Melbourne, 1956), p. 294. 8 For evidence of Chifley’s ruthless quality see Tennant, op. cit., p. 131.

9 F. Farrell, International Socialism and Australian Labour (Sydney, 1981), p. 149.

10 SMH, 14/5/45. 11 Argus, 21/7/45. 12. The best exposition of the relationship between Chifley and his ‘official family’ is set out in Canberra Research Group, op. cit., pp. 196-203. Y.A. Mamchak offers a somewhat different assessment of this relationship in his studies of the Department of Post-war Reconstruction, viz. The Origins and Early Years of the Australian Ministry of Post-

war Reconstruction, MA thesis, Canberra College of Advanced Education, 1980; ‘Central Economic Planning and Post-war Reconstruction. An Examination of Ideological Influence in the Processes

of Policy Formation and Implementation’, paper presented at the National Seminar on Post-war Reconstruction, ANU, 1981. In these works Mamchak correctly, qualifies Crisp’s exaggerated version of Chifley’s dedication to postwar reconstruction (‘Central Economic Planning’, p. 76) but has difficulty in assessing Chifley’s relationship with his public service advisers (Origins. . ., pp. 111, 181-2, 193-4). Overall, Mamchak downgrades Chifley’s grasp of economic principles and inflates the influence which public servants had upon him. Certainly Mamchak’s reference to his ‘indecisiveness’ stands opposed to

virtually all other opinions concerning Chifley’s character and decision-making abilities. (Lang is once again the exception, accusing

Chifley of having ‘left all the major decisions to his officials’, The Turbulent Years, p. 210. Elsewhere, however, Lang implies that Chifley acted single-handedly on the bank nationalization issue at least—see The Great Bust, p. 129). It seems likely that Mamchak, in his generally excellent research, has tended to identify with his subject department on this issue. In other words he misinterprets the increasing tensions between the Department of PWR and Treasury—which are well described by Selwyn Cornish in Full Employment in Australia: The Genesis of a White Paper, Research Paper in Economic History no. 1 (ANU, 1981). Instead of seeing Chifley’s role as demonstrating the natural victory both of his pragmatic and of his Treasury instincts—1in a manner feared by both Harold Holt and the 1943 ALP conference—

Mamchak tends to see PWR’s defeats in terms of Chifley being influenced by Treasury’s F.H. Wheeler, who was the main ‘opponent’ of the PWR permanent head, H.C. Coombs. Mamchak notes that Wheeler himself saw Chifley as the determining influence. Coombs in his own autobiography presents Chifley as a strong personality who

326 Division of Labour stood back from the early debates which he usually encouraged between advisers before coming in with final decisions: see Trial Balance (Melbourne, 1981), pp. 35, 264, and passim. For some popular evidence of public servants identifying with Chifley see People, 30/8/ 50.

13. Interviews with E.V. Elliott, 30/10/80 and L.J. McPhillips, 23/2/82. 14. Datly Telegraph, 13/3/46. 15 Argus, 14/7/45, 21/5/46, 19/7/47; Smith’s Weekly, 31/1/48.

16 Tennant, op. cit., p. 131. 17. Green, op. cit., p. 131; J.W. Burton, review of Crisp’s biography, Bulletin of the Australian Society for the Study of Labour History 2, May 1962, p. 95.

18 For example Newcastle Trades Hall Council Executive minutes, 25/7/ 45.

19 Interviews with N.J.O. Makin, 1/10/80, S.J. Butlin, 4/11/74, Sir William McKell, 27/10/80. For an anecdote concerning Evatt’s reaction to Chifley’s parsimony see Edgar Holt, Politics 1s People (Sydney, 1969), p. 52. People (30/8/50), in emphasizing his natural frugality, reported

that Chifley simply couldn’t understand why Australia’s representatives in wartime Washington needed expense accounts! 20 Coombs, op. cit., pp. 218-19.

21 Crisp, op. cit., p. 153; interview with S.J. Butlin 4/11/74; N.J.O. Makin, Federal Labour Leaders (Sydney, 1961) p. 128; interview with Makin 1/10/80.

22 Holt, op. cit., p. 52. 23 Lang, The Turbulent Years, pp. 209-10; T. McGillick, Comrade No More (Perth, 1980), p. 204. See also footnote 3 above.

24 Crisp, op. cit., pp. 13-14, 146 376n; Butlin and Schedvin, op. cit., p. 321; interview with J. Kane and F. Rooney, 19/8/83; Burton, op. cit., p. 95; D. Whitington, The Rulers (Melbourne, 1964), p. 100. 25 Sydney Sun, 13/7/45. 26 See for example Round Table, September 1948, p. 813 for the allegation about price controls. Bank nationalization is dealt with below. 27 Evatt’s biographer feels, for example, that Chifley’s refusal in 1949 to change his stand on petrol rationing represented the electoral death warrant of his party: Tennant, op. cit., pp. 231-2. 28 Minutes of CPA central committee plenum, 31/5—2/6/46. 29 M. Beresford and P. Kerr, ‘A Turning Point for Australian Capitalism: 1942-52’, in E.L. Wheelwright and K. Buckley, Essays in the Political Economy of Australian Capitalism, vol. 4 (Sydney, 1980), pp. 148-71; A Markus, ‘Labour and Immigration 1946-9: The Displaced Persons Programme’, Labour History 47, November 1984, pp. 73-90;

R. Watts, ‘The Origins of the Australian Welfare State’, Historical Studies 19, 75, pp. 175-98. 30 One relatively neutral contemporary observer who felt that the biography painted too rosy a picture is Burton, op. cit., p. 95, who claimed, ‘Crisp’s Chifley is in many respects the mythical one’. 31 Coombs, op. cit., p. 264, offers a somewhat modified view of the degree of Chifley’s immersion in administrative detail. 32 See also Tennant, op. cit., p. 270.

33 Crisp’s analysis of industrial relations is to be found in his Chapter

Notes 32/7 XXI (pp. 343-67). My book obviously challenges his general interpretation, including, notably, Chifley’s true attitude to the 40-hour week (Crisp, pp. 348n, 361). One specific incident reported by Crisp (p. 356) concerns Chifley outfacing FIA leaders during the 1945 steel strike by threatening to call in the armed forces. This 1s demonstrably untrue since one FIA man concerned, E. Thornton, was not even

in Australia at the relevant time. The other, L.J. McPhillips, spontaneously—and vehemently—denied Crisp’s tale during an interview with me (23/2/82). 34 Journalist Crayton Burns forecast the effect of the departure of Beasley

(and of Makin), Argus, 19/1/46. Whitington also points to the significance of the departure of Chifley’s three wisest lieutenants 1n 1946 (Twelfth Man?, p. 115).

35 For detailed accounts see A.L. May, The Battle for the Banks. (Sydney, 1968); P. Love, Labour and the Money Power (Melbourne, 1984), pp. 165-80. For a vivid insider account see Daly, op. cit., pp. 57-62.

36 For a full explanation see Love, op. cit.; M.J. Howard, ‘Interpreting State Regulation of Capital: Aspects of the Banking and Monetary Policies of the Curtin-Chifley Governments, 1941-9’, Australasian Political Studies Association conference 1986.

37 S.J. Butlin, ‘Australian Central Banking, 1945-59’, Australian Economic History Review XXIII, 2, September 1983, p. 101. Crisp explains Chifley’s 1945 stance in terms of his fears that the war effort might be jeopardized by a controversy over nationalization: Crisp, op. Cit. ,

p. 178. 38 J. Hill, From Subservience To Strike. Industnal Relations in the Banking Industry (Brisbane, 1982), pp. 117—18, 120-1.

39 Tennant, op. cit., p. 217; D.L. Clark, “The Political Economy of Labour in Office: The Curtin and Chifley Era’, Economics 10, 2, June

1975, pp. 27-34; Whitington, Twelfth Man’, p. 114; G. Sawer, Australian Federal Politics and Law 1929-1949 (Melbourne, 1963), p. 220; Crisp, op. cit., p. 331; Breen, ‘J.B. Chifley’, pp. 231-40; But-

lin, ‘Australian Central Banking’, pp. 146-7; May, op. cit., p. 9; Coombs, op. cit., pp. 115-16. 40 Green op. cit., p. 130. 41 Whitington, The Rulers, p. 19. 42 People, 30/8/50.

3 The government, the economy and the labour market 1 Unless otherwise indicated the following discussion is based on S.J. Butlin and C.B. Schedvin, War Economy 1942-1945 (Canberra, 1977).

2 R. Watts, “The Origins of the Australian Welfare State’, Historical Studies 19, 75, p. 195n.

3 1bid., p. 197. 4 Butlin and Schedvin, op. cit., p. 633. 5 ibid., p. 634. 6 Ian Milner, ‘Referendum Retrospect’, Australian Quarterly, December 1944, pp. 38-49; P.G. Tiver, The Liberal Party, Principles and Performance (Brisbane, 1978), pp. 61-3.

- 328 Dhvision of Labour 7 For example, R.G. Menzies in discussion of “The Change-Over to Peace’ at the summer school of the Australian Insititute of Political Science, January, 1944, published in D.A.S. Campbell (ed.), PostWar Reconstruction in Australia (Sydney, 1944), pp. 179-80.

8 W.J. Waters, ‘Labor, Socialism and World War II’, Labour History, May 1969, pp. 14-19.

9 SMH, 5/8/43. 10 Waters, op. cit., p. 15. 11 Smiuth’s Weekly, 26/2/44. Waters’ point is confirmed by Don Watson, Brian Fitzpatrick. A Radical Life (Sydney, 1979), pp. 158-9. 12 Smith’s Weekly, 8/1/44. See also W.J. Waters, The Post War Recon-

struction Plans of the ALP During the Second World War, MEc. thesis, University of Sydney, 1968, pp. 51-2. 13. Y.A. Mamchak, ‘Central Economic Planning and Post-war Recon-

struction. . .’, paper presented to the National Seminar on Postwar Reconstruction, ANU, 1981, pp. 45,51; H. Breen, ‘J.B. Chifley’, pp. 228-31. See also Butlin and Schedvin, op. cit., p. 682; Watson, op. cit., pp. 204-5. 14 Speech to annual conference of the New South Wales branch of the ALP, 12/6/49, reprinted in Things Worth Fighting For. Speeches by Foseph Benedict Chifley, selected and arranged by A.W. Stargardt (Melbourne, 1952), p. 62. 15 R. Catley and B. McFarlane, Australian Capitalism in Boom and Depression (Sydney, 1981), p. 72.

16 D.L. Clark, “The Political Economy of Labor in Office. . .’, Economics 10, 2 (June 1975), p. 33. For further evidence of ALP moderation see D. Stephens, “The Effect of the Great Depression on the Federal Labor Governments, 1941-49’, Australian Journal of Politics and History August 1976, pp. 258-70.

17 Rob Watts, ‘Revising the Revisionists: The ALP and Liberalism 1941-1945’, Thesis Eleven 7, 1983, pp. 67-86. Note, however, that M.J. Howard ‘Interpreting State Regulation of Capital. . .’, APSA conference 1986, has recently called for a clearer formulation of criteria with which to interpret state regulation of capital in the Curtin—Chifley period.

18 Fitzpatrick also suspected that ‘Catholic-Tammany dominance’ of the state ALP executive was responsible for the lack of conviction of the ALP campaign in Victoria: Watson, op. cit., pp. 157-8; Waters, Post War Reconstruction Plans, pp. 101, 104-5; L.F. Crisp, Ben Chifley (Sydney, 1961), pp. 195-7; P. Hasluck, Government and the People 1942-1945 (Canberra, 1970), p. 537. 19 K. Tennant, Evatt. Politics and Justice (Sydney, 1970), p. 161. 20 Butlin and Schedvin, op. cit., p. 684.

21 Basic examples include lamb and fruit and vegetables other than onions and potatoes: ‘Graphic’, Communist Review, June 1949. 22 Argus, 28/6/47; CPD, vol. 202, p. 496.

23. P. Robertson, ‘Official Policy on American Direct Investment in Australia, 1945-52’, Australian Economic History Review XXVI, 2, September 1986, pp. 159-81; CPD, vol. 188, p. 4302, vol. 195, pp. 3271-6, vol. 196, pp. 252-6, vol. 202, pp. 158-61, vol. 204, p. 195, vol. 205, p. 1890; Argus, 1/3/46, 19, 23/7/47; SMH, 27/1/48, 19, 26/7/

Notes 329 48, 13, 19/9/48, 8/12/48, 3/1/49, 4/3/49; Crisp, op. cit., p. 280; R. Gollan, Revolutionaries and Reformists. Communism and the Australian Labour Movement 1920-1955 (Canberra, 1975), pp. 155-6. 24 1bid., pp. 214—22; C. Johnson, Social Harmony and Australian Labor:

The Ideology of the Curtin, Chifley and Whitlam Labor Governments, PhD thesis, University of Adelaide, 1986, pp. 137-44. 25. For Chifley’s public statements on tax and social security see Argus 27/11/45, 12/3/46, 17/6/46, 7/1/47, 4/2/47; SMH, 10/6/48, 31/8/48, 27/ 10/48; CPD, vol. 185, pp. 5635-41, vol. 197, pp. 1801-7, vol. 199, pp. 2120-4, vol. 202, p. 15. For details of budgetary policy see M.]J. Artis and R.H. Wallace, ‘A Historical Survey of Australian Fiscal Policy 1945-66’, in Neil Runcie, Australian Monetary and Fiscal Policy, Selected Readings, vol. 1 (Sydney, 1971), pp. 403-16; Greg Whitwell, The Treasury Line (Sydney, 1986), pp. 90—5. See also Chifley’s own summary of his postwar budgets, CPD, vol. 204, pp. 17-18, vol. 206, p. 1234. 26 Clark, op. cit., p. 33. 27 The confusion in economic thinking resulting from a failure to understand the centrality of wage-pegging to Chifley’s economic policy was observed by the anonymous Australian contributor to Round Table 37, 146, March 1947, p. 193. 28 Chifley to E.J. Ward, 20/1/42, Ward papers, National Library, 2396/ 1/26.

29 ‘Wartime Industrial Impressions’, Australian Quarterly, June 1944, pp. 33-56. 30 See for example, M. Kalecki, ‘Political Aspects of Full Employment’, Political Quarterly XIV, 4, 1943, pp. 322-31; W.H. Beveridge, Full Employment in a Free Society (London, 1944), pp. 194-8.

31 See for example, Coombs, ‘Problems of a High Employment Economy’, the Joseph Fisher Lecture in Commerce, University of Adelaide, 1944; ‘The Economic Aftermath of War’, in Campbell, op. cit., pp. 67—99 (particularly pp. 96—7); D.B. Copland, “The Change-Over

to Peace’, ibid., pp. 121-67 (particularly pp. 160-1); E.R. Walker, discussion, 1bid., pp. 113-14. 32 The remainder of this chapter 1s largely drawn from my ‘Planners and

the Australian Labour Market 1945-1949’, Labour History 53, November 1987, pp. 99-113, which contains detailed references to all sources. 33. ‘A Note on Prices and Wages Policy’, (anon., undated, August 1944), CP 131/1, 45/628. 34 GG. Firth, ‘Price Stability with High Employment’, 17/8/44, ibid. 35. Firth, ‘Outline For the White Paper’, 5/12/44, 1bid. 36 ‘Meeting of Interdepartmental Committee on ACTU Claims and Price Policy on April 22nd, 1946, 3 p.m.’, A571, 45/3964, Part 1. 37. Selwyn Cornish, Full Employment in Austraha. . .(ANU, 1981); see also L. Black, ‘Social Democracy and Full Employment’, Labour History 46, May 1984, pp. 34-51; Firth to Coombs, 18/8/44, CP 131/1, 45/628; Ulrich Ellis, memo, 15/1/45, CP 131/1, 45/632; minutes of weekend conference 1—3/3/45, CP 131/1, 45/635; Ross to Coombs, 27/ 2/45, ‘Re White Paper Again’, CP 131/1, 45/632; Stevens to Wheeler, 27/4/45, ‘Notes On the White Paper on Full Employment in Austra-

330 Division of Labour lia’, A571, 45/574, Part 3; Wheeler to Coombs 19/3/45, CP 131/1, 45/ 636.

38 19/3/45, CP 131/1, 45/636. 39 Holloway to Dedman, 17/4/45, CP 131/1, 45/637. 40 CP 131/1, 45/639. 41 Lazzarini to Dedman, 28/3/45, CP 131/1, 45/637. 42 Cornish, op. cit., p. 165. 43 Firth, 3/5/45, CP 131/1, 45/641.

44 Cornish, op. cit., pp. 177-8. 45 South Australian Chamber of Commerce, Adelaide Commerce, June 1945.

46 Wheeler to Firth, 29/11/45, CP 286, Series 2, Bundle 5, Item 1434, Part 1. 47 Wheeler to Giblin, 6/12/45, A571, Item 45/3964.

48 Firth to Coombs, 10/12/45, CP 286... . 49 ‘Meeting of the Inter-Departmental Committee on Wage Policy in the Senate Committee Room at 9 o’clock, 14th December 1945’, A571, 45/3964, Part 2. 50 Executive Minutes 4/12/47; ‘Executive Report—ACTU Congress, September Ist, 1947’; L.J. McPhillips, Communist Review, September 1948, p. 285.

51 ‘Report of the Inter-Departmental Committee on Economic and Financial Effects of the ACTU Claims in Relation to the Basic Wage and Hours of Work’, Ward papers, National Library, 2396/10/14791534.

52 Firth, ‘Prices and Wages’, 8/10/45, CP 286, Series 2, Bundle 5, Item 1434, Part 1. See also Ward, ‘Price Control in the Post War Period’, undated (October 1945?), ibid. 53 Coombs to Dedman, 2/5/46, CP 286, Series 2, Bundle 5, Item 1434. 54 Wheeler to McFarlane, 6/5/46, ibid. 55 “Wages and Prices. Third Meeting of Cabinet Sub-Committee, 24/7/ 1946’, ibid.

56 A.S. Brown (for Coombs) to Dedman, 24/10/46 (see also Brown to Dedman, 22/10/46), ibid. 57 ‘Basic Wage: Price Stabilisation Policy. Notes of Meeting—Treasury 13/11/46’, bid. 58 “Wages and Prices. Fourth Meeting of Cabinet Sub-Committee, 12th December 1946’, ibid. 59 ‘Conference on Relaxation of the Wage Pegging Regulations, 25th November, 1946’, ibid.

60 The others were the Dollar Budget, Trade and Employment and Secondary Industries Committees: Canberra Research Group, ‘Commonwealth Policy Co-ordination’, Public Administration 14, 4, 1955, p. 201. 61 Andrew Markus, ‘Labour and Immigration 1946-9. . .’, Labour History 47, November 1984, pp. 77-8. 62 IEC, ‘Economic Trends and Prospects’, 8/12/47, A571, 47/1907, Part 4,

63 Correspondence between A. Strahan, Commonwealth Directorate of Shipping, and C.H. McFadyen, Department of Shipping and Fuel, April—October 1949, AA MP 413/5, box 465, file 137/17/66. For

Notes 33] general government advocacy see SMH, 4/8/47; Standard Weekly, 8/8/ 47, 22/10/48; Chifley to Judge Kelly, 7/1/49 (Evatt Papers); Incentive Payments (Department of Labour and National Service, 1949); broadcasts by J.B. Chifley, 13, 20/2/49; ACTU report to 1949 congress; CPD vol. 200, pp. 3729, 4020, vol. 204, p. 572. 64 ‘Draft Prospects for 1948-9’, A571, 47/1909, Part 5. 65 ICE meeting, 23/2/48. This was in line with a background paper which urged the government ‘to throw the weight of its influence against further wage increases’ and ‘suggested that the Government might adopt the view that [it is] undesirable to effect any reductions in taxation’ because of the inflationary implications: ‘The Price Level’, 20/2/ 48, CP 286/2, Bundle 3, Item 141. 66 Wheeler to Randall, 16/4/48, A571, 45/3964, Part 2. 67 H. Bland (LNS), working committee, 10/2/48, A571, 47/1909, Part 3. 68 Interview with Sir Richard Eggleston, 26/5/1981. 69 Fora discussion of the problems see Australian Department of Labour and Immigration, Labour’s Share of the National Product. The Post War Australian Experience (Canberra, 1975). 70 T. Sheridan, Mindful Militants. . . (Cambridge, 1975), pp. 183-6.

71 R.I. Downing and P.H. Karmel, ‘Special Problems of the Member Nations: Australia. Part 1. Economic Problems’, Australian Institute of International Affairs, British Commonwealth Relations Conference 1949.

72 9/4/49, A571, 47/1909. 73 Memo, 5/5/49, ibid. 74 For Chifley’s public presentation of this argument see SMH, 1/3/49.

75 IEC committee, 6/6/49, Agendum, ‘Review of Economic Policy’, A571, 47/1907, Part 7.

76 Markus, op. cit., pp. 87-9. 77 For a critical summary of these unions’ attitude see SMH, 29/9/48. For Chifley’s defence of the immigration schemes see SMH, 12/5/49, 30/5/49.

78 IEC working committee, 1/3/49, A571, 47/1909, Part 6.

79 Markus, op. cit., p. 90; M.G. Quinlan, Immigrant Workers, Trade Union Organisation and Industrial Strategy, PhD thesis, University of Sydney, 1982, pp. 446-9, 464-9; B. Luckham, Immigration and the Australian Labour Movement, mimeograph, Imperial Relations Trust, 1958, pp. 37-50. On the employers’ side, ACMA director L. Withall argued that communists were deliberately obstructing immigration by ensuring coal and steel shortages: Argus, 7/5/49.

4 The unions 1 J. Hagan, The History of the ACTU (Melbourne, 1981), p. 182; P. Hasluck, Government and the People 1942-1945 (Canberra, 1970), pp. 264-5. 2 SAPD, 31st parliament, 4th session (1946), pp. 119, 189, 273. 3 The tramways case is outlined below, p. 187. The Sydney case is described in J. Street, Truth or Repose (Sydney, 1966), p. 124. For CPA outlook see T. O’Lincoln, ‘Women and the CPA 1946-1968’, Hecate VI, 1, 1980, pp. 53-66. The Sydney railworkers’ campaign is

332 Division of Labour outlined by Freda Brown, Communist Review, August 1949. See also A. Summers, Damned Whores and God’s Police: The Colonization of Women in Australia (Melbourne, 1975), p. 419; J. Stone, “Women in

the Metal Trades’, Front Line, December 1976, pp. 9-17; P. Ryan and T. Rowse, ‘Women, Arbitration and the Family’ in A. Curthoys et

al., Women At Work (Canberra, 1975), pp. 15-30; P. Spearitt, ‘Women in Sydney Factories c. 1920-1950’, 1bid., pp. 31-46; C. Allport, ‘Women, Reconstruction and New Order Housing’, Labour History 46, May 1984, pp. 1-20. 4 For communists’ anxieties on this issue see below pp. 147, 239, 358 n. 42. 5 For example, E.W. Bulmer, NSW president of the BWIU, quoted by C.N. McKay in his 1948 presidential address to the Victorian Chamber of Manufactures. 6 For some expansion of this theme and a summary of the structure and operation of the Groups and the Movement, see T. Sheridan, Mindful Militants. . .(Cambridge, 1975), pp. 192-200. 7 News Weekly, for example, could surprise the casual reader by lambasting communist officials involved in a dispute and then concluding, as it did in the case of a major Hobart tram strike, that ‘Morally the claims. . . are proper and just’ (8/1/47). 8 There are problems in estimating these proportions. Hagan gives a figure of 30 per cent in 1945—see The ACTU: A Short History (Sydney, 1977), p. 53; Pilkington says 34 per cent in 1946 and 41 per cent in 1950—see G. Pilkington, ‘ACTU Authority 1927-57: From State Branch to Federal Union Legitimation’, in B. Ford and D. Plowman, Australian Unions. An Industrial Relations Perspective (Melbourne, 1983), p. 276. See also Hagan, The History of the ACTU, pp. 232-3. 9 ‘1945 ACTU Congress Minutes’, 12/6/45. 10 The original members of this initially unconstitutional but unchallenged ‘emergency committee’ were W.J. Duggan, C.A. Crofts and

D. Cameron. On Duggan’s death in 1934, Monk replaced him. Cameron entered the Senate in 1937 and became a minister in the Curtin and Chifley governments. See Clifford B. Donn, The Australian Council of Trade Unions. History and Economic Policy (Lanham, Maryland, 1983), pp. 42, 49-50.

11 tbid., p. 78. 12 Pilkington, op. cit., p. 292. 13. 1tbid., p. 293. 14 Hagan, The History of the ACTU, p. 184.

15 ibid., p. 187. 16 For some details of union concern and involvement in these programmes see S.J. Butlin and C.B. Schedvin, War Economy 19421945 (Canberra, 1977), pp. 701-6; Hasluck, op. cit., pp. 521-3; A. Markus, ‘Labour and Immigration 1943—-1949’, paper presented to the Postwar Reconstruction Seminar, ANU, August 1981; SMH, 16/6/1945; ACTU executive minutes 13/8/1946, 7/9/46, 18/9/46, 22/12/ 47; M.J. Howard, ‘Beyond Full Employment: The Nature and Scope

of Commonwealth Intervention in the Building Industry, During Post-War Reconstruction, 1941—49’, paper presented to the National Seminar on Postwar Reconstruction, ANU, 1981 and ‘State, Busi-

Notes 333 ness and Unions in the Restructuring of the Building Industry in Australia, 1939-52’, Industrial Relations Paper, Research School of Social Sciences, ANU, 1987. 17 ACTU congress minutes; SMH, 16/6/45.

18 Don Watson, Bran Fitzpatrick (Sydney, 1979), pp. 210-1; ACTU executive minutes, 31/5/47, 2/6/47; T. Wright, Communist Review, August 1947.

19 For details of the joint declaration see Hagan, The History of the ACTU, p. 192; SMH, 4/8/47. The enthusiasm of the ACTU leadership for the basic idea of such a ‘summit’ meeting at which they would represent labour is demonstrated in letters from Clarey to E.J. Holloway (25/10/45) and Chifley (26/10/45): AA CRS A461, Item V.326/1/1.

20 Minutes of conference of federal unions, 26/5/48. 21 ACTU minutes, 11/4/48, 9/5/48. 22 Emergency committee minutes, 18/9/48. 23 Monk’s version is set out in his report on the basic wage case to the 1949 congress. For the MTEA case see N.F. Dufty, /ndustrial Relations in the Australian Metal Industries (Sydney, 1972), p. 119.

24 S. Macintyre, Militant. The Life and Times of Paddy Troy (Sydney, 1984), p. 104.

25 AA CRS 2700 XM, vol. 25, Agenda 1127; Ward papers, National Library, 2396/7/755; letter to ACTU from Senator N.E. McKenna, Minister for Health and Social Services, 22/3/48; ACTU emergency committee minutes, 21/5/48. 26 Emergency committee minutes, 18/4/48. 27 Emergency committee minutes, 4/6/49, 7/6/49; letter from Monk to affiliated unions, 24/6/49 and attached papers in 1949 ACTU congress documents; Hagan, The History of the ACTU, p. 153.

28 FLAC minutes, 6/12/48, 7/12/48, 7/3/49, 13/5/49, 7/12/49; Riley papers, National Library, box 38.

29 Doris Blackburn, CPD, vol. 203, pp. 2077-9; Sheridan, Mindful Militants. .. , pp. 214-17; Hagan, The History of the ACTU, pp. 1945; T. Wright, Communist Review, May 1949; AA A432 Item 48/840. 30 For a detailed study of one region see N.W. Saffin, Left And Right in Bendigo and Shepparton 1947-51 (Kilmore, 1974).

31 R. Murray, The Split (Melbourne, 1970), p. 16; L.J. McPhillips, Communist Review, May 1947.

32 Murray, op. cit., p. 307. 33 J. Wanna, ‘A Paradigm of Consent: Explanations of Working Class Moderation in South Australia’, Labour History 53, November 1987, pp. 54-72; J. Moss, Sound of Trumpets. History of the Labour Movement in South Australia (Adelaide, 1985). 34 UTLC minutes, 2/5/47. For examples of ‘militant’ motions see ibid., 28/9/45, 1/8/47 (Indonesia); 21/12/45 (steel strike); 1/7/46, 5/7/46 (meat strike); 15/8/46, 14/3/47 (rocket testing); 8/11/46, 31/1/47, 28/2/47, 11/ 4/47 (wage-pegging and 40-hour week); 14/3/47 (Bretton Woods); 27/ 2/48, 12/3/48 (Queensland railway strike). 35. 1bid., 17/6/49, 15/7/49; News Weekly, 3/8/49; Advertiser, 30/7/49, 18/8/ 49; News, 29, 30/7/49; Herald (SA, ALP), 29/7/49; SA Tribune, 5/8/49, 21/10/49.

334 Division of Labour 36 News, 14—18/5/45; Advertiser, 23, 24/7/45; 7, 11/8/45; 25/10/45; Workers’ Weekly Herald, 9/11/45. 37 Advertiser, 30/10/45. 38 Workers’ Weekly Herald, 9/11/45. 39 Advertiser, 5/11/45. 40 Advertiser, 7/11/45.

41 tbid., 12, 13/11/45; News, 12/11/45. 42 Advertiser, 14, 15, 19/11/45; News, 15/11/45; 56 CAR 475.

43 For details see R. Davis, “Tasmanian Labor and The Trade Union Movement, 1920-1960’, Tasmanian Historical Research Association, Papers and Proceedings 28, 2, June 1981, pp. 85-104. 44 For public transport see Mercury, 18, 19, 21, 24, 30/12/46, 1, 18/4/47; News Weekly, 8/1/47; Hobart THC minutes, 16/1/47. The road dispute, arose from the habit of an earlier ALP Premier of creating ‘company unions’ to displace existing unions critical of his policies: Mercury 14, 20, 21, 23/12/46; Davis, op. cit., p. 95; News Weekly, 8/1/47. For coal see Mercury 10, 14, 21/3/47. For butchering see ibid., 11, 19, 29/3/47. For the waterfront see ibid., 25/5/49, 3, 7, 9, 10, 15, 28, 29, 30/6/49, 1/7/49. Despite the Mercury’s communist conspiracy thesis a true indication of the ‘moderate’ nature of the Tasmanian branches of

the WWE in 1949 is provided by their reaction to the Sharkey— McPhillips gaolings (below, p. 166) and the Healy—Roach clash with

Judge Kirby of the Stevedoring Industry Commission (below, pp. 172-5): tbid., 29/3/49, 12/4/49, 25/5/49. 45 FF. McManus, The Tumult and the Shouting (Adelaide, 1977), p. 79. 46 Mercury, 6/5/46. See also Hobart THC minutes, 9, 16/5/46. For exam-

ples of other Cosgrove pronouncements on industrial relations see Mercury, 17, 18/12/45, 17/3/47. 47 Mercury, 28/2/49, 1/3/49; Hobart THC minutes 10, 24/3/49. 48 Davis, op. cit., pp. 88, 100; Mercury, 12/11/47, 5/12/47.

49 Hobart THC minutes, 9/5/46, 16/5/46, 10/10/46, 27/2/47, 11/3/48, 14/ 10/48, 28/10/48, 9/6/49, 14/7/49; Davis, op. cit., pp. 89-90, 96-8; 65 CAR 830. Davis (op. cit., p. 90) is wrong in claiming that the THC denounced Chifley’s use of troops in the coal strike: an amendment couched 1n such a vein was rejected by the Council—minutes, 25/7/49.

50 Macintyre, op. cit., p. 97. 51 The AWU was WA’s largest union, accounting for 14 per cent of unionists affiliated to the ALP. Its highly centralized structure and WA’s system of bloc voting for parliamentary candidates induced many politicians to join its ranks, giving it an influence even greater than its size warranted—see A. Wilkinson, The Formation of the West Australian Trade Unions Industrial Council, ALP (WA Branch)

1947, Honours dissertation, University of WA, pp. 28-9, 31-2. Barry says, ‘[B]etween 1933 and 1947, two thirds of all Cabinet Minis-

ters and two General Secretaries of the ALP were members of the AWU’: K. Barry, ‘Labour in turmoil: The Garratt Strike of 1946’, Social Sciences Forum 4, 1977, p. 27. For some detail of how ‘the government strengthened ‘“‘moderate” unions and “‘moderate”’ officials and in turn gained their support within party councils’ see R. Pervan

and D. Mitchell, “The Changing Nature of the Australian Labor

Notes 335 Party’ in R. Pervan and C. Sharman (eds), Essays on Western Austrahan Politics (Perth, 1979), p. 136. 52 Justice Dunphy, West Australian, 11/5/49. 53. Western Australian Industrial Gazette XXXVI, pp. 181-2. See also ibid., XXVII, pp. 270, 517-38, 540, XXX, p. 145; West Australian, 21, 30/8/48, 23, 28, 29/3/50. 54. M. Hess, “The Pilbara Aboriginal Workers’ Uprising of 1946’, paper presented to the Australian-Canadian Labour History Conference, University of Sydney, 1988. 55 The following summary largely rests on Barry, op. cit., and Wailkinson, op. cit., pp. 50-61. See also Communist Review, January 1947.

56 Quoted by Barry, op. cit., p. 41. 57 The Collie miners had made a formal approach to the other two unions for the formation of ‘The Triple Cooperative Council of Unions (WA)’ one month before the Garratt strike— see Wilkinson, op. cit., pp. 49, 60.

58 ibid., p. 47; Pervan and Mitchell, op. cit., p. 138; Barry, op. cit., p. 43.

59 Macintyre, op. cit., pp. 99; see also West Australian, 9/6/48, 3, 21, 22/7/48.

60 Macintyre, op. cit., p. 99.

5 Private-sector employers 1 J. Hagan, The History of the ACTU (Melbourne, 1981), p. 53. 2 ibid., pp. 56, 60; W.T. Dobson, Associated Chambers of Manufactures of Australia 1904-1977, MA thesis, University of Melbourne, 1977, pp. 221-2, 231-41. 3 T. Sheridan, Mindful Militants. . .(Cambridge, 1975), pp. 107-9. 4 G.W. Ford, D. Plowman and R.D. Lansbury, ‘Employers’ Associations: An Introduction’ in G.W. Ford, J.M. Hearn and R.D. Lansbury, Australian Labour Relations: Readings (Melbourne, 1980), p. 232; D. Plowman, ‘Structural Change and the Institutions of Industrial Relations’ in Trends in Australasian Industrial Relations, proceedings of AIRAANZ conference, Brisbane, 1985, p. 23; D. Plowman,

‘Compulsory Arbitration. ..’, PhD thesis, Flinders University, 1986, p. 309.

5S M.J. Howard, ‘State, Business and Unions, in the Restructuring of the Building Industry in Australia, 1939-52’; Industrial Relations Paper, Research School of Social Sciences, ANU, 1987, p. 21. 6 Brochure to celebrate 20th Anniversary of Australian Metal Industries Association, Sydney, 1962. 7 For example, Metal Trades Journal, 17/7/43, 17/8/43, 15/5/44. 8 D.J. Blackmur, Industrial Relations under an Australian State Labor Government. The Hanlon Government in Queensland 1946-1952, PhD thesis, University of Queensland, 1986, pp. 334-6. 9 Plowman, Compulsory Arbitration. . ., p. 297.

10 ibid., p. 296. 11 1tbid., pp. 270-1, 292. 12 1tbid., p. 278.

336 Division of Labour 13. For details of such ‘state’s rights’ fears in Queensland, see Blackmur, op. cit., pp. 355-7. 14 Attachments to Agenda of ‘Conference on Industrial Matters, 5th and 6th January, 1944’, p. 1, BHP archives, A 26/19. 15 Chairman H.G. Darling, ‘Draft [of Minutes of Conference on Industrial Matters, 5th and 6th January, 1944]’, p. 37, loc. cit. 16 Rydge’s, April 1944.

17 Industry and Trade, February 1947. See also Adelaide Commerce, August 1946.

18 Dobson, p. 162. 19 1bid., p. 164. 20 loc. cat. 21 A.L. May, The Battle for the Banks (Sydney, 1968), pp. 22, 24, 25. 22 Melbourne, October 1944. See also the NSW IPA’s What Is Ahead for Australia? (Sydney, 1945). 23 J.R. Hay, ‘The Institute of Public Affairs and Social Policy in World War II’, Historical Studies 20, 79, 1982, p. 209. 24 1bid., p. 210. 25 1bid., pp. 199, 215. 26 The following summary is based on Plowman, ‘Compulsory Arbitra-

tion. . .”, pp. 292-5. 27. Research Service, ‘Communist Initiated Disputes in Australia in the Post-war Period’ (Sydney, 1950). 28 Fournal of Industry, April 1944; Industrial Australian and Mining Standard, August 1944; Adelaide Commerce, September 1945. 29 Rydge’s, March 1945, 30 Rvydge’s, October 1944; WA Mining and Commercial Review, January 1945.

31 Rvydge’s, February 1946; Industry and Trade, August-September 1946. 32 Rydge’s, January 1947, December 1950; WA Mining and Commercial

Review, February 1948; C.L. Jones, Chairman of David Jones Ltd, SMA, 21/10/48. 33. WA Mining and Commercial Review, July 1949; Rydge’s, March-May 1949.

34 Sir Frank Clarke made one of the best presentations of this argument in the Victorian Legislative Council in 1945, VPD, vol. 220, pp. 63—5 (4/12/45). In response the ACTU’s Clarey gave suitable reassurances:

ibid., p. 69. On the same point see W.C. Taylor and Lloyd Ross, ‘Contemporary Party Policies: The Labor Party’ in A. Campbell Garnet, Freedom and Planning in Australia (Wisconsin, 1949), pp. 311-2. 35 Fournal of Industry, June, November 1946; Rydge’s, January, May, June 1944; Industry and Trade, May 1945 and other 1945 issues. 36 Forexample, Journal of Industry, September 1947; Industry and Trade, October 1947; WA Mining and Commercial Review, November 1947.

37 L. Withall, director of ACMA, fournal of Industry, February 1943; W. Queale, president of SACM, 1b1d., November 1943, March 1948; H. Grose, ACCA president, WA Mining and Commercial Review, May 1948.

38 Rydge’s, May 1945, May 1946, January 1947; VCM president, Cdr L. Robinson, Annual Report year ended 31/3/46; A.G. Cameron, WA

Notes 337 Mining and Commercial Review, September 1946; C.N. McKay, Argus 26/12/46. 39 Industry and Trade, May 1945, December 1946; JPA Review, January 1947.

40 ACEF presidential report, Industry and Trade, April 1947. See also H.P. Higginson, VEF president, 1bid., June 1947. 41 Australasian Manufacturer, 29/1/49; Manufacturing and Management, 15/3/49; Industrial Australian and Mining Standard, 1/9/45. 42 Industry and Trade, July 1945; Rydge’s, May 1946; fournal of Industry, June 1946. 43 Rydge’s, May 1946, p. 348. 44 A.J. Gairns, Rydge’s, May 1946, p. 348. 45 Australian Institute of Political Science, Australia’s Post-War Economy, (Sydney, 1945), pp. 261-7.

46 VPD, vol. 228, p. 4031. 47 For example, at the height of the 1949 coal strike, Adelaide Commerce, July 1949. 48 WA Mining and Commercial Review, May 1948.

49 Harbour, 1/9/48. 50 Fournal of Industry, April 1948.

51 For example, resolutions carried at the 38th annual meeting of ACMA, 27 & 28 November 1946.

52 Blackmur, op. cit., pp. 350-2. 53 For example, fournal of Industry, August 1948. 54 Blackmur, op. cit., p. 345. 35 Fournal of Industry, December 1948.

56 ibid., January 1949. 57 For example, a report by the president of the TCM entitled ‘Harmonious Industrial Relations’, Australasian Manufacturer, 5/5/49.

58 August 1945, January 1947. 59 ACEF memorandum to Chifley, 11/10/46, AA CP 18/1 pt.A, reprinted in Industry and Trade, February 1947; IPA Review, January 1947; Harbour, 1/9/48.

60 VPD, vol. 229, p. 275. 61 For example, Australian Observer, 10/1/48. 62 Industry and Trade, January, February, August-September, November 1946, February, March, June 1947; fournal of Industry, January, July 1948; ‘Address Delivered by the President, Mr C.N. McKay, at the Annual Meeting on 25th May, 1948’, VCM, 1948. 63 For example, Metal Trades Journal, 1/12/45, 1/2/46, 1/4/46, 15/2/47; ACEF in Argus, 5/6/47; VCM Annual Report, year ended 31/3/48; J.A.

Merritt, A History of the Federated Ironworkers’ Association. . ., PhD thesis, ANU, 1967, p. 359; Blackmur, op. cit., pp. 336-7. 64 For some detail of the employers’ approach to the proposed 1945 conference see Hay, op. cit., pp. 213—4; Dobson, op. cit., p. 165. In seeking government representation at the conference ACMA demonstrated that it did not see ACEF participation as essential: L. Withall, ACMA director, to E.J. Holloway, 30/10/45, AA CRS A461 Item V. 326/1/1. 65 ACMA president’s address to conference, AA MP579 File 31/3/2.

66 Hagan, The History of the ACTU, p. 192; Sheridan, Mindful Mil-

tants. .., pp. 164-5.

338 Division of Labour

6 The opening salvos: NSW steel and Queensland meat 1 The ensuing discussion of the steel strike largely summarizes three earlier published papers which contain detailed references to all relevant sources. See T. Sheridan, ‘A Case Study in Complexity: The Origins of the 1945 Steel Strike in New South Wales’, Labor History 41, November 1981, pp. 87-109; ‘The 1945 Steel Strike: Trade Unions, the New Order and Mr Chifley’, zbid. 42, May 1982, pp. 1-26; ‘Aspects of Decision Making in a Monopoly: BHP and the 1945 Steel Strike’, Australian Economic History Review XII, 1, 1982,

pp. 1-27. 2 Illawarra Trades and Labor Council and Newcastle Trades Hall Council, The Story of the Steel Strike of 1945, St George Newspaper Print, 1946, p. 3. It 1s impossible to state accurately the total working days lost, for the official Bureau of Statistics figures (Tables 1 and 7) do not include indirect work loss.

3 Eather reports that the Commonwealth Investigation Branch, on its own initiative, supplied details to BHP in 1940 of communist employees and suggested they be dismissed: W.A. Eather, The Trenches at Home: The Industrial Struggle in the Newcastle Iron & Steel Industry, 1937-1947, PhD thesis, University of Sydney, 1986, pp. 64, 69.

4 ibid., pp. 172-3, 184—5, 201-2. 5 J.A. Merritt, A History of the Federated Ironworkers’ Association. . ., PhD thesis, ANU, 1967, pp. 287, 333. 6 Quoted in R. Gollan, Revolutionaries and Reformists. . .(Canberra, 1975), p. 178.

7 Merritt, op. cit., p. 288. 8 Letter from K. Butler, manager Newcastle steelworks, to Essington Lewis, BHP chief general manager, Melbourne, 20/10/45, BHP archives, $4/56. See also Butler to Lewis, 5/10/45, zb1d., A26/21. 9 BHP had two days earlier confidentially informed Coal Commissioner

N. Mighell and Munitions Secretary J.K. Jensen of its intentions. Letters, 26/10/45, BHP archives, A26/21. 10 ‘Notes on Discussion held [on] 13th December, 1945’, loc. cit. 11 Sydney Sun, 28/10/45. See also Crayton Burns, Argus, 29/10/45; report of ACTU executive to 1945 congress. 12. J. Hagan, Printers and Politics (Canberra, 1966), pp. 276-8. 13. SMA, 29/9/45, 9/10/45. 14 NSWPD (Assembly), 18/10/45, p. 545; see also ibid., 3/10/45, p. 182. 15 Amalgamated Engineering Union Monthly fournal and Report, November 1945. See also SA UTLC minutes, 9/11/45.

16 SMH, 20/10/45. ‘

17 NMBA, 19/10/45. See also Tribune, 19/10/45. 18 Illawarra TLC and Newcastle THC, Story of the Steel Strike, p. 21. 19 R.C. Morgan (FIA), NMH, 24/11/45. 20 Australian Labor Party, Official Report of Proceedings of the 17th Commonwealth Triennial Conference.

21 Labor Call, 6/12/45. 22 NMA, 30/11/45. 23 thid., 3/12/45.

Notes 339 24 loc. cit.; Argus, 3/12/45. 25 In the negotiations Holloway did argue, along with the ACTU representatives, in favour of BHP recognition of the FIA as the main route to a speedy settlement of the dispute. This was of course, a very different matter from the government taking a firm public stand on the recognition issue. 26 The real danger of a union objection was seen to rest with the AWU Illawarra TLC and Newcastle TLC, (Story of the Steel Strike, pp. 1920). In fact, when the FIA applied for reregistration the only union momentarily to threaten opposition was the Miscellaneous Workers’

Union which was concerned about jurisdiction over cleaners and watchmen employed in metal firms. On the employers’ side the NSW Chamber of Manufactures was originally anxious to oppose FIA reregistration: ‘Memorandum of Secretary’s telephone conversation with Mr R. Parry Okeden. . . 28/12/45’, BHP archives A26/21. 27 The pleas came not just from unionists and labour supporters. They came also from conservative politicians, including federal Opposition leader, R.G. Menzies, and the conservative press, who all felt that the federal government had the legal power under the National Security Regulations to intervene. See for example Argus, 13/12/45, 18/12/45; Hobart Mercury, 13/12/45; Age, 14/12/45. In their opinion, of course, the government’s intervention should be directed at the strikers and not at BHP—AIS. After the strike the federal government publicly acknowledged that it did have the legal power to intervene on either side: Senator McKenna, CPD, vol. 186 (15/3/46), pp. 368-9. 28 Freedom, 5/12/45.

29 NMA, 4/12/45. 30 L. Sharkey, Communist Review, January 1946. 31 See for example president of the Victorian Chamber of Manufactures, Argus, 28/11/45; West Australian Mining and Commercial Review, January 1946. For the minority employer view that Chifley ‘by his ‘“‘master-

ly inaction’. . . lost prestige’, see Industrial Australian and Mining Standard, 7/1/46.

32. NMH, 9/11/45. 33 NSWAR, 1945, p. 507. 34. NSWAR, 1946, p. 20. 35. The Sydney Morning Herald editorial writer (7/1/46) did express doubts as to the worth of the FIA’s undertakings. The militants’ open disregard for arbitration etiquette upset not merely the arbitration industry itself. The NSW minister, Knight, was aghast at what he considered to be the strike leaders’ general off-handedness and lack of respect towards the state Industrial Commission. E.V. Elliott recalls Knight’s expostulations when the union leaders were discussing the composition of the bench for the Parker reinstatement case. (Interview, 30/10/80.) This possibly explains why the NSW government refused to allow the reregistration to be speeded up by being handled by the Industrial Registrar. See ‘ACTU Executive Minutes’, 14/12/45; NSWPD, 20/12/45. 36 Bulletin, 16/1/46. 37 L. Sharkey, Communist Review, February 1946. 38 B.J. Costar, ‘Labor and the Depression’, in D.J. Murphy, R.B. Joyce

340 Division of Labour and C.A. Hughes, Labor in Power. The Labor Party and Governments in Queensland 1915-57 (Brisbane, 1980), p. 407.

39 For a summary see D.J. Blackmur, Industrial Relations under an Australian State Labor Government. .., PhD thesis, University of Queensland, 1986, pp. 69-71.

40 ibid., pp. 2-4. The remainder of this chapter is largely drawn from Blackmur, who has also published a shorter account of the meat dispute in D.J. Murphy (ed.), The Big Strikes, Queensland 1889-1965 (Brisbane, 1983), pp. 217-34. 41 For some further details of AMIEU officers and factions and the conduct of the 1946 strike see T.A. Cutler, The History of the AMIEU: A Study of the Internal Dynamics of a Labour Organisation, PhD thesis, University of NSW, 1976, pp. 294-350. 42 1bid., p. 298n. 43 Blackmur, op. cit., p. 166. 44 Neumann, quoted zbid., p. 165. 45 ACTU executive committee minutes, 26, 29/6/46, 3, 4, 6/7/46. 46 Cutler, op. cit., p. 300.

47 ibid., p. 338. 48 ibid., p. 315. 49 Blackmur, op. cit., p. 319.

50 1bid., p. 211.

51 Cutler, op. cit., p. 317.

7 Hours and wages: the ‘40 years’ case and the margins war 1 ACTU emergency committee minutes, 13/3/45; report of ACTU executive to 1945 congress. 2 Delegate Bennett (ARU), 1945 ACTU congress minutes, 14/6/45. 3 loc. cit. See also Monk’s attack on excessive taxation, SMH, 14/5/45. 4 Executive member M. O’Brien, ibid., 13/6/45. 5 Decisions of full executive meeting, 8—15/10/45. 6 Address to federal union conference, SMH, 14/5/45. 7 Details of the discussion are not available because the executive agreed ‘in the interests of the Trade Union Movement’ not to submit detailed

reports to the state branches until after the hearing of the case was finished (full executive minutes, 23/2/46). For press speculation about the discussions see SMH, 22/2/46. 8 Cabinet Secretariat I, AA, CRS 2700 XM Item, Vol. 20, Agenda 992.

9 C.A. Crofts, Labor Call, 7/3/46. 10 loc. cit. 11 161d, 21/2/46, 18/4/46. 12 Age, 22, 23/5/46; Communist Review, July 1946.

13 Ensuing discussion of the metal trades dispute is largely drawn from my ‘Labour v. Labor. The Victorian Metal Trades Dispute of 1946-7’ in Iremonger, et al., Strikes. . .(Sydney, 1973), pp. 176-224, which contains detailed references to all relevant sources. 14. Labor Call, 24/10/46. 15 Hagan, The History of the ACTU (Melbourne, 1981), p. 149. 16 CPD, vol. 189, pp. 73-6; B. Nairn, The ‘Big Fella’. Jack Lang and the Australian Labor Party 1891—1949 (Melbourne, 1986), pp. 311-12.

Notes 34] ° 17. Advertiser, 2/12/46; Labor Call, 5/12/46.

18 ACTU executive minutes, 9/2/47, 10/2/47; NSWPD, vol. 182, pp. 851, 980, 989; Communist Review, March 1947.

19 Immediate policy of the ACTU adopted at interstate executive meeting, 10/2/47. 20 NSWPD, vol. 183, p. 1013; SMA, 27/2/47. 21 Round Table, March 1946, p. 185, June 1947, pp. 291-2. 22 ACTU executive minutes, 5/2/47.

23 CPD, vol. 190, pp. 27-33. 24 AEU Monthly Fournal and Report, April 1947. 25 Argus, 26, 28/2/47; 14, 20, 21, 24, 26/3/47; 1/4/47. 26 Labor Call, 27/3/47. 27 Argus, 3/4/47.

28 VPD, vol. 223, p. 4809. 29 CPD, vol. 191, p. 1757. 30 1bid., p. 1723. 31 ibid., p. 1611. See also H.E. Holt, ibid., pp. 1603-4. 32 ibid., p. 1673.

33. CAR1088. 34. 5958 CARI1272, 1277-8. ..

35. L.F. Crisp, Ben Chifley. . .(Sydney, 1961), p. 346. AEU members long resented the gloatings of some right-wing officials of the rival Australasian Society of Engineers over the fact that the wage rise had not cost the ASE a penny in strike pay: ASE South Australian branch secretary's report, 23/6/47. 36 Communist Review, June 1947.

37 For example, /ndustry and Trade, August 1947; VPD, vol. 224, p. 5042.

38 ACTU congress minutes; executive minutes, 23/9/47. The inception

of the shorter week six months earlier in New South Wales had threatened unrest in industries where workers were engaged side by side under federal and state awards. The most notable case was the gas industry where 15 per cent of employees came within state jurisdiction. The Court solved the problem by a classic piece of pragmatism. With the employers’ compliance, Judge Foster in July altered the remuneration in the federal award to a 40-hour basis while pointing out that there was nothing either to prevent employers from working their employees less than the prescribed hours, or to prevent the parties agreeing about this (59 CAR 93). Foster, who wrote the full bench’s unanimous 40-hours judgement, appears to have had exaggerated ideas of the role of the Court in the introduction of shorter hours. Rather than acting as a drag on union progress towards its goal he

felt that he and his fellow judges were bestowing a gift on Australian workers—see C. Larmour, Labor Fudge. . .(Sydney, 1985), p. 189. 39 K.J. Hancock, ‘The Wages of the Workers’, Journal of Industnal Relations 11, 1, 1969, p. 29. 40 For example, The Record, June 1948; The Australasian Manufacturer, 13/11/48; [PA Review, November-December 1948.

41 SMH, 9/9/48. 42 For example, Crisp, op. cit., pp. 348n, 361; R.M. Martin, ‘Govern-

342 Division of Labour ments, Industrial Tribunals and the Rule of Law’, Journal of Industrial Relations 6, 1, 1964, pp. 38, 49n.

8 Federal arbitration: reform, personnel and sanctions 1 L.F. Crisp, Ben Chifley. . .(Sydney, 1961), p. 123. 2 For contemporary awareness of the rebuff see Argus 19, 20/2/47; Tnibune, 28/1/47. See also minutes of conference of federal unions, Melbourne 5, 6/2/47; ACTU executive minutes, 4/6/47. 3 Cabinet agendum no. 997, CRS 2700 XM, vol. 20. 4 ‘Executive Report ACTU Congress, September Ist, 1947’. 5 Hagan, The History of the ACTU (Melbourne, 1981), p. 194. 6 Agendum no. 997A. The AWU also submitted peripheral proposals which Cabinet accepted in principle. 7 Hagan, The History of the ACTU, pp. 164-5, 189-90. 8 M. Perlman, fudges in Industry. A Study of Labour Arbitration in Australia (Melbourne, 1954), p. 40. 9 In the original 1930 Bill, commissioners were given virtually the same powers as judges. Only if an application were made to worsen working conditions by increasing hours or reducing wages would a full bench of three judges be required: CPD, vol. 124, pp. 2362ff. 10 In fact the federal tribunal remained ‘under the constitutional corrective authority of the High Court in any matter pertaining to jurisdiction’: O. de R. Foenander, Studies in Australian Labour Law and Relations (Melbourne, 1952), p. 74. 11 The Court itself failed to activate the research bureau provided in the Act: Hagan, The History of the ACTU, p. 153.

12 Menzies, CPD, vol. 191, p. 1309. Senator Leckie was the only other speaker to draw attention to the preference clause: 1bid., p. 2068. 13. One leading member of the Opposition argued strongly in favour of the continuation of the common rule provision—apparently to end the ability of unions to boast of the gains they had achieved solely for their members by arguing claims before the federal tribunal: Archie Cameron, ibid., p. 1522.

14 Senator McLeay, CPD, vol. 191, p. 2304. 15 ibid., pp. 1326, 1334, 1536, 1559. 16 Forexample, J. McEwen, 1bid., pp. 1318-23; T.W. White, pp. 133942; H.L. Anthony, pp. 1387-94; E.J. Harrison, pp. 1487-92. 17 McKenna claimed ‘the mere threat of deregistration brought the engineers back to the court’: 1bid., p. 2170. A few days later he made less outrageous but essentially misleading claims that the settlement represented ‘a triumph for the processes of conciliation because it was the conciliative processes of the court that settled the strike after the court had intervened by calling a compulsory conference’; ibid., pp. 2298-— 9. Evatt had been equally misleading before the dispute settlement by

arguing that Chifley, ‘day after day and night after night, ever since the dispute began has used his best offices for a proper settlement, although the dispute might be regarded as primarily a matter for State

jurisdiction’: ibid., p. 1675. ,

18 For relatively sober criticism see Menzies, ibid., pp. 1314, 1611,

Notes 343 1673-4; P.A. McBride, pp. 1455-6; W.G. Turnbull, p. 1406; Holt, pp. 1603-4; Dame Enid Lyons, p. 1656; Senator McLeay, pp. 2085, 2297. For more violent language see W.J. Hutchinson, pp. 1710-1; E.J. Harrison, pp. 1721-3; G.J. Bowden, pp. 1725-6; R.S. Ryan, pp. 1732-3; W.G. Turnbull, pp. 1750-1; J. McEwen, pp. 1764-5. 19 ‘A General Note on Wage Movements’, A571, 47/1909, Part 5. 20 One of the fiercest attacks on the 1947 amendments came from the academic lawyer, O. de R. Foenander. For conservative legal views of the industrial scene see his Studies in Australian Labour Law and Relations, pp. 81-9. 21 First Annual Report by the Chief Fudge of the Commonwealth Court of Concilianon and Arbitration and the Chef Conciliation Commissioner, October 1948.

22 61CAR 664. 23 L.J. McPhillips, Communist Review, January 1950. For further details of the female rates saga see Tom Wright, ibid., July 1948, January 1949; Freda Brown, ibid., August 1949; Labor Call, 30/10/47; S. Encel et al., Women and Society: An Australian Study (Melbourne, 1974) pp. 157-8; T. O’Lincoln, ‘Women and the CPA 1946-1968’, Hecate VI, 1, 1980. 24 The Opposition claimed this was true of fourteen out of sixteen commissioners in 1949: CPD, vol. 205, p. 2043. After Chifley’s electoral defeat J.T. Lang named seven commissioners as union or ALP men: Century 16/12/49. Foenander (pp. 222-3) states that nine of the eighteen commissioners in 195] had union or ALP connections at the time of their appointments by the Chifley government. Cabinet papers reveal that the 255-strong ‘short list’ of applicants came from all over the industrial and social spectrum. Tnbune claimed (8/4/47) that ‘Labor Party Right wingers are prominent among applicants’. 25 There was another side to the use of paid agents. Some delegates felt that the ACTU should retain lay advocates for use by smaller unions: ‘Conference of Federal Unions Convened by the Full Executive of the ACTU Held Trades Hall Melbourne, Commencing 24th May, 1948’. When commissioners (and the Court) were allowed to give leave for a

party to be represented by counsel, solicitor or paid agent, Kelly claimed that no protests were made from either side: Fifth Annual Report by the Chief Fudge of the Commonwealth Court of Conciliation and Arbitration (1952).

26 ACTU minutes of emergency committee meeting, 18/9/48. 27 See for example J.J. Brown to Evatt, 22/9/49 re Commissioner D.V. Morrison’s declaration that no strike should take place if it inconvenienced the public: Evatt papers, Flinders University Library, miscellaneous correspondence. 28 Braham Dabscheck, Arbitrator at Work. Sir William Raymond Kelly and the Regulation of Australian Industrial Relations (Sydney, 1983), p. 141.

29 Sheridan, Mindful Militants. .., pp. 183-7; O’Lincoln, op. cit., p. 55. 30 ‘Report to the Right Honourable the Attorney-General by the Acting Chief Judge of the Commonwealth Court of Conciliation and Arbitra-

344 Division of Labour tion in respect of the year ended 30th September 1950’; ‘Fourth Annual Report by the Chief Judge of the Commonwealth Court of Conciliation and Arbitration’.

31 R. Kirby, ‘Conciliation and Arbitration in Australia—Where The Emphasis?’, Federal Law Review 4, 1, 1970, pp. 9-10. 32 Dabscheck, op. cit., pp. 62—4. 33. CPD, vol. 191, p. 1309. 34 See in particular 60 CAR at 832, 61 CAR at 174 and 274, 62 CAR at 659-60, 65 CAR at 172. For discussion of the High Court decisions see R. Mitchell. ‘The High Court and the Preference Power: Wallis and Findlay in Context of the 1947 Amendments’, University of WA Law Review 16, pp. 338-60; “The Preference Power and the Practice of the Federal Industrial Tribunal 1904-1970’, Fournal of Industrial Relations, March 1987, pp. 3-24. 35 For example, Senator O’Sullivan, CPD, vol. 205, p. 2161. 36 J. Moss, Sound of Trumpets. . . (Adelaide, 1985), pp. 278-81. See also speech of E.J. Rowe to CPA political committee meeting 10, 11/1/48. 37 CPD, vol. 191, p. 1559. Another aspect of Chifley’s personal experience of arbitration judges is revealed by Sir Richard Kirby. He reports that ‘Once [Chifley] had entered the [NSW] court to find, he said, Judge Curlewis chatting amiably with the employers’ advocates. The

judge had glanced briefly at Chifley to say “Put your hat over there’, and then ignored him. Chifley said this unkindness had filled him with a class-conscious resentment—even hatred—for judges’: B. d’ Alpuget, Mediator: a Biography of Sir Richard Kirby (Melbourne, 1977), p. 106. 38 CC. Larmour, Labor Fudge. . . (Sydney, 1985). p. 117; d’Alpuget, op.

cit., p. 111; Perlman, op. cit., p. 40; interview with Sir Richard Eggleston, 26/5/81.

39 Interview with A.T. Brodney, 27/5/81.

40 D’Alpuget, op. cit., pp. 21-8, 44-5. Other members of the Brains Trust included C.R. Evatt, J. (later Sir John) Kerr, F. Dwyer, and J. McClemens. 41 1bid., pp. 94-5. See also News Weekly, 26/3/47. The main evidence which d’Alpuget presents for Foster’s radical arbitration behaviour is the 1947 decision on working hours for which she gives Foster almost sole responsibility and which Kirby recalls Chifley as believing to be ‘reckless’ in its generosity, (pp. 111, 120). In this passage they seem to believe that the 40-hour week could have been still further delayed or its introduction staggered (see also Chapter 7, note 38). In 1950 Fos-

ter, expecting to be outvoted, was the most generous of the three judges in their initial private decisions in the basic wage case. Eventually Dunphy, with mixed motives, and confronted with obtuse obstinacy from Kelly, sided with Foster against Kelly who sought to award a nil increase. Dunphy reported that Foster was ‘not delighted, so much as astounded’, (d’Alpuget, p. 121). In Sir Richard Eggleston’s opinion (interview, 26/5/81) Foster originally decided on the figure of £1 because he thought he would make a good fellow of himself’. When Foster discovered Dunphy had agreed with him he is reported to have involuntarily exclaimed ‘You'll ruin the bloody country’. 42 UTLC of SA minutes, 9/5/47.

Notes 345 43 CPD, vol. 203, p. 2111. See also Tribune, 9/3/49. 44 Interview, 26/5/81. 45 Minutes of national council of FIA, 24/10/45; Labour News, September 1945, October 1945; L. Sharkey, Communist Review, January

1946. Judge Kirby provides neutral evidence of O’Mara’s anticommunism: d’Alpuget, op. cit., pp. 43—4. Sir Richard Eggleston also felt that in general communists “got a raw deal’ from the federal bench in our period: interview, 26/5/81. 46 Interview, 23/2/1981. C.L. O’Shea (ATMOEA), who was imprisoned by Sir John Kerr in 1969, similarly singled out Dunphy as ‘vicious and bitter’ and ‘the worst one I encountered’ in thirty years experience of federal arbitration: interview 22/8/80.

47 D’Alpuget, op. cit., pp. 111-2; 116-8, 124-148; R. Murray, The Split (Melbourne, 1970), pp. 117-20; interviews with Sir Richard Eggleston (26/5/81), A.T. Brodney (27/5/81); ACTU congress report, 1949.

48- D’Alpuget, op. cit., pp. 141, 143-4. 49 Dabscheck, op. cit., pp. 116-48. 50 The size of the 1950 basic wage increase did surprise some conservative observers. The Court’s decision—handed down, be it remembered, over four years later than the unions had expected—was attributable to the particular and peculiar juxtaposition of personalities on this full bench. See footnote 41 above.

51 Fitzpatrick and Cahill calculated that one in eight merchant seamen died as a result of war service; op. cit., p. 164. The following discussion of the shipping industry is largely based on Butlin and Schedvin, op.

cit, pp. 216-8, 225-7, 493-5 and B. Fitzpatrick and R.J. Cahill, The Seamen’s Union of Australia 1872-1972 (Sydney, 1981), pp. 138-56,

242-7, 273-7. 52 For details see AA CRS 2700, vol. 19; Guardian 4/1/46; CPD, vol. 191, p. 1223 (1947), SMH, 4/2/48, 20/7/48, 23/7/48, 28/7/48; SA Tnbune, 14/5/48, 30/7/48; Tribune, 19/8/49.

53 Couner Mail, 23—31 January 1948; Argus, 5/2/48; Australian Coal, Shipping, Steel and the Harbour (hereafter Harbour), 1/3/48, SA Tribune, 6/2/48.

54. SMH, 24/7/46, 12, 26/9/46, 18/5/49, 19/9/49; CPD, vol. 205, p. 1540; SUA, Senate Select Committee: Maritime Indemnities, 1958; Fitzpatrick and Cahill, op. cit., pp. 264-9.

55 Seamen’s Fournal, 21/9/72. See also CPD, vol. 190, pp. 156-7; 59 CAR 1263.

56 Bulletin, 26/2/47. 57 SMH, 23/11/49. 58 Harbour, 1/8/47 59 SMH, 10, 25, 27, 30/9/47; Mantime Worker, 27/9/47; Harbour, 1/10/ 47.

60 SMH, 29/9/47. 61 Bulletin, 8/10/47. 62 SMH, 28/10/47. 63 1bid., 29/10/47, 18/12/47, 13/12/47; Harbour, 1/12/47. 64 See for example. Perlman, op. cit., pp. 127-159; S.J. Butlin and C.B.

Schedvin, War Economy 1942-1945 (Canberra, 1977), pp. 227-9,

346 Division of Labour 485-93; K.F. Walker, Australian Industrial Relations Systems (Cambridge, Mass., 1970), pp. 369-79. 65 Upon Healy’s death in 1961 an estimated 10 000 marched in what was believed to be Sydney’s biggest-ever funeral procession. For tributes to his career and for details of the general waterfront background see V. Williams, The Years of Big 1m (Melbourne, 1975); W. Lowenstein and T. Hills, Under the Hook (Melbourne, 1982); Tom Nelson, The Hungry Mile (Sydney, 1957); Stan Moran, Reminiscences of a Rebel (Sydney, 1979).

66 An example of the willingness of Healy and other WWF leaders to discipline their members is provided in ‘Notes of a Deputation of Members of the Waterside Workers’ Federation which Waited on the Acting Prime Minister (Mr Forde) on Monday, 15th January, 1945’:

Prime Minister’s Department, Correspondence File Multi-number Series, Third System, ““Waterside Workers Federation”’, 1932-1949, AA CRS A461, Item Z, 351/1/3, Part 2. For evidence of Healy’s postwar concern for discipline, see d’Alpuget, op. cit., pp. 99-100.

67 1bid., p. 95. For an employer’s retrospective praise for Healy see Lowenstein and Hills, op. cit., p. 94.

68 Maritime Worker, 20/7/46. In 1950 two of the six members of the WWE federal executive and six of the twenty-six members of the federal conference were communists: Williams, op. cit., pp. 99-100. For some details of branch political allegiances see Century, 2/8/46, 30/1/49; Nelson, op. cit., p. 60; News Weekly, 12/2/47; SMH, 21/7/48. 69 D’Alpuget, op. cit., pp. 99-100. For further detail of the historic inde-

pendence of WWF branches see Committee of Inquiry into the Stevedoring Industry, Report (Canberra, 1957) (Tait Report), p. 26. 70 The ports which stopped work as a protest against the prosecution of Sharkey on 28 March 1949 were Beauty Point, Bowen, Brisbane, Bun-

daberg, Kempsey, Launceston, Port Augusta, Port Kembla, Port Pirie, Sydney, Townsville, Wallaroo, Whyalla. The ports which stopped work as a protest against the sentence 1mposed on McPhillips on 11 April 1949 were Brisbane, Bundaberg,

Cairns, Coffs Harbour, Darwin, Geelong, Kempsey, Launceston, MacKay, Port Augusta, Port Douglas, Port Kembla, Sydney, Thursday Island, Townsville. Australian Stevedoring Industry Board (ASIB), First Report, Year Ended 30 Fune 1950, p. 22.

71 S. Macintyre, Militant. The Life and Times of Paddy Troy (Sydney, 1984) pp. 133-4; West Australian, 31/1/46, 11/2/46.

72 P.R. Bentley, ‘Communist Trade Union Leadership and Strike Incidence—with Specific Reference to the Waterside Workers’ Federation, 1950-66’, fournal of Industrial Relations 12, 1, 1970, pp. 88— 95; Perlman, op. cit., p. 158; Walker, op. cit., pp. 375-6; ‘Stevedoring

Industry Inquiry 1945-6 Report 22/2/46’, (Foster’s Report), AA CRS 2700 XM, item Vol. 17, Agenda 896; ASIB, First Report, op. cit.; Tait Report, op. cit.; H. Basten, Report on the Turn-round of Ships in Australian Ports (Adelaide, 1952). 73 ‘Notes of a Deputation which waited upon the Right Honourable the Prime Minister (Mr R.G. Menzies) at Commonwealth Offices, Melbourne, on Monday, 22nd January, 1940, at 2.30 p.m.’, Prime Minister’s Department, Correspondence File, Multi-number Series, Third

Notes 347 System, ‘““Waterside Workers— Disruptive Tactics’, 1940-1946, AA CRS A461, Item V.351/1/1. 74 Beasley to Chifley and Ashley, 17/10/46, Chifley to Beasley, 19/10/46,

“Disputes. Sydney Waterfront Disputes’, 1946-1950, ibid., Item B.T. 352/1/4; CPD, vol. 189, pp. 233, 416, 735, 845-6. 75 D’Alpuget, op. cit., p. 100. 76 For a succinct assessment of the insurmountable problems surrounding any attempt to measure labour efficiency see Butlin and Schedvin, op. cit., pp. 485-93. For a graphic description of work methods in one port see M. Tull, “Blood on the Cargo: Cargo-Handling & Working Conditions on the Waterfront at Fremantle 1900-1939’, Labour History 52, May 1987, pp. 15-29. 77 Perlman, op. cit., p. 139. In the controversies surrounding women’s rates in ‘referred’ industries Holloway is reported to have described Piper to a federal union congress as ‘spineless and weak-kneed’: SMH, 14/5/45.

78 See for example the remarks of Beasley in ‘Notes Of A Deputation. . . 15th January, 1945’, op. cit., and the comments of Healy in ‘Notes Of A Deputation Which Waited On The Prime Minister On Friday, 15th September, 1944, From The Waterside Workers’ Federation’, loc. cit. 79 Butlin and Schedvin, op. cit., p. 491; CPD, vol. 180, pp. 2262, 2334; SMA, 7, 8/11/44. For evidence of longstanding WWF opposition to

the appointment of Nicholls as deputy chairman see ‘Notes of a Deputation. . . 15th September 1944. . .’ op. cit.; Williams, op. cit., p. 82. 80 ‘Notes of a Deputation. . .[to]the Acting Prime Minister (Mr Forde) on 4th July, 1945’, CRS A461, Item Z 351/1/3 part 2. 81 Williams, op. cit., p. 83; Century, 2/8/46; Lowenstein and Hills, op. cit., pp. 86, 130.

82 J.M. Hewitt, a lawyer hitherto on Evatt’s personal staff, was acting chairman of the second SIC while the newly appointed Kirby was still involved in his official mediation efforts during the Dutch-Indonesian crisis of 1947—48. As deputy chairman, Hewitt presided over more meetings than usual in winter when Kirby took advantage of the seasonal slack on the waterfront to undertake other work on the arbitration bench: d’Alpuget, op. cit., pp. 94-101. In 1949 when the SIC was disbanded Hewitt became chairman of its replacement, the Australian Stevedoring Industry Board (ASIB). 83. CPD, vol. 190, pp. 302-6, 504, 507, 601, 651. 84 Argus, SMH, 10—18/5/46; CPD, vol. 187, pp. 2013; Lowenstein and Hills, op. cit., pp. 123-4.

85 D’Alpuget, op. cit., p. 97.

86 Most of the details are set out in Perlman’s pioneering study —Perlman, op. cit., pp. 145-9.

87 It was this dispute that caused British shipowners to consider a

lockout. 88 It is in connection with this largest of disputes that Perlman drew two wrong inferences. In the first place he appeared to ascribe the dispute to the WWE’s federal executive whereas in fact it was initiated and controlled by the (non-communist) Sydney branch executive: SMH,

348 Division of Labour 19/7/46. Leading communists were displaced at the 1946 Sydney branch elections because of the PCWLU absorption issue (above p. 168) and because of their over-strong advocacy of the introduction of

new, shorter shifts which had been the occasion of Stan Moran’s famous speech beginning, ‘nights were made for love—not work’: Nelson, op. cit., p. 60; Moran, op. cit., p. 26-7. Secondly, Healy acted in this instance largely as a mediator—and one whose settlement proposals were accepted by the rank and file—not overruled as Perlman states. 89 This and subsequent quotations are taken from SMH, 11, 12, 13, 19, 25/3/47.

90 News Weekly, 2/4/47. 91 Bulletin, 19/3/47. 92 Bulletin, 14/1/48. 93 ASIB, First Report, p. 22. 94 D’Alpuget (op. cit., pp. 102, 103) estimates that even more wharfies struck over McPhillips (50 per cent) than had struck over Sharkey (40 per cent). See footnote 70 above for details of ports involved in the two stoppages. 95 For example, SMH, 11/5/49.

96 Perlman, op. cit., pp. 148-9. 97 op. cit., pp. 104-105. 98 Mantime Worker, 11/6/49, 25/6/49.

99 Tait Report, p. 84. 100 Williams, op. cit., p. 115. 101 Harbour, 1/3/49. In mid-1948 the Victorian Chamber of Commerce had demanded the abolition of the new SIC: Argus, 30/7/48.

102 Gus Alford, a leader of the Melbourne WWF Groupers, Labor Call, 29/4/49; Nelson, op. cit., p. 50. 103 Maritime Worker, 28/5/49; ACTU minutes of emergency committee, 21/6/49.

104. Maritime Worker, 30/4/49, 28/5/49, 11/6/49, 24/9/49, 22/10/49. ACTU emergency committee minutes, 10/6/49, 21/6/49; interstate executive minutes, 19/8/49. 105 Maritime Worker, 30/4/49.

106 D’Alpuget, op. cit., p. 105. 107 Tait Report, p. 20. 108 64 CAR 288. For a detailed account of the background and internal consequences of the FEDFA’s registration, see G.F. Teagle, The Consequences of Deregistration on the Organizational Survival of Trade Unions: Three Case Studies, Honours thesis, University of Sydney 1979, Chapter 2. See also SMH, 8-14/3/49, 6, 13, 29/5/49, 2, 9/6/49.

109 SMH, 1/4/47. 110 For details, see ibid. , 28/3/47.

111 Teagle seems to typify Evans as right-wing (p. 43). Everything is relative—in 1946 the left supported him against an anti-communist candidate: Victorian Royal Commission into the origins, aims, objects and funds of the Communist Party in Victoria and other related matters [RCCP] transcripts, p. 984.

Notes 349 112 ACTU emergency committee minutes, 10/6/49. 113 M.J. Howard, ‘Beyond Full Employment’. . .’, paper presented to the National Seminar on Post-War Reconstruction, ANU, 1981, p. 30; see also Butlin and Schedvin, op. cit., p. 792. 114 Howard, ‘Beyond Full Employment’, p. 37.

115 ibid., p. 34. 116 1ibid., p. 45.

117. The CPA was highly suspicious of the programme, claiming that ‘DPs’ were carefully screened in favour of pro-fascists! (Communist

Review, July 1949). Opposition to immigrant ‘dilution’ of skill, however, had a long and instinctive tradition among craftsmen: see for

example T. Sheridan, Mindful Militants. . . (Cambridge, 1975), p. 165.

118 Howard in his most recent paper uses higher estimates which, unlike the ABS figures, include labour engaged in the maintenance and repair of buildings: M.J. Howard, ‘State, Business and Unions. . .’, Industrial Relations Paper, Research School of Social Sciences, ANU, 1987, paper presented to the National Seminar on Post-War Reconstruction, ANU, 1981, pp. 41-2 and footnote 65. 119 For details see zbid., pp. 23—30; Teagle, op. cit., Ch. 4. 120 Howard, ‘State, Business and Unions’, pp. 48-9. 121 Teagle, op. cit., p. 100; Murray, op. cit., p. 20. 122 VCM Annual Report for the Year ended 31st March, 1948. 123 For details see Age, Argus, 4/9/48.

124 VCM Annual Report. . . 1948. 125 Teagle, op. cit., p. 100-In. 126 RCCP, Report (Melbourne, 1950), p. 86. 127 ACTU executive minutes, 9/12/49.

128 Guardian, 14/6/49. An earlier attempt by ‘moderate’ waterfront carpenters to join the new Victorian branch of the Ship Joiners’ Union (SJU), established immediately after the BWIU’s deregistration, was

met with fierce opposition and alleged intimidation (RCCP, transcripts, pp. 1353—1626). The SJU had caused similar controversy in Sydney immediately after its registration in December 1944. It seems likely that employers contributed to the ‘fighting fund’ of the Victorian SJU which had anti-communists among its leaders. However, an important element in the SJU’s attraction for BWIU members was the

craftsmen’s feeling that BWIU leadership was favouring wartime ‘dilutees’ on the waterfront.

129. 74CAR 65-8. 130 The new ASCJ was actually first formed in Tasmania (Age 18/10/50), but made little headway there. Efforts by the ASCJ to expand into NSW and Queensland in the early 1950s were largely blocked by the State tribunals. In 1952, the South Australian branch of the BWIU

decided to form itself into the ASCJ of South Australia, but the reasons had much more to do with local carpenters’ craft exclusiveness

than with anti-communism. Eventually, in 1956, an agreement was

reached whereby the BWIU accepted that the South Australian carpenters should have their own distinct state union. Teagle, op. cit., pp. 108-9, 114, 116.

350 Division of Labour

9 Victoria and Queensland 1947-49: getting tough with the unions 1 K. White, fohn Cain and Victorian Labor 1917-1957 (Melbourne, 1982), pp. 104-7. 2 Sir Albert Dunstan, VPD, vol. 228, p. 4023. 3 White, op. cit., pp. 103-4. 4 Broadby’s role in the 1945 Adelaide dispute was outlined above, pp. 67-9. For Junor’s militancy in NSW see SMH, 10/10/46, 15/10/ 46, 6/12/46, 13/12/46, 21/12/46, 3/1/47, 17/1/47, 6/9/47. For discussion of Communist-Grouper tensions in the NSW ATMOEA see for example News Weekly, 11/12/46, 15/1/47, 22/1/47, 23/11/49. For a variety of views on factional motivation and alignment within the NSW branch of the ARU see News Weekly, 11/9/44, 4/5/49, 15/6/49, 3/8/49, 17/10/ 51; Century, 25/10/46, 28/1/47, 2/1/48, 5/3/48, 27/8/48, 22/7/49; Bulletin, 10/3/48; Tribune, 10/3/48, 13/3/48. 5 Advertiser, 2, 11/10/46; SMH, 13, 14/11/46, 12/12/46; Argus, 22/1/48.

6 See for example Address of R. Dixon to CPA central committee plenum, 14—16 February 1947.

7 Interview, 22/8/80. 8 Royal Commission into. . . the Communist Party [RCCP] transcripts, evidence of J.J. Brown, pp. 7193—7222, 7243, 7272-8; Argus, 3/4/48, 3, 8/7/48, 5, 9, 16, 17, 23/8/48, 11/10/48; News Weekly, 6/7/49.

9 SMH, 30/10/48 10 Argus, 5/1/48. 11 VPD, vol. 222, p. 2799. 12 1bid., vol. 222, p. 2732. 13. 1bid., vol. 220, p. 495; vol. 222, pp. 2390-4; vol. 226, 250-3. 14. Argus, 21/10/46, 8/1/48.

15 Communists associated life appointments with anti-communist unions. In mid-1949 the secretaries of seven sizeable Victorian unions, including the ETU, VBU and printers, enjoyed life appointments—as

did Stout and Clarey (in his two part-time union positions): J.D. Blake, Communist Review, June 1949.

16 Argus, 22, 28, 30, 31/8/45; 4, 8/9/45; 55 CAR, pp. 392-3. 17 RCCP transcripts, evidence of J.J. Brown, p. 7071. 18 Argus, 12, 27, 28/9/45, 2—5/10/45. For evidence of the effects of the manpower shortage on the wartime hours of Victorian tramworkers see Argus, 25/9/44, 2/10/44.

19 Argus, 11, 18, 19, 25/10/45. 20 News Weekly (Freedom), 24/10/45. 21 Argus, 8, 14, 16, 24, 26/11/45. 22 Argus, 8, 14/2/46. 23 Argus, 13/2/46. News Weekly (20/2/46) took the Sydney line: conducting should be left to men, ex-servicemen needed jobs and Australia needed mothers. 24 Argus, 29/8/47; M. Bevege, ‘Women’s Struggle to Become Tram Drivers 1956-1975’, in E. Windschuttle (ed.), Women, Class and History (Melbourne, 1980) pp. 437-52. 25 SMH, 13, 14/3/46, 19/7/46, 19, 21, 23, 24, 25, 31/12/46, 3, 17, 18, 21/1/47; NSWPD, vol. 180, p. 2647.

Notes 351 26 Argus, 23—25/4/46. 27 Argus, 29/4/46. 28 Argus, 30/4/46, 1, 2, 6, 22/5/46; News Weekly, 1/5/46. 29 Argus, 31/5/46, 1, 3, 4, 5, 17/6/46. 30 Argus, 13, 16/8/46, 16, 17, 23, 30/9/46, 2/10/46. 31 Argus, 7/10/46. 32 News Weekly, 16/10/46; THC minutes, 10/10/46; Labor Call, 17/10/46. 33. Argus, 21/10/46.

34 loc. cit. 35 According to Brown, Abfalter and Broadby disagreed openly on this point, so Brown thought it tactically wiser to recommend a joint return to work: RCCP, transcripts, p. 7242. 36 VPD, vol. 222, pp. 2769, 2797, 2799. 37 op. cit, p. 120. It is particularly alarming to see the communist plot thesis of postwar industrial relations being reproduced in passing in McCalman’s pioneering study of Richmond: J. McCalman, Struggletown. Public and Private Life in Richmond 1900-1965 (Melbourne, 1984), p. 227.

38 21/4/49.

39 RCCP transcripts, p. 1069; see also the cross-examination of Sharpley by A.C. Cullen (ATMOEA), pp. 2450-2461; Argus, 12/7/49. 40 Labor Call, 7/11/46; see also Argus, 1/11/46.

41 Address by R. Dixon. 42 Interview, 19/8/80. 43 News Weekly, 30/10/46. 44 Argus, 8, 27/11/46; 19, 21/12/46; 57 CAR 991-5. 45 Argus, 20, 21/11/46; 18, 21, 25/2/47; 20/6/47; News Weekly, 11/12/46. In the elections for positions on the ATMOEA’s federal council Abfalter received less than 17 per cent of the vote: Argus, 3/12/46. 46 Argus, 28/12/46, 1, 8, 14/1/47, 11/2/47. 47 Argus, 28, 31/3/47, 1, 2, 14/4/47. 48 59 CAR 414; Argus, 6, 12, 18, 20, 28, 30/8/47; 1, 5/9/47. 49 Argus, 29/4/47, 27, 28/6/47, 9, 15, 18, 21, 22, 24/7/47, 9, 12, 17, 18, 23, 24, 30/9/47, 6/10/47. 50 Argus, 27/11/47, 4, 5, 31/12/47, 3/1/48. 51 News Weekly, 7/1/48. See also Labor Call, 8/1/48.

52 Both Grouper and communist ATMOEA officials emphasized the industry’s tradition of direct bargaining: Argus, 2/10/44; 14, 15/1/48. 53. VPD, vol. 222, p. 2749; Argus, 17/10/47, 6, 12/1/48; Labor Call, 8/1/ 48.

54 Argus, 10/1/48. Blackburn was distrusted for his strike-breaking role in the 1928 wharf strike: ‘he led a gang to bash up the wharfies. . . and he has a very bad and unsavoury reputation. In the South Australian movement there was a wave of disgust when he was appointed a Con-

ciliation Commissioner by the Federal Government’ (E.J. Rowe, address to CPA political Committee, 10—11 January, 1948). In 1950 the ATMOEA demanded in negotiations to settle an eight-week tram strike that a commissioner other than Blackburn should handle the dispute: Argus, 21/4/50. 55 D.A. Alexander, CIS deputy director, sent daily reports to his director in Canberra AA CRS A432, Item 48/30.

352 Division of Labour 56 Argus, 31/12/47, 6-9/1/48; VPD, vol. 226, p. 620. 57. Argus, 12—-17/1/48; Harbour, 2/2/48.

58 Labor Call, 16/1/48. 59 VPD, vol. 226, p. 633. 60 ibid., pp. 617, 634. 61 White, op. cit., p. 135. 62 VPD, vol. 226, pp. 604—5, 634, 637, 644. 63 ibid., p. 605 (Kennelly). 64 ibid. p. 651 (Cain), pp. 609-17 (Clarey), p. 619 (Kennelly). 65 RCCP transcripts, evidence of J.J. Brown, p. 7101. 66 Communist Review, March 1948. 67 RCCFP transcripts, evidence of C. Sharpley, p. 1083. 68 Address to central committee plenum by Frank Johnson, February

1948. Sharpley, in his subsequent anxiety to demonstrate CPA ‘control’ of the dispute, had J.D. Blake hauling the communist THC leaders over the coals next day (17 January) at a Party state executive

meeting. In fact Blake was in Sydney at this time and, according to Brown, did not deliver his criticism until some four weeks later: RCCP transcripts, pp. 1079, 7105, 7330. Sharpley’s version of Blake’s criticisms are nevertheless quoted in the Royal Commission’s Report, p. 94. 69 Argus, 16/1/48. 70 Harbour, 2/2/48. See also VCM, Annual Report For the Year ended 31st March 1948; Industry and Trade, January-February, 1948; Bulletin, 21/ 1/48.

71 Inside Canberra, 22/1/48. 72 Century, 23/1/48. 73 For example, Hobart Mercury, 19/1/48; Brian Fitzpatrick in Smuth’s Weekly 17, 31/1/48; Australian Observer, 24/1/48. 74 Smuth’s Weekly, 24/1/48.

75 Age, 5,7, 14, 16, 17/1/48. 76 E.F. Hill, Communist Review, March 1948; address of J.D. Blake to CPA political committee meeting, 10—11/1/48; C. Stoneham, VPD, vol. 226, p. 649. 77 For example, Age, 5/1/48; Argus editorial, 6/1/48.

78 At the CPA national political committee meeting held during the strike on 10-11 January, J.D. Blake reported how the railwaymen were still hostile to the tramwaymen for not standing with the AEU and the ARU at the climax of the metal trades dispute in 1947. Ted Rowe confirmed this and related how he and others had been ‘howled

down’ in advocating support for ATMOEA ‘and Cranwell, who usually sums up the AEU feeling really well, said to me “I hope to Christ [J.J.] Brownie does not get himself pulled in, it will do the bastards good to be out on a limb for a while”’. The daily press also referred to the lingering antipathy towards the tramworkers during the dispute (e.g., Argus, 13/1/48). 79 Argus, 13, 15, 22/5/48, 12/6/48.

80 Argus, 1/3/48. 81 Argus, 25, 26/2/48; Labor Call, 5/3/48; News Weekly, 10/3/48. 82 Argus, 2, 3/3/48; News Weekly, 10/3/48.

Notes 353 83 D.A. Alexander to director, Commonwealth Investigation Service, 4/ 5/48: AA CRS A432, Item 48/30. 84 Age, 18/10/48, 10/11/48; Argus, 10/11/48; THC minutes, 11/11/48; Labor Call, 12/11/48. 85 Age, 13-15/11/48. 86 C.M. Southwell, AEU Monthly Fournal, January 1948. 87 Argus, Age, 16, 17/11/48; E.F. Hill, Communist Review, January 1949. 88 Argus, Age, 18/11/48. 89 Argus, 20/11/48; VPD, vol. 228, p. 4004. 90 Argus, 23/11/48; News Weekly, 1/12/48; CPD vol. 204, p. 484; VPD, vol. 228, p. 4031. 91 ibid., p. 4004 (McDonald). 92 Argus, 25/11/48. 93 ibid, 29/11/48. 94 VPD, vol. 228, p. 4022. 95 ‘Government Plans Black Xmas For The People of Victoria’, SUA pamphlet, November 1948, AA CRS A432, Item 48/30. 96 Age, 29/11/48. :

97 Labor Call, 3/12/48. 98 RCCP transcripts, pp. 760, 974-5. 99 Herald, 19/4/49. 100 In conversation recalling the corruption of Sydney ALP politics and the legendary abilities of ‘Plugger’ Martin and his kerosene can, two leading NSW Groupers jokingly claimed that ‘the ALP taught the CPA to rig ballots’: interview with J. Kane and F. Rooney, 19/8/83. 101 RCCP transcripts, pp. 762—3, 1069-78. 102 RCCP, Report, pp. 93-4. Lowe was also confused about the transport stoppages of October 1946, referring to three instead of two strikes: ibid., p. 93. 103 ibid., pp. 1134—2372, 2618-2812 104 For example, address of M. Julius to CPA 15th national congress, May 1948; R. Dixon, Communist Review, April 1948; D. Thomson, tbid., July 1948. 105 Age, editorials 17/11/48, 1/12/48. 106 Labor Call, 26/11/48, 3/12/48; Communist Review, January 1949.

107 RCCP transcripts, Sharpley pp. 1079-99; Hill pp. 7470-92; Brown pp. 7073-150, 7278-83. 108 RCCP transcripts, pp. 1085, 2476; personal interview with O’Shea, 22/8/80; Argus, 27/11/48; News Weekly, 1/12/48. 109 News Weekly, 1/12/48.

110 The critics included J.D. Blake and J. Arrowsmith: RCCP transcripts, pp. 765-7. 111 RCCP transcripts, pp. 1091, 7087, 7156, 7159, 7482. 112 1ibid., pp. 1218-9. 113 ibid, pp. 7480-1. 114 B. Fitzpatrick and R.J. Cahill, The Seamen’s Union of Australia 18721972 (Sydney, 1981), p. 263. 115 RCCP transcripts, (Sharpley) pp. 1085, (Hill) 7488; Melbourne THC minutes, 20/1/49. 116 On one occasion when the Intelligence Service was privy to a tele-

354 Division of Labour phone conversation between Bird and his federal secretary, Elliott, ‘it can be stated that in the conversation that ensued ELLIOTT left the handling of the situation to BIRD’, D.A. Alexander to CIS director, 26/11/48: AA CRS A432, Item 48/30. 117. Argus, 21/4/49. 118 RCCP transcripts, p. 7084. 119 Argus, 2/12/48.

120 VPD, vol. 228, pp. 4002-5. 121 tbid., p. 4023. 122 ibid., p. 4025. 123. The government issued a special gazette avowedly bringing the shipping industry within the scope of the Essential Services Act but there were considerable doubts about its constitutional validity: Argus, 16/1/ 48, 19/11/48; Age, editorial 26/11/48; VPD, vol. 228, p. 4031. The

Commonwealth Attorney-General’s Department sought counsel’s opinion on areas of potential jurisdictional conflict arising out of the Act: AA CRS A432, Item 48/30. 124 Communist Review, January 1949.

125 White, op. cit., pp. 135-8. 126 News Weekly, 2, 9/2/49; Argus, 11, 25/1/49. 127 Melbourne THC minutes, 17/2/49, 24/2/49, 3/3/49; Labor Call, 18/2/ 49, 1/4/49, 2/9/49; News Weekly, 9/3/49; Argus, 22/2/49; Murray, The Split (Melbourne, 1970), p. 29. 128 Argus, 22, 24/2/49, 21, 22, 28/3/49, 5, 6, 9, 11, 29/4/49, 31/5/49, 1/6/ 49,

129 Argus, 8, 15/1/49; News Weekly, 12/1/49; 63 CAR307. 130 Melbourne THC minutes, 7, 14/7/49; Argus, 15, 19, 22/7/89. 131 Labor Call, 22/7/49. 132. Labor Call, 29/7/49; Age, 27, 28/7/49. 133 Age, 28, 29/7/49; Argus, 29/7/49, 12/8/49; Bulletin, 3/8/49. 134 Age, 29/7/49. The Wonthaggi men’s overwhelming decision to strike was made at an open meeting. 135 Labor Call, 29/7/49; Argus, 30/7/49; Age, 1, 10/8/49; News Weekly,

3/8/49. .

136 Labor Call, 5/8/49. 137 SMH, 4/8/49. 138 VPD, vol. 234, p. 2345; Argus, 28/2/50. 139 VPD, vol. 233, p. 1904. 140 ibid., vol. 234, p. 2314. 141 Age, 1/8/49. 142 I originally studied the 1948 dispute as historian of the major workshop union involved, the AEU (T. Sheridan, Mindful Militants. . . [Cambridge, 1975], pp. 179—83). However, by far the most important source of the following discussion of the 1948 dispute is D.J. Blackmur’s authoritative and meticulous account in his Industrial Relations under an Australian State Labor Government. . ., PhD thesis, University of Queensland, 1986, pp. 214-308. (An early and briefer ver-

sion of his findings was published in D.J. Murphy (ed.), The Big Strikes. . .[Brisbane, 1983], pp. 235-52.) Blackmur provides refer-

Notes 355 ence to all earlier discussions of this most controversial of Queensland disputes.

143 Blackmur, op. cit., pp. 86-109. 144 ibid., p. 256. 145 Courier Mail, 28/2/48. 146 1tbid, 12, 13, 15/2/48. 147 Sunday Mail, 7/3/48.

148 Blackmur, op. cit., p. 272. 149 For example, Inside Canberra, 4/3/48. 150 AEU Monthly Journal and Report, March 1948. 151 Argus, 12/3/48; Communist Review, February 1949, p. 37. 152. Argus, 18, 20/3/48; Standard Weekly 19/3/48; ACTU minutes, 21/5/48.

153 Quoted by VCM president, C.N. McKay, in his ‘Address Delivered. . .at the [VCM] Annual Meeting on 25th May, 1948’. See also ACTU minutes, 11/4/48, for Clarey’s official report on the Queensland strike. 154 Courer Mail, 4/3/48; Argus, 4, 20/3/48; Inside Canberra, 4, 18/3/48; CPD, vol. 196, pp. 311-2, 517. 155 J. Guyatt, Trade Unions and the ALP in Queensland 1947-1957, MA thesis, University of Queensland, 1971, pp. 121-2.

156 Press confidence that road transport workers would not join in the embargo was bolstered by the attitude of the TWU’s federal president and NSW state secretary, A.G. Platt, who was currently having problems with a restive membership, allegedly being stirred up by communist agitators: AA A461 BU351/1/4; Tribune, 3/3/48. 157 NSW Labor Council, ‘Minutes of General Meeting’, 4/3/48; Tribune, 10/3/48; Standard Weekly, 12/3/48.

158 Quoted in Tribune, 13/3/48. 159 NSWPD, vol, 186, pp. 2129-85. 160 For details see Sheridan, Mindful Militants. . ., pp. 182-3. 161 Blackmur, op. cit., p. 297. 162 B.A. Santamaria, for example, still wrote in 1981 in terms of the AEU in the 1940s being, ‘in fact controlled by the communist, E. (‘Teddy’) Rowe’: B.A. Santamaria, Against the Tide (Melbourne, 1981), p. 81. 163 Guyatt, op. cit., p. 117. 164 For details see Blackmur, op. cit., pp. 89-97, 326-9. 165 Blackmur, op. cit., p. 327.

10 The Communist Party and industrial relations 1 Alastair Davidson, The Communist Party of Australia. A Short History (Stanford, 1969), pp. 33, 53, 65, 82-3, 120.

2 This is a view advanced both by contemporary communists and by subsequent writers. See for example J.B. Miles ‘address to Central Committee Plenum, 20-22 February 1948; Robin Gollan, Revolutionaries and Reformists. Communism and the Australian Labour Move-

ment 1920-1955 (Canberra, 1975), pp. 130-171. See Davidson, op. cit., pp. 120-1 for party leaders’ reactions to the exodus of the 1950s. The transience of party membership in earlier years 1s noted by P.]J. Morrison, The Communist Party of Australia and the Australian

356 Division of Labour Radical-Socialist Tradition, 1920~1939, PhD thesis, University of Adelaide, 1975, p. 314n. 3 Standard Weekly, 21/12/45.

4 Davidson argues for the dominance of Comintern. Much greater autonomy and ‘Australianess’ in decision-making 1s posited by Morrison op. cit., and by a leading communist, J.D. Blake: “The Australian Communist Party and the Comintern in the early 1930’s’, Labour History 23, November 1972, pp. 38—47. F. Farrell, International Socialism and Australian Labour, (Sydney, 1981) leans towards Davidson.

5 Davidson, op. cit., p. 98, quoting L.L. Sharkey. 6 Morrison, op. cit., Chapter 6. 7 Davidson, op. cit., p. 99 8 Communist Review, April 1949. Similar extreme language was used throughout 1949, see for example Sharkey’s report to central committee plenum, zbid., July 1949. Nevertheless the CPA still instructed its

supporters to give their second preferences to the ALP 1n the 1949 federal election: Dixon, zbid., April 1949.

9 J.B. Miles, address to CPA central committee plenum, 1947; N. Jeffrey, address to central committee plenum, February 1948. 10 Miles, address to central committee plenum 1947. 11 Interview with J.J. Brown, 26/5/81. 12 R.G. Menzies originally held realistic views of the threat posed by the Communist Party. He long believed that banning the party would prove counterproductive, maintaining this view in his first ministry and in the 1946 general election. 13. The supposed omnipotent malevolence of the CPA in industrial relations is best presented in the pages of the Bulletin and News Weekly. An outwardly cooler and more objective analysis which reached similar, exaggerated conclusions 1s provided by the employer associations’ Research Service, ‘Communist initiated disputes in Australia in the post-war period’ (Sydney, 1950). 14 J.D. Playford, Doctrinal and Strategic Problems of the Communist Party of Australia, 1945-62, PhD thesis, ANU, 1962, pp. 1-2. 15 K. McEwan, Once a folly Comrade (Brisbane, 1966), p. 117. 16 Mark Taft, ‘Communism in Australia’, in H. Mayer and H. Nelson, Australian Politics. A Third Reader (Melbourne 1973), p. 451. An antidote to Taft’s exaggerations is to be found in the succeeding paper by Fred Wells, ‘The Communist Parties of Australia’, ibid., pp. 453-7.

17 Blake, op. cit., p. 40; Morrison, op. cit., pp. 290n., 401; Davidson, op. Cit., p. 27. 18 Morrison, loc. cit.; Davidson, op. cit., p. 75. 19 Morrison, op. cit., pp. 334—5. 20 For an example of this (and an implicit denial that a civil libertarian

strand could exist in trade unions independent of the Communist Party) see Morrison’s statement ‘For a roll-call of those unions which the CPA dominated to the extent, that they supported the party in its fight for legalisation, see the Tribune. . .’, op. cit., p. 417n.

21 Nevertheless Playford (op. cit., pp. 54, 85-7) still emphasized CPA ‘leadership’ of the 1945-7 industrial disputes. 22 R. Gollan, The Coalminers of New South Wales (Melbourne, 1963); T.

Notes 357 Sheridan, Mindful Militants. . .(Cambridge, 1975), J.A. Merritt, A History of the Federated Ironworkers’ Association of Australia: 1909—

52, PhD thesis, ANU, 1967; B. Fitzpatrick and R.J. Cahill, The Seamen’s Union of Australia 1872—1972 (Sydney, 1981), pp. 153-6, T.A.

Cutler, The History of the AMIEU..., PhD thesis, University of NSW, 1976, p. 279.

23 Davidson, op. cit., p. 92; J.J. Brown, address to CPA 15th national congress, 7—10/5/48. The Menzies government in early 1950 believed there were fifty-three CPA members holding full-time union positions,

but this number was later reduced to forty-eight: L.F. Crisp, Ben Chifley. . . (Sydney, 1961), pp. 384, 386.

24 Morrison, op. cit., p. 297. 25. Ian Turner, Room for Manoeuvre (Melbourne, 1982), p. 134.

26 Morrison, op. cit., pp. 13-4. 27 ibid., p. 326. 28 Playford, op. cit., p. 410. 29 Davidson, op. cit., p. 183. Morrison (op. cit., p. 406) demonstrates how the CPA took a ‘considerable risk’ in furnishing officials for ‘fronts’ in the pre-war era. When conflict arose between the Party and the front, communist officials ‘very often’ sided with the front against the Party.

30 For example, N. Whitlam and J. Stubbs, Nest of Traitors (Brisbane, 1974), p. 14. 31 Interviews with H. Low, 31/5/79 and J. Kane and F. Rooney, 19/8/83. 32 Interview with J. Arrowsmith, 28/5/81. 33. Merritt, op. cit., p. 450. 34 Interviews with J. Arrowsmith, 28/5/81; N. Cunningham, 25/10/80; L. Aarons, 28/10/80; L.J. McPhillips, 23/2/82. 35. Nancy Wills, Shades of Red (Melbourne, 1980), pp. 77-81, 85, 104-5. 36 Interview with L.J. McPhillips, 23/2/82.

37 Playford, op. cit., pp. 369-70. 38 C. Sharpley, J Was A Communist Leader (Melbourne 1949), p. 8. See also Sharpley’s comments on ‘Cup’ Southwell (AEU), George Seelaf (AMIEU), Sid Moss (FEDFA), and J.C. Chandler (BWIU), Herald, 21/4/49. Two decades later Ted Hill, who led the first split from the CPA, offered the opinion that the Party’s failure largely rested on the diversion of both energies and ideological purity associated with its attempts to maintain its power base in the unions: E.F. Hill, Looking Backward Looking Forward (Melbourne, 1965). Subsequent CPA officials, while rejecting Hill’s own brand of communism, appeared tacitly to accept this criticism of the Party’s lack of vision. e.g. Bernie Taft, ‘Post-war Industrial Policy’, Australian Left Review 28, 1971, pp. 50-6. 39 CPA records lodged at the Mitchell Library, Sydney, do not include copies of every speech made at these conferences. However, the great majority of speeches, including the major policy pronouncements by

secretariat members, seem to be there. It should be noted that the speeches are not bound strictly in the order in which they were actually delivered. Speeches considered by the leadership to be of sufficient

importance were reproduced in whole or part in slightly edited versions in the Communist Review.

358 Division of Labour 40 Tribune, 28/9/45. A leaflet supporting Dixon’s line was reproduced in Tribune, 19/10/45.

41 For example, 7rnbune, 12, 16, 19, 23, 26, 30/10/45, 2, 16/11/45, 15/1/ 45, 12, 19/2/46. 42 The refusal of most striking engineering craftsmen to involve themselves greatly in agitation during the Victorian metal trades dispute helped the secretariat appreciate this point (see Rowe, Communist Review, June, 1947). According to former CPA functionary, C. Sharpley, when Dixon came to Victoria early in 1948 to urge the need for disputes to be made more political he optimistically directed that strikers should be prevented from taking jobs elsewhere in order to ensure their closer involvement in disputes: RCCP transcripts, p. 824. 43 For details see E. Ross, A History of the Miners’ Federation of Australia (Sydney, 1970), pp. 386-7, 404. 44 Tribune, 28/1/47, 4/2/47. 45 Tom Wright, Communist Review, August 1947. 46 R. Dixon, ibid., December 1947. 47 Healy reported at the national congress that during the strike Hanlon

had told himself and Cranwell that Chifley was responsible for Queensland’s economic problems—but rejected the unionists’ suggestion that they ask Chifley to subsidize the increase demanded. ‘More recently, in Canberra, when I retailed to Chifley the failings of Mr

Hanlon and mentioned his statement that he had won the strike, Chifley said; “if he 1s such a fool as to believe that, I will be quite happy to let him go on believing it.”’’

48 Certain communist-influenced unions were not affiliated to the ALP in Victoria largely because of that state branch’s 1943 decision that officers of affiliated unions could not campaign for non-ALP candidates in elections. In 1947 the unaffiliated unions were the Painters’, the ARU, FIA, BWIU, FCU, BLF, and SUA: Standard Weekly, 28/3/ 47.

The CPA’s ‘bastion’ unions usually made election donations to both parties: Playford, op. cit., p. 79; Cutler, op. cit., p. 274. However, even before the great coal strike the Miners’ Federation’s central council rejected a motion in May 1949 that £250 be donated to the Com-

munist Party election fund: P. Deery, The 1949 Coal Strike, PhD thesis, La Trobe University, 1976, p. 50. The novelty of Thornton’s proposal lay in the levy. Anti-communists concentrated on one particular paragraph (my italics) of Thornton’s explanation of the FIA’s proposal. Secondly, Comrade Sharkey mentioned briefly the question of relations between the union led by us and the ALP. It has been agreed that we need a new attitude to this question. It is time we reconsidered a policy which causes us to finance people who attack us all the time; who attempt to break every strike conducted by affiliated unions. But it is far more important that we should take steps to break with the old tradition that the Labour [sic] Party is the only party of the working-class, the political wing of the Labour Movement.

This allegiance to the Labour Party is very much a formal affair anyhow. I doubt whether there are more than five or six hundred members of the Labour Party of the 40000 odd members in the Ironworkers’ Union. Only two members of the ALP are officials of the union. But the Communist Party is in a different relationship with the union. Many officials are members of the Party.

Notes 359 This shows the great authority of the Communist Party with this union. And the general poltcy of the union. Is that decided 1n consultation with the leaders of the Labour Party? No! The policy of the Ironworkers’ Union 1s decided 1n consulta-

tion with the leaders of the Communist Party. The great achievements of our Union in the past few years should be credited to the Communist Party. But they are not so credited. Because the Party does not appear as the Communist Party to the members of the Union. The achievements of our leadership are credited to individuals and not

to the Party... 49 For example, L. Sharkey, Communist Review, Setember 1948. 50 For example, N. Freehill, 1b1d., December 1948; J.D. Blake, 1bid., March 1949. 51 L. Sharkey, 1bid., September, 1948. 52. R. Dixon, ibid., October 1948. 53. R. Dixon, tbid., April 1949. 54 L. Sharkey, ibid., October 1948; Tribune 11/9/48. 55 R. Dixon, Communist Review, April 1949.

56 J.C. Henry, loc. cit. 57. Gollan, Revolutionaries and Reformists, p. 243.

58 Davidson, op. cit., pp. 108-9.

11 Regulating market forces: the run-in to the 1949 coal strike 1 C.B. Donn, The Australian Council of Trade Unions. . . Lanham, Maryland, 1983), p. 78.

2 Easily the best studies of the strike are P. Deery, The 1949 Coal Strike, PhD thesis, La Trobe University, 1976, and M.L. MacIntosh, The 1949 Coal Strike, MA thesis, Flinders University, 1975. 3 Second Annual Report of the Joint Coal Board, 1948-49, p. 7.

4 In the 1940s it was often claimed that Australian miners produced more coal per head at a lower cost than anyone else in the world: for example, Senator Morrow, CPD, vol. 202, p. 633; E. Ross, The Coal Front. (An account of the 1949 Coal Strike and the issues it raised) (Syd-

ney, n.d.), p. 14. 5 Deery, op. cit., p. 47. 6 For further details of Australian miners’ working and living conditions and their effects on outlook see ibid., pp. 35—49. For an international comparison of miners’ propensity to strike see C. Kerr and A. Siegel,

‘The Inter-Industry Propensity To Strike’, in A. Kornhauser, R. Dubin and A.M. Ross, /ndustrial Conflict (New York, 1954).

7 A particularly vivid description of an outsider’s first experience of underground work is contained in L. Tancock’s translation of Emile Zola’s Germinal (Penguin, 1976), pp. 37-60. See also George Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier (London, 1937), pp. 21-35.

8 Butlin and Schedvin, War Economy 1942-1945 (Canberra, 1977), p. 447. 9 R. Gollan, The Coalminers of New South Wales, (Melbourne, 1963), p. 221. 10 Deery, op. cit., p. 50. 11 Gollan, op. cit., p. 214. 12 For details see P. Hasluck, Government and the People 1942-1945 (Canberra, 1970), pp. 206-7, 583-9. 13. Butlin and Schedvin, op. cit., p. 444.

360 Division of Labour 14 ibid., p. 446. 15 ibid., p. 452. 16 In 1947 the WA Labor government did gazette an order resuming the leases of Amalgamated Collieries at Collie. It then lost office and its conservative successor restored the leases: Ross, A History of The Miners’ Federation of Australia (Sydney, 1970), p. 404.

17 loc. cit., p. 399; MacIntosh, op. cit., pp. 91-8; ‘Report of the Commonwealth Board of Inquiry Appointed to Inquire into and Report upon the Coal Mining Industry, 1945-46’: AA CRS 2700 XM item Vol. 26, Agenda 1145. 18 Alan Walker, Coaltown: A Social Survey of Cessnock N.S.W. (Melbourne, 1945). 19 First Report of the Joint Coal Board, 1947-48, p. 5.

20 loc. cit. 21 P. Deery (ed.), Labour in Conflict. The 1949 Coal Strike (Canberra, 1978), pp. 10-12; The 1949 Coal Strike, p. 36; Ross, A History, p. 401; Railway Review, August 1949, p. 13. 22 Queensland’s refusal to bring its miners under the CIT was based on

the Hanlon government’s ‘state’s rights’ fears of the expansion of Commonwealth authority: D.J. Blackmur, ‘Industrial Relations under an Australian State Labor Government’, PhD thesis, University of Queensland, 1986, p. 303.

23 Ross, A History, pp. 207-8, 417-18. 24 Deery, The 1949 Coal Strike, pp. 17—8, quoting Harbour. When JCB chairman, K.A. Cameron, became managing director of Mt Morgan Mines Ltd, he referred unflatteringly to the coal owners ‘feudal atti-

tude’ and coal management’s ‘gross mistakes and errors of judgement’: JPA (Victoria) Review, May—June 1951, p. 60.

25 Eight ‘back Saturdays’ were worked at the end of 1947, while in the last quarter of 1948 six were worked in the northern field and five in the southern (no agreement was possible in the western district): First Report of the Joint Coal Board, p. 22. 26 Common Cause, 15/11/47. 27 Ross, A History, p. 409; First Report of the foint Coal Board, p. 24.

28 Meat Industry Fournal, July 1949, quoted in Deery, The 1949 Coal Strike, p. 37. 29 Argus, 8/7/48. 30 The NSW northern district had five delegates, the southern, western, Barrier and Queensland districts had two each and Victoria, Tasmania and Western Australia one each. President, vice-president and general secretary completed the council.

31 SMH, 5/8/48. 32 One of ACSEF’s fiercest critics in 1949, L.C. Haylen, MHR, after a tour of the coalfields on the very eve of the strike, argued ‘With regard to the question of stupid, insane, petty stoppages, the evidence seems to suggest. . .a measure of responsibility on both sides. On the owner or managerial side there are definite indications of provocation’. Elsewhere Haylen listed the main causes for ‘basic unrest’ as ‘(1) Com-

munist propaganda—planned to create unrest; (2) pig-headed management determined to yield not a jot’. Memo to Chifley, undated (May 1949), Evatt papers, Flinders University Library.

Notes 361 33. SMH, 22/7/48, 11/8/48.

34 Chifley and other ALP spokesmen bore witness to the Bunnerong problem: CPD, vol. 202, pp. 348-9; Chifley to Lithgow ALP branch 8/6/49, Evatt Papers; McGirr, NSWPD, vol. 186, pp. 1892, 1942, 2121, vol. 192, p. 5876; J.L. Geraghty, ibid., vol. 186, p. 2121. 35. SMH, 29/7/48. In his 1949 memo (above, footnote 32) Haylen listed ‘the best hated and uncooperative managers’ and added ‘Of course, : Mr Gregory Foster has a special classification’. See also Ross, A History, p. 395.

36 SMH, 31/7/48. 37 SMH, 5, 6/8/48. 38 ibid., 11, 12/8/48. 39 ‘For proprietors’ views see Harbour, 1/9/48. The editor of the ndustrial Australian and Mining Standard (16/9/48) took a more lenient view of miners as a whole, but felt they were too easily led ‘by the vociferous and irresponsible sections among both their leaders and the rank and file’.

40 There is controversy as to whether Gallagher ever used this muchquoted expression but ACSEF officials, including J. Comerford, claimed to have heard him (Deery, The 1949 Coal Strike, p. 29). Deery is wrong in dating the expression’s origin to November 1948 discussions on the Kemira dispute (below, pp. 265-7), in fact, Edgar Ross had already attributed it to Gallagher in his address to the CPA national congress in May 1948: see below, p. 269.

41 Second Annual Report of the Joint Coal Board, 1948-49, pp. 29-30; Ross, A History, pp. 418-9, Ross, The Coal Front, pp. 20-1; SMH, 7, 12, 14, 19, 28/10/48.

42 In New South Wales, industry was permitted to use gas or electricity on only two days per week and domestic consumption was restricted to approximately three hours per day. Similar restrictions were imposed in Victoria and South Australia. Of direct consumers of coal, the steel industry was limited to 10 per cent of usual consumption, railway locomotion to 33.3 per cent, gas producers 50 per cent, electricity generation 55 to 60 per cent and all other undertakings 50 per cent: Second Annual Report of the Foint Coal Board, 1948—49, p. 22.

43 SMH, 8/11/48. ACSEF leaders took the threats seriously: interview with J Comerford, 30/5/79.

44 The Sydney Morning Herald was relatively staid compared with the tabloids but, for example, it took pains to emphasize what a cushy life miners enjoyed during strikes (5/11/48) and to explain that ‘The Communists hate the AWU because of its moderation and particularly because it was this union which largely accounted for the Communists’ humiliating defeat in the Queensland railway strike’ (4/11/48).

45 loc. cit. 46 Joint statement by G. Grant and W. Parkinson, ibid., 1/4/49. 47 Deery, The 1949 Coal Strike, p. 396n. See also Ross, A History, pp. 381-2. 48 The numbers attending the central council in 1949 varied between eleven and nineteen, depending on the presence of interstate delegates: MacIntosh, op. cit., p. 158n. 49 Deery, The 1949 Coal Strike, p. 23; see also pp. 53, 172, 394—5S.

362 Division of Labour 50 It is worth recalling (p. 222) that in fact the Queensland coal miners did not give wholehearted support to the railway workers and that the ACSEF central council rejected the notion of NSW members striking in support. 51 E. Ross, Communist Review, July 1948. 52 1bid., April 1949. 53 Ina letter to Chifley on 25/10/46, Grant had referred to ‘an element working inside our industry who, although on the surface make it * appear that they are in support of the Government, are working tooth

and nail in every way possible to bring about industrial unrest throughout the industry’. This was, however, placed in the context of

the need for the government to take the miners into its confidence when selecting personnel for the new JCB and followed a letter of complaint on 18/10/46 about lack of consultation with ACSEF in appointing the JCB’s chairman. AA CP12, 18/1, Bundle A. 54. Ross, A History, p. 419; Century, 31/12/48; Deery, The 1949 Coal Strike, pp. 196-9. 55 ibid., p. 201; Common Cause, 14/5/49. 56 Common Cause, 18/6/49. 57 Ross, A History, p. 420. 58 Deery, The 1949 Coal Strike, pp. 167-9. 59 See MacIntosh, op. cit., pp. 111-17 for a considered confirmation of this conclusion.

60 ibid., p. 116. 61 ibid., p. 117. 62 Deery, The 1949 Coal Strike, p. 179. 63 Ross, The Coal Front, pp. 21-2. 64 ‘Statement by N.S.W. Combined Colliery Proprietors’, 19/5/49. 65 For example, SMH, 20/5/49. 66 According to JCB secretary, N. Stuart, “There were no notes taken at the first conference except by the parties’: CIT transcripts, 9/6/49, p. 126. In JCB archives there is ‘a very brief note of the discussions’ of 19 May which includes the following, ‘Senator Ashley spoke along the

lines of the attached notes prepared for him. In particular he stated that he thought there was some merit in the principle of long service leave. If there was agreement, or 1f long service leave was granted by an award, the Commonwealth would play its part in financing the scheme’. The attached notes were a little more cautious, saying that the government ‘may be able to help financially’ —but government aid was certainly expected by all parties including R.W. Davie, the leading proprietors’ representative at the meeting. ‘Report of Proceedings at Conference Held at the Commonwealth Bank Building, Monday 30 May, 1949 Between Representatives of the Colliery Proprietors’ Association, Combined Mining Unions and the Joint Coal Board’. 67 ‘Report of Proceeding[s] at Conference Held. . . 24th May, 1949...’ 68 ACSEF central council minutes, 25/5/49. Idris Williams also claimed that, in order for the employers’ incentive scheme to provide miners 1n

a 400-man colliery with the desired 30s per week increase, output would have to be increased by 66.6 per cent.

69 ‘Report of Proceeding[s]...24th May, 1949 ...’. When Cameron formalized his proposals and circulated them to the parties after the

Notes 363 meeting he modified this particular proposal to establishing conciliation committees at every mine and holding pit-top meetings on days and times agreed with colliery management: ‘Compromise Proposal

Submitted by Joint Coal Board to a Conference of Owners and Unions Held in Sydney on Tuesday, 24th May’. 70 ACSEF central council minutes 25/5/49. See also transcript of broadcast by Williams, 27/5/49. (MacIntosh, op. cit., p. 130, is incorrect in

stating that this broadcast, outlining ACSEF’s opinion of the proprietors’ and JCB’s proposals, represented ‘a break with the desires of [Cameron] that only he should make press statements [about the negotiations of 24 May]’. The transcript of that conference revealed that the parties agreed to leave the press statement to Cameron who indicated he would issue it on 26 May i.e. one day before Williams’ radio talk. MacIntosh’s claim that the ‘broadcast. . . marks a turning point

in the dispute, in that it was the first time any of the parties had appealed to a broader coalfields audience’ 1s also somewhat misleading. While it was the first time in the eight-day-old negotiations, both sides had widely publicized their positions since earlier 1n the year: ACSEF through its organized meeting and leaflet campaign, the proprietors, the JCB and the government through the sympathetic popular media. )

71 Deery, The 1949 Coal Strike, p. 187.

72 ‘Report of Proceedings. . . 30th May, 1949...’. 73 ACSEF central council minutes, 25/5/49. 74 Deery (p. 191) is rather misleading in his reference to this incident. His quotation from the JCB-produced ‘Report of Proceedings’ is not Grant’s, as he implies, but Cameron’s unsubstantiated interpretation of an otherwise unrecorded remark by Grant. On p. 192 Deery refers to Williams’ ‘intransigence’ but in fact he too abruptly terminates the quotation provided to exemplify this. Williams’ subsequent readiness to yield ground when necessary suggests that in May the ACSEF militant leadership was out to demonstrate their preparedness to go to the brink—expecting of course the government to step in from the sidelines.

75 CIT transcript, 31/5/49, p. 3. 76 1bid., p. 8. 77 1bid., Addendum. 78 ibid., 1/6/49, p. 4. 79 ibid., 6/6/49, p. 65. Later on in the long-service leave hearings (9/8/49, p. 125) Stuart indicated that the federal government was considering the imposition of an excise tax on coal to finance the scheme. 80 Joint Coal Board, This 1s the story (Sydney, 1949). 81 CIT transcript, Stuart, 6/6/49, p. 65; CPD, vol. 202, p. 349, vol. 203, p. 1921.

82 ibid., vol. 202, p. 349. 83 CIT transcript, 8/6/49, pp. 47, 53, 54. Further details of the employer (and JCB) reaction to this significant union concession are contained in the transcript of the eve-of-strike conference on 26/6/49; see particularly the remarks of N. Hindmarsh, pp. 15-21. 84 1bid., 8/6/49, p. 58.

85 ibid., p. 51.

364 Division of Labour 86 1bid., p. 56. 87 1bid., p. 56. 88 The two exceptions were awards covering private bus companies and private nurses, both handed down by a single judge of the NSW Industrial Commission: ibid., 9/6/49, p. 142. 89 ibid., pp. 160-1. For union interpretation of these remarks, revealed in eve-of-strike discussions, see ibid., 26/6/49, pp. 6-7, 24. 90 ibid., 14/6/49, p. 19. 91 ibid., 9/6/49, p. 139. The government, media and other opponents of the strike made much of this decision—which was perfectly consistent with the miners’ ‘New approach’. The fact that an error in the ACSEF office led to unsigned copies of a wages log being submitted to the employers allowed anti-strike propagandists to depict the sinister leaders of the miners withdrawing their wage claim before it had a chance of being considered. Equally, Gallagher’s widely publicized statement that “The 35 hour week claim is almost completed’ (ibid., p. 38) was misleading. In fact the miners were not granted a 35-hour week till twenty-one years later.

92 1bid., Hindmarsh, 8/6/49, pp. 55-6; Deery, The 1949 Coal Strike, p. 211. 93 See for example CIT transcripts, Grant 8/6/49, p. 54; Williams, 9/6/ 49, p. 158. 94 Davidson, op. cit., p. 136. 95 Transcripts of conference with CMUC, in camera, 14/6/49, p. S. 96 CMUC minutes, 14/6/49, pp. 2-3; SMH, 15/6/49. A specific statement of the CMUC view was made by T. Herron in the Central Reference Board transcripts, 15/6/49, p. 8. 97 CIT transcripts, 14/6/49, pp. 15-20, 33. Williams unwillingly provided the names of the mover and seconder but not those of the remaining

eight supporters of the motion. When ACSEF, in retaliation, called Davie, the proprietors’ representative, to ascertain which owners initiated the decision to apply for a no-strike order, it was provided with

the surprising information that the proprietors never presented motions at their meetings and that decisions were always unanimous: ibid., pp. 22-6.

98 1bid., pp. 29-30. 99 1bid., p. 32. 100 ibid., p. 38. 101 These arguments concerned the traditionally poor attendances at meetings outside working hours; the likely disruption (based on past examples) of work if the meetings were not held; and the fact that, in any case, maintenance men and engine men all worked at weekends: ibid., pp. 28, 33—5. See also ibid., 8/6/49, p. 55. 102 CRB transcripts, 15/6/49, p. 3. See also T. Herron, p. 8 and W. Hale (Blacksmiths’ Society of Australasia), p. 12.

103 ibid., p. 7. 104 At Collie the vote was 112 to 88 against the CMUC recommendation. Only three centres agreed with Collie—Muswellbrook in the NSW northern district (185 to 35), and two Queensland centres, Rosewood

(144-28) and Blair Athol (25-7): Deery, The 1949 Coal Strike, p. 215n.

Notes 365 105 Communist Review, 1948-9, passim. 106 Ross argues this view strongly in his memoirs Of Storm and Struggle, Pages from Labour History (Sydney, 1982): ‘Far from inspiring the general strike, the top leaders of the Communist Party were concerned with its implications and advised against it’, (pp. 102—3). On the eve of the strike ‘Lance Sharkey counselled the mineworkers to test the arbitration tribunal again, but his advice was rejected’ (p. 104). Ross

seems to imply that J.C. Henry and J.D. Blake used the strike to attempt to undermine the positions of both Sharkey and Dixon (p. 106). McPhillips independently reported Sharkey’s reservations ~ (interview, 23/2/82) as did J. Comerford, a non-communist militant who became ACSFF acting general secretary during the strike (interview, 30/5/79). MacIntosh (op. cit., p. 183) reports that Sharkey’s opposition to the strike was relayed to him by an anonymous interviewee.

107 SMA, 17/6/49. 108 For example, Tom Morris, Wallarah lodge secretary: Daily Telegraph, 13/6/49.

109 Deery, The 1949 Coal Strike, p. 220. 110 «ibid., pp. 182n, 194n. In fact his footnotes do not refer to CIT transcripts at all. On pp. 192-3 he incorrectly refers to a Coal Board summary of proceedings as a ‘transcript’. See above, footnote 74.

111 Deery, The 1949 Coal Strike, p. 222. 112 Deery did conclude firmly that all union officials believed that they would win the strike and were not therefore knowingly directing their members along the road to defeat: 1b1d., pp. 226-8. 113. SMH, 19, 21, 22/6/49; Labor Call, 17/6/49. 114 Although generally submerged in the anti-miner tide, occasionally readers were provided with more balanced reporting, such as Ross Campbell’s report from the coalfields, Sunday Herald, 26/6/49. 115. P.L. Coleman, ‘The 1949 Strike in New South Wales’, Victorian Historical Fournal 52, 1981, p. 45. See also Common Cause, 25/6/49.

116 CIT transcripts, 26/6/49, pp. 4, 8, 16, 17. Evidence that their fears were justified is provided by the fact that when ACSEF unity broke down late in the strike, opponents of Williams tried to raise rank-andfile resentment by circulating rumours that he had sold the pass on

mechanical pillar extraction at these negotiations: see report on ACSEF central council debate, Common Cause, 17/9/49.

117 CMUC minutes, 23/6/49. In May, at the outset of negotiations, the unions had claimed three months leave after seven years service. The JCB’s ‘compromise’ offer had been three months after ten years, not to be taken by working miners until 1954. As stated above, any breaks in continuity of service, including strikes, removed the relevant year entirely from calculation. Seventy-five per cent of past service up to a

total of ten years could be recognized. On the eve of the strike the union argued for up to twenty years service to be retrospectively accepted and for working miners to be allowed to take leave from 1951.

118 JCB sources reveal that two years was suggested by the unions: JCB cablegram to N. Mighell, 1/7/49. Prime Minister’s Department, correspondence files, AA CSR A461 item DA 351/1/4. 119 CIT transcripts, 26/6/49, Monk, pp. 3—5; Williams, pp. 5—10; Hind-

366 Division of Labour marsh, pp. 15-21.

120 SMH, 1/6/49; ‘Report of Proceedings. . .24th May’, pp. 12-13; ‘Compromise Proposal. . .24th May’, pp. 5-6; CIT transcripts, 9/6/49, pp. 137-9. 121 Transcript in possession of M.L. MacIntosh; see also SMH, 23/6/49. 122 CIT transcripts, 26/6/49, p. 17.

123 ibid., pp. 21-2. 124 MacIntosh, op. cit., p. 163. 125 Sunday Herald, 26/6/49. 126 Ross, Of Storm and Struggle, p. 104.

12 ‘Boots and all’: Mr Chifley and the miners 1 No exact figures of the numbers laid off are available. The Coal Board subsequently reported that 122 000 were receiving unemployment benefits in July (Second Annual Report, p. 35). This figure probably falls short of the total unemployed. Press estimates ranged up to 400000.

Using Keating’s workforce figures—M. Keating, The Australian Workforce 1910-11 to 1960-61 (Canberra, 1973), Table 19.21—strikeinduced layoffs would thus range between 3.7 and 12.3 per cent of the workforce or between 4.7 and 15.3 per cent of employees. 2 Deery, The 1949 Coal Strike, PhD thesis, La Trobe University, 1976,

p. 233. (All references to Deery in this chapter are to this doctoral thesis.) Ironically enough, because it just had been deregistered feder-

ally (above, p. 176), FEDFA funds could be used to help its own members: E.J. Harrison, CPD, vol. 203, p. 1709. 3 Individuals fined (£100) were A.E. Mountjoy (ACSEF Southern District), J. Parkinson, W.J. Smith and T. Welsh (ACSEF Western District), and K. McKeon (Sydney branch FIA). ACSEF and the WWF were fined £2000 each and the FIA £1000. Proceedings against the AEU were dropped when it was established that 1ts withdrawals were in accord with its usual banking pattern. 4 CCCA transcripts, 23/8/49, pp. 24—5; Common Cause, 16/7/49; Deery, p. 259n. 5 1ibid., p. 262. 6 The nature of these discussions was not widely publicized: JCB cablegram to Mighell, 1/7/49, AA CSR A461 Item DA 351/1/4.

7 CPD, vol. 203, p. 1561. 8 R. Gibson, My Years in the Communist Party (Melbourne, 1966), p. 153; Labor Call, 29/7/49; Argus, 30/6/49; Century, 8/7/49; E. Ross,

The Coal Front,. . .(Sydney, n.d.), p. 126; L.F. Crisp, Ben Chifley (Melbourne, 1961), p. 364; A. Johnson, Fly a Rebel Flag. Bill Morrow 1888—1980 (Melbourne, 1986), pp. 179-88. Cameron, who had occasionally offered public glimpses of an older radical spirit beneath his ministerial shell (for example CPD, vol. 186, pp. 274—8, vol. 194, p. 1201; Labor Call, 4, 11/12/47; Australian Worker, 8/1/48, 3/11/48), managed to ignore totally the coal strike in his regular contributions to Labor Call. In his ministerial capacity he refused to be drawn on the issue of de facto radio censorship of the miners’ case: CPD, vol. 203, p. 1989, vol. 204, p. 856.

9 J.D. Playford, Doctrinal and Strategic Problems of the Communist

Notes 36/7 Party of Australia, 1945-62, PhD thesis, ANU, 1962, p. 119. B.A. Santamaria was among those who felt the 1947 Approved Defence Projects Protection Act to be an important first instalment: Against the Tide (Melbourne, 1981), p. 111.

10 CPD, vol. 203, p. 1713. 11 CPD, vol. 191, pp. 1748-9. 12 CPD, vol. 203, p. 1721. 13. News Weekly, 6/7/49.

14 Labor Call, 1/7/49. 15 Ross, The Coal Front, p. 38; Deery, p. 242. 16 Deery, pp. 245-6, accepts the over-optimistic view. My judgement is that ACTU and other moderate hopes rested on the reasonableness of ACSEF’s approach to mechanization in the eve-of-strike conferences. There is no evidence that at this stage any ‘moderate’ ACSEF official was prepared to concede more than this. 17 News Weekly, 13/7/49. 18 The friend was A. Wallis of the Clothing Trades Union whose account is retailed by R. Gibson, op. cit., pp. 152-3. 19 Deery, p. 257n. Foster’s correspondence to government ministers and officials does not suggest that the judge was alarmed by the government response to the strike: see letter to Solicitor-General, 8/7/49, to

Evatt, 25/8/49; Evatt papers, Flinders University Library, correspondence file.

20 When Foster first took over, counsel referred to how sick Kelly had been during the earlier proceedings: CCCA transcripts 7/7/49, p. 2. 21 For example, ibid., 13/7/49 (ACSEP), p. 69. 22 1bid., 11/7/49 (ACSEF), p. 45. Foster’s biographer also draws attention to his unjudicial reasoning: C. Larmour, Labor Fudge (Sydney, 1985) pp. 198-9. She describes his sentences as ‘excessive’ (p. 201) but retails Foster’s own account of how he walked the streets for an hour before actually delivering his first judgement. See also I.G. Sharp, ‘Alfred William Foster’, Economic Record 39, 85, p. 114.

23 CCCA transcripts 8/7/49 (ACSEF), pp. 31-3; 11/7/49 (WWE), pp. 6-8. See also F. Paterson, OPD, 4/8/49, pp. 67-8. 24 CCCA transcripts, 11/7/49 (WWE), pp. 6-8. 25 For example, ibid., 15/7/49 (ACSEF), p. 98; 13/7/49 (ACSEP), pp. 44, 51; 14/7/49 (CPA); pp. 44, 48, 15/7/49 (CPA), p. 69; 18/7/49 (CPA), p. 177-8. 26 For example, ibid., 8/7/49 (FIA), p. 9; 14/7/49 (CPA), pp. 12-14; 15/7/49 (CPA), pp. 64-5, 75-8, 112; 19/7/49 (CPA), p. 188; 21/7/49 (WWE) p. 79. 27 1bid., 18/7/49 (CPA), p. 126. 28 Healy of the WWF, who had been a personal friend of Foster, enjoyed a better run than most when in the box—zbid., 18/7/49 (CPA), pp. 185-

98. Even he, however, was cut short when he attempted to quote federal Labour Minister Holloway’s apposite arguments voiced in court during the 1929 timber strike: 1bid., 21/7/49 (WWF), pp. 72-3. 29 1bid., 11/7/49 (ACSEF), p. 55.

30 ibid., 14/7/49, pp. 88-9. 31 For example, Hobart Mercury, 11/8/49; Labor Call, 22/7/49; News Weekly, 27/7/49.

368 Division of Labour 32 Prime Minister’s Department, Correspondence, AA CRS A461 Item CZ 351/1/4; CPD, vol. 205, p. 1537. 33 Ross claimed a circulation of 4.950 000 for the thirty-five leaflets issued by the striking unions: The Coal Front, p. 71. 34. Don Watson, Brian Fitzpatrick (Sydney, 1979), p. 223.

35. Argus, 25/7/49. ABC Chief R.J.F. Boyer declared the ‘ABC should not be allowed to become the voice of the Government of the day’: ibid., 26/7/49. ACSEF felt, however, that the ABC ducked the issue of allowing the unions a right to reply to JCB chairman Cameron: Ross, The Coal Front, p. 65; CPD, vol. 203, p. 1989, vol. 204 p. 856.

36 Labor Call, 24/6/49. 37 1bid., 5/8/49. 38 Both Groupers and Langites clearly recognized this bonding effect: see for example News Weekly, 29/6/49; Century 5/8/49. For details of the miners’ considerable internal network of relief committees see Ross,

The Coal Front, pp. 95-100. For the role of miners’ wives see W. Mitchell, ‘Wives of the Radical Labour Movement’ in A. Curthoys et al., Women at Work (Canberra, 1975), pp. 1-14. 39 For example, Common Cause, 2/7/49, 13/8/49.

40 See K. Tennant, Evatt (Sydney, 1970), pp. 251-2. See also Gordon William’s regular objective reports 1n the Argus early in the strike, 1, 2, 4, 16/7/49. 41 Parkinson to central council, Common Cause, 17/9/49. 42 Interview with J. Comerford, 28/5/79; Deery, p. 288. 43 Ross, The Coal Front, p. 88; News Weekly, 20/7/49, 3/8/49; Argus, 1/8/49; Century, 5/8/49.

44 Ross, The Coal Front, p. 114. 45 Australian Observer, 3/5/47. 46 The West Australian, 13-18/7/49. 47 WAPD, 20/7/49. 48 Mercury, 7, 23, 28/7/49, 4, 11, 8/7/49. 49 R. Murray, The Split (Melbourne, 1970), p. 35. 50 News Weekly, 20/11/46, 27/7/49; Tribune, 19/11/46.

51 SMA, 23, 28/10/46, 2, 4, 6/12/46, 10/1/47, 26/3/47, 1/4/47; 58 CAR 302.

52. SMH, 3, 4/7/47, 11, 13, 16, 17, 18/12/47.

53 SMH, 25/11/46, 19, 20/11/47, 28-31/1/49, 24-26/2/49, 7/3/49; 48 NSWIR, 18 & 85. 54 What follows is a composite account of the state council meeting taken from SMH, 25/5/49 and News Weekly, 1/6/49. 55 For evidence of contemporary clashes between the shop committees and NSW union officials see Labor Council, minutes of general meetings, 12, 19, 26/5/49; SMH, 21/5/49; Tribune, 18, 21, 25, 28/5/49, 1, 11/6/49.

56 NSW Labor Council, minutes of general meetings, 9/6/49; SMH, 19/6/49; News Weekly, 15/6/49.

57 Tnbune, 15/6/49; SMH, 13/6/49. 58 Shortly after the strike Chifley paid tribute to the ‘wonderful assistance’ from Ferguson: Letter to F.M. Forde, 10/9/49, Evatt papers. For a similar assessment see Tennant, op. cit., pp. 248-52. 59 SMH, 13, 14, 15/7/49.

Notes 369 60 Tribune, 23/7/49. 61 Tribune, 16/7/49. 62 SMA, 15, 18/7/49; Tribune, 20/7/49, 23/7/49. 63 Railway Review, August 1949; Ferguson to sub-branch secretaries and representatives, 18/7/49; see also Ferguson’s address to NSW ARU conference, 10/10/49, Ward Papers, National Library, 2396/15/ 355-358. The Queensland branch was reluctant to support the miners because of its isolation after supporting the meat workers in 1946:

Blackmur, Industrial Relations..., PhD thesis, University of Queensland, 1986, p. 206.

64 SMA, 23/7/49. 65 Tribune, 23/7/49; Century, 22/7/49.

66 SMH, 28/7/49. 67 Tribune, 12/11/49. 68 Iam indebted to Hugh Stretton for this information. In an interview with Stretton on 22/12/80, Playford revealed that, in one of their regular phone conversations, Chifley pointed out that the AWU was losing out to ACSEF in the recruiting competition at Leigh Creek. Anxious to maintain a source of coal unaffected by NSW stoppages, Playford moved to oust ACSEF. He conceded de facto preference to the AWU by agreeing to send any applications for employment at Leigh Creek to the AWU to check if they were from ‘satisfactory workers’. See also SAPD, 1949, 3rd session, p. 153. 69 CPD, vol. 203, p. 1557; Age, 14/7/49; News Weekly, 27/7/49. 70 Daily Telegraph, 20, 21/7/49; P.L. Coleman, “The 1949 Strike in New South Wales’, Victorian Historical Fournal 52, 1981, p. 55; Century, 5/8/48. After passions had cooled Clyde Cameron, who had seldom gone along with eastern state AWU industrial policies, made a categorical denial that Dougherty had ever offered, or Chifley ever requested,

AWU labour to work the mines. (CPD, vol. 207, p. 2565, 11/5/50). This was doubtless true in a strictly formal sense—and when the government decided to use troops the NSW secretary of the AWU, R.W. Wilson, declared he had not been asked to supply labour by the government: Daily Telegraph, 21/7/49. Nevertheless, informally, everyone knew that the Queensland, NSW and federal officers of the union were

ready, willing and able to marry self-interest to the national determination to defeat the coal strike. 71 In response to a complaint from Evatt about Herald criticisms of the government’s reluctance to use all means to shift available coal, editor A.K. Thomas wrote on 14 July, ‘If we had known that the P.M. had decided many days ago, as you told me, that all plans were made to use troops if necessary, we would. . . not have referred to Government reluctance’: Evatt papers, miscellaneous correspondence. 72 This point was emphasized by Evatt when defending himself in correspondence from criticism by friends such as Eleanor and Eric Dark (28/7/49): Evatt papers. 73 Workers Weekly Herald, 14/12/45. See also above, Chapter 2, footnote 33.

74 For details of ACTU emergency committee support see ACTU minutes, ‘Statement by A.E. Monk. . . Relative to Haligonian Duke, July 19th, 1949’.

370 Division of Labour 75. JCB, Third Annual Report of the foint Coal Board, 1949-50, p. 18; CPD, vol. 204, pp. 630, 1140; Ross, The Coal Front, pp. 89-92; interview with J. Comerford, 30/5/79. 76 See Chapter 11 above, footnote 104. 77 See ‘Suggested Basis of Terms of Settlement of Coal Dispute. . . 15/7/ 49° and ‘Statement Made by President and Secretary of ACTU on General Coal Situation, July 19th, 1949’, ACTU minutes. 78 This account of the ending of the strike rests on Deery, pp. 375—420. 79 =T. Sheridan, Mindful Militants. . . (Cambridge, 1975), p. 203. 80 Deery, p. 402. Individual district votes were: northern 1195 for 4848 against; southern 671-725; western 360—595: Queensland 395-578; Victoria 334-4; Tasmania 2—200. 81 Ross, A Aistory of the Miners’ Federation of Australia (Sydney, 1970), p. 428; Argus, 4, 6/8/49.

82 Argus, 4/7/49. The first use of this phrase in the context of the strike came, however, from the other side of the fence: Deery, p. 251n. 83. CPD, vol. 203, pp. 1910, 1921, 2036, 2148; Century, 24/6/49, 8/7/49, 22/7/49, 5/8/49. Ward was also to the fore in calling on Chifley to visit the coalfields and debate with the miners: Ward papers, 2396/7/5313.

84 When discussing this episode in interview, Comerford did not cast Ross in such an arrogant mould as does Deery (pp. 397-8). Comerford did feel that Ross had too much influence in ACSEF in relation to his actual official position in the union. Comerford, with Woods, voted with the moderates on central council to defeat a move to co-opt Ross

on to the central executive in the run-up to the 1949 coal strike, but confessed to being at times influenced by Ross’s tactical appreciations when acting general secretary. Interviews, 28 and 30/5/79.

85 loc. cit. See also Deery, pp. 389-90. 86 Interview with J.W. Burton, 16/5/80. See also N. Whitlam and J. Stubbs, Nest of Traitors (Brisbane, 1974), p. 36. Burton, incidentally, sympathized with the miners and later described Chifley’s strike policy as ‘pigheaded’: see his review of Crisp’s Ben Chifley, in Bulletin of the Australian Society for the Study of Labour History 2, May 1962, p. 95.

87 CPD, vol. 204, pp. 28, 38, 42. 88 On 5 July he stated, ‘I understand there is no suggestion that the miners on the northern coalfield are Communist controlled’: CPD, vol. 203, p. 1921.

89 Deery, p. 327. Security reports on communist leaders’ activities during the strike can be seen in Attorney General’s Correspondence Files, AA CRS A432 Item 640 Part 1. The security service agents apparently

attended any meeting at which support for the strikers might be voiced, such as the meeting in Adelaide Town Hall on 4 July arranged

by the TLC to discuss the dispute. Chifley’s private secretary, Sir Murray Tyrell, revealed that, at least in earlier postwar years, a ‘mole’ planted deep within the CPA would sometimes relay information directly by phone to Chifley’s office: Interview, 28/8/80. 90 The consistent tenor of Chifley’s views was set out on 12 June when he addressed the ALP conference in Sydney. After describing the miners’ decision to hold aggregate meetings as ‘base ingratitude’ he sought to disabuse ‘some sections associated with [ACSEF of the belief]. . . that

Notes 371 the people of this country will have imposed on them some sort of a

code or political philosophy from another country’ (text in Evatt papers, ‘Chifley File’; see also daily press 13/6/49). Chifley’s second ‘Report to the Nation’ is a good example of his constant reiteration of the communist plot theme: see Labor Call, 22/7/49. 91 W. Taylor, secretary of the Goulburn TLC, wrote to Chifley on 4 July reporting local communists’ support for the miners. He attached to the letter a list ‘of the leading Communists in Goulburn who are on the phone’, thus seeming to imply that they be tapped. Chifley handed over the ten names to the security service: Attorney General’s Correspondence Files, AA CRS A432 Item 640, Part 1. 92 Ross, A History, p. 429. 93 Edgar Ross believed that fear of a shorter week was an important influence on Chifley: interview, 23/2/82. 94 For example, News Weekly, 20/7/49; G.W.A. Duthie MHR to Chifley, 8/8/49, F.M. Forde to Chifley 2/9/49, Chifley to Forde, 10/9/49, K. Gee to Evatt, 15/8/49, all in Evatt papers; Deery, pp. 422-3. See also the British left-wing Labour journal, Tribune, 7/10/49 and the London News Chronicle, 12/8/49. In a speech on the Sydney Domain, transcribed by the security service, McPhillips of the FIA claimed that,

while he was in prison, a visiting NSW state minister repeated throughout a 45-minute interview that the strike would win the election for the ALP: Attorney General’s Department, AA CRS A432, 49/640. Dr Burton was convinced that electoral considerations determined Chifley’s attitude: interview, 16/5/80 and J.W. Burton, “The Nature and Significance of Labor’, 5th Chifley Memorial Lecture, 11/ 9/58, p. 11. 95 The poll organization’s method of allocating ‘don’t knows’ varied between polls. In the February poll respondents were asked directly how they would vote if faced only with a choice of candidates from the three main parties. This seems to have forced many potential ‘don’t knows’ to express a direct preference. In subsequent polls respondents were asked more passively which party or candidate they were likely to vote for. Allowing for this discrepancy the ‘raw’ data again seems to indicate a crucial shift to the Opposition during the strike period. The ‘raw’ percentages were as follows:

ALP —_ Opposition Independent Don’t know

February42 4942 462na145 March May 43 39 2 16

Fune 40 42 46 43 22 12 13 Fuly September 9 December na43na46 na2na 96 See for example, CPD, vol. 203, pp. 1181, 1555-9, 1678-81, 168690, 1698-1701; vol. 204, pp. 296, 381, 426, 689; vol. 205, pp. 1299, 1525-32, 1614-22, 1632. 97 ibid., vol. 207, p. 2002 (Menzies).

372 Division of Labour 98 ibid., vol. 204, pp. 481, 485; vol. 205, pp. 1616-7. 99 ibid., vol. 204, pp. 447-8 (McLeod), 766 (Sheehy), 872—3 (Senator Hendrickson). 100 Deery, pp. 263—6, 424—6; Century, 2/9/49; Maritime Worker, 24/9/49;

Ward papers, 15/359-60. °

101 Interview with J. Comerford, 30/5/79. 102 Railroad, 2/2/51. 103. A. Davidson, The Communist Party of Australia (Stanford, 1969), p. 136. 104 The BWIU also disaffiliated from the ALP: Ross, The Coal Front, p. 125. 105 Deery, p. 433. Booth’s inclusion in the arraignment is indicative of how closely guarded was his secret role in hiding the ACSEF fund withdrawal. 106 Grant’s address to ACSEF central council, Common Cause, 17/9/49. 107 Interview with J. Comerford, 30/5/79. 108 CCCA transcripts, 24/8/49, p. 44. 109 Common Cause, 17/9/49. 110 Downing to Chifley, 1/9/49, Chifley files, Evatt papers, Flinders University Library. 111 Kenny’s notes of the above meeting, attached to his letter to Downing, 29/8/49, 1bid. Stewart’s notes of the meeting, sent to Downing 29/8/49 (tbid.) reveal that the ACSEF moderates felt it ‘Important that Coal

Tribunal decision re long service leave be published, prior to the [ACSEF Northern District] ballot being held, and that the decision be at least as favourable as Yallourn’. For ACSEF’s reactions to Gallagher’s award see Common Cause, 17/9/49. 112 Chifley to Downing, 8/9/49, Chifley files, Evatt papers.

113 Crook replaced Baddeley who retired from parliament to become Director of State Coal Mines. The other two members of the 1949 northern district executive later followed Crook to parliament— Simpson entered the Assembly and Cockerill the Legislative Council: Ross, A History, p. 438. 114 News Weekly, 23/11/49. 115. Labor Call, 21/12/49.

116 Deery, p. 440. 117 This summary of the 1950 hearings is based on Ross, A Aistory, pp. 437-42; JCB annual reports; Ward papers, 2396/7/6812. 118 M. Perlman, Judges in Industry (Melbourne, 1954), pp. 175-6.

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INDEX

Abfalter, J.I., 186, 187, 190, 191, Ansett, R., 196

193 Anthony, H.L., 312

aborigines, 63, 72 Approved Defence Projects Protecabsenteeism, 13; see also coal miners tion Act 1947, 62, 240, 242, 294

Adamstown, 286 arbitration: bans clauses, 146, 147, Adelaide Club, 158 152, 156; commissioners, 10, 80, Adelaide Steamship Co Ltd, 249 149-50, 152, 153, 154, 155-7,

Adelaide, 67-9, 133, 134, 135, 158, 168, 200; see also names; dereg-

163, 166, 182, 249 istration, 90; federal, 128, 142, aircraft industry, 8 143, 152, 196, 197; state, 121,

Amalgamated Engineering Union 124, 176-80, see also FIA; (AEU): 49, 50, 54, 67, 79, 121, Harvester judgement, 127, 146; 123, 125, 189, 204, 207, 212, 232, in wartime, 10—11, 13-15, 79-80, 241, 246, 249, 293, 302, 306, 307, 149-50, 161; judges, 5—6, 13, 80, 313; finances, 54, 142, 143, 147; 127, 128, 146, 152, 153, 154-5, independence, 9, 60, 128, 136, 158-61, 167, 173, 257, 285, 296—-

137-8, 176; margins campaign, 7, see also names; personnel, 3, 125, 127, 129, 130-47, 194, 213- 125; private, 143; reform, 2, 5-7, 23; steel strike, 106, 107; struc- 10, 42, 43, 46, 62, 64, 80, 82, 104,

ture and outlook, 127-9, 222 148, 149-61; restraint, 2, 3, 44, Amalgamated Foodstuffs Union, 64, 144, 157-8, 288, 316, 318-9;

116 sanctions, 5, 7, 64, 80, 82, 130,

Amalgamated Society of Carpenters 149, 151, 152, 153, 179, 185, 291,

and Joiners, 116, 179, 180 295, see also unions, coalmining; amenities, 16, 164, 165, see also coal state, 79, 80, 147; tribunals:

mining NSW, 89, 91, 96, 102, 103-4,

Anderson, C.W., 288, 289, 314 105, 106, 109, 110, 111, 115, 161,

Anderson, G., 103, 108 257; Queensland, 89, 118, 119,

annual leave, 11, 13, 43, 67, 69, 82, 120, 121, 122, 123, 124, 213, 214, 86, 119, 125, 150, 151, 167, 168, 215, 216, 219, 221, 222, 224; 170-1, 173, 174, 178, 183, 186, South Australia, 158; Western 187, 189, 191, 192, 210, 222, 252, Australia, 71—4, 160, 258; person-

261, 262, 304 nel, 3, 106, 111-3, 216; see also

388 Division of Labour names; sanctions, 73—4, 124,197, Australasian Society of Engineers,

204, 205, 215, 222, 223, 224; see 67 also unions, deregistration; see Australian Bank Officers’ Associa-

also Coal Industry Tribunal, tion, 28

Maritime Industry Commission, Australian Broadcasting Commis-

Stevedoring Industry Commis- sion, 298 sion, Commonwealth Court of Australian Capital Territory, 78 Conciliation and Arbitration, Australian Constitutional League,

Basic Wage Cases, metal trades 82

award Australian Council of Employers’

Arms, Explosives and Munition Federation (ACEP), 78, 79, 80, Workers’ Union, 94, 95, 206 81, 82, 83, 150-1, 152 Ashley, W.P., 26, 46, 111, 162, 163, Australian Council of Retailers, 78 164, 168, 170, 174, 175, 220, 262, Australian Council of Trade Unions 263, 264, 266, 275, 278, 279, 309, (ACTU): 9, 57-65, 78, 122, 128,

314 163, 182, 205, 209, 220, 266, 273,

Associated Chambers of Commerce 274; arbitration, 150, 151, 155, of Australia (ACCA), 78, 80, 81, 156, 158, 176, 237; Basic Wage

85, 150-1, 152 Case, 45, 60, 64, 131, 132, 134,

Associated Chambers of Manufac- 273, 274; changing power base, tures of Australia (ACMA), 77, 59-60; coal strike, 289~—90, 305,

78, 79, 80, 81, 88, 150, 264 306, 307, 313; Congress, 1943, Attlee government, 36; dispute 59, 61; 1945, 43, 57, 61, 126, 230;

provocation, 166—7 1947, 57,59, 60, 62, 63, 74, 147,

Attlee, C.R., 305 177; 1949, 49, 57, 59, 63, 313; Austin, L.P., 176, 301 leaders’ conservatism, 2, 57-9,

Australian Coal and Shale Em- 60, 63-5, 74, 88, 126, 137, 139, ployees’ Federation (ACSEF): 220, 319; metal trades dispute, 103, 106, 107, 109, 110, 204, 230, 133—48 passim; national strike,

231, 233, 239, 249-316 passim; 126, 137, 139, 147, 188, 239; policoverage and organization, 249, cy, 43, 44, 62; federal govern261, 266; elections, 206, 271, ment, 49, 51, 63, 64—5, 88, 126, 314-5; internal discipline, 253, 130-1, 133, 134, 136-7, 150; Re258, 264, 272; internal divisions, construction, 61-2; steel dispute,

271-2, 299-300, 307-8, 309, 106, 108-9

314, 315; leadership complexion, Australian Federated Union of 109, 222, 251, 267—70, 283, 292, Locomotive Enginemen 315; policy, 255, 258, 272—3, 276-— (AFULE), 18-19, 107, 121, 122,

7, 282; rank and file militance, 124, 156, 158, 183, 186, 189, 192, 251, 252-3, 258-9, 260, 261, 267, 203, 216, 219, 222, 303, 304 268-9, 270, 272, 279-80, 281, Australian Iron and Steel Pty Ltd 285, 286, 287, 288-90, 293, 298, (AIS), 61, 85, 90-1, 92, 97, 98, 315-6; relations with ALP, 258, 99, 100, 103, 108, 112, 113, 115,

259, 263-4, 271, 314; relations 265-7

with Joint Coal Board, 259, 260; Australian Labor Party: and unions, relations with other unions, 251, 1—3, 7, 49, 63, 64, 65, 70, 71, 72-

257-8, 265-7, 292, 304-5, 313, 74, 94, 114-5, 116, 117, 187, 266;

see also coalminers federal, 1,7, 24, 26, 58, 109, 110,

Australian Meat Industry Em- 114, 127, 130, 150, 151, 152, 159, ployees’ Union (AMIEUV), 116, 226, 227, 228, 233, 234, 236, 238,

117-24, 236 240, 244, 246-7, 255, 260, 294-5,

Index 389 312-3, 318, see also Chifley, Cur- 105, 106, 110; autocracy, 96, 319; tin, Scullin; conferences, 8, 24, 1949 coal strike, 292, 304-7, 30826, 43, 50, 101, 106, 107, 127, 9, 312; conservatism, 52, 54, 55, 187, 241; federal executive, 26, 89, 116, 137, 238, 319; differences 63, 127, 150, 274; moderate poli- with SA branch, 69; with shearcy, 36—7, 117, 1185 split, 19-20, ers, 137; independence, 9, 57; 56, 127; NSW, 19-20, 66, 89, jurisdiction and demarcation dis102-3, 104, 107, 108, 109, 110, putes, 95-6, 265-7, 304, 305, 114, 126, 128, 136, 137, 159, 177, 308-9; political influence, 66, 71, 183, 251, 255, 260, 273, 295, 298, 116, 223-4, 304, 319 299, 301, 302, 306, 308, 313, see Automobile Chamber of Commerce,

also Lang, McGirr, McKell; 138 Queensland, 64, 66, 89, 116, 117,

118, 123, 124, 162, 181, 213-4, Bacon Factory Employees’ Union,

see also Hanlon; South Australia, 123 54, 87; Tasmania, 70, 71, 159, Baddely, J.M., 266, 271, 299, 314 300, see also Cosgrove; Victoria, Ballarat, 129 27, 58, 65, 127, 136, 177, 181, Balmain, 12, 93, 95, 96 182, 183, 197, 201, 209, 213, see Balts, 51-2 also Cain; Western Australia, 71— | banking: 1945 Banking Act, 28, 31,

4, 150, 160, 300 40; Chifley’s attitude, 21, 23,

Australian Labor Party Industrial 27-9; nationalization, 23, 27-9, Groups: 52, 55, 56, 57, 64, 115, 81, 84, 182, 240, 247, 301, 311, 172, 174, 241, 242, 313, 319; pre- 312; Royal Commission (1936—7),

cursors, 95, 107, 184; NSW, 56, 20 66, 115, 183, 187, 221, 301, 314, Bankstown, 243 315; Queensland, 56, 66, 86,124, Basic Wage, 2, 38, 42, 43, 44-5, 46, 224; South Australia, 56; Victor- 47, 50, 60, 71-2, 74, 87, 106, 125, ia, 56, 64, 65, 166, 178, 179, 181, 127, 134, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139, 184, 185, 187, 189, 191, 192, 193, 146, 150, 151, 153, 174, 191, 193,

196, 204, 210, 220, 295 213, 214, 224, 237, 247, 273, 274;

Australian Metal Industries Associa- Basic Wage Cases: 1931, 130;

tion (AMIA), 78 1940-1, 10, 46, 78, 131; 1946,

Australian Railways Union: federal, 44-5, 46, 47, 87, 126, 131, 132, 190, 202, 221, 303-4; NSW, 66, 133, 134; 1949-50, 50, 60, 64, 83,

107, 202, 221, 301-4, 313; 155, 224, 247

Queensland, 116, 121, 122, 215, Bathurst, 18, 19, 21, 27 216-7, 219, 220, 224; Victoria, Beale, H., 144 69, 107, 135, 136, 140, 141, 142, Beasley, J.A., 24, 26-7, 104, 166-7,

183-204, 238 168 Australian Security Intelligence Beaurepaire, F., 87

Organisation, 195 Beazley, K.E., 160, 294

Australian Stevedoring Industry Beeby, G.S., 128

Board, 174, 175 Bell, H.H., 183, 184, 185, 186, 187,

Australian Tramway and Motor 190, 194, 195, 196, 197, 200, 201 Omnibus Employees’ Association Bentley, P., 166

(ATMOEA), 67-70, 140, 182- Beresford, M., 24

210 Beveridge, W.H., 32, 82, 247

Australian Workers’ Union(AWU): Bevin, E., 226 51, 54,55, 72, 110, 111,120,150, Binbin, D., 72 196, 223; anti-communism, 95, Bird, W., 162, 204, 208, 211

390 Division of Labour Blackburn, A.S., 158, 195, 196, building employers, 177-9

197, 198, 200, 202 buildings unions, 52, 60, 106, 176— Blackburn, D., 152, 292 80, 197, 205, see also individual Blackburn, M., 151, 152, 158 titles Blackmur, D.J., 86, 117, 120, 121, Bukowski, R.J.J., 66, 224

213, 216, 223 Bulli, 307

Blacksmith’s Society of Australasia, | Bundaberg, 222

107, 249, 290, 306 Bunnerong Power House, 102, 103, Blair Athol, 265, 299 104, 105, 108, 137, 234, 262 Blair, W., 306, 307 Bureau of Agricultural Economics, Blake, J.D., 199, 234, 238, 239, 245 47

Blakeley, A., 91, 96, 103 Bureau of Statistics, 47

Bland, H.A., 52 Burke, J.E., 128

biltzkrieg, 252 Burke, T.P., 28 Boilermakers’ Society of Australia, Burns, G., 247

186 Burton, J.W., 310

Boote, H.E., 295 Butler, K., 100 Booth, G., 295, 299, 314 Butlin, S.J., 23, 28 Bound, J.R., 300 Byrnes, P., 213 Bowles, K., 306

Bradman, D., 87 Cain, J., 27, 85, 131, 136, 138, 140, Breen, H., 28, 36 141, 143, 144, 177, 182, 187, 188, Bretton Woods, 35, 53 189, 190, 191, 192, 193, 204, 209,

Brisbane Abattoir, 117, 119, 120, 121 210, 212, 238 Brisbane Trades and Labor Council, Calwell, A.A., 24, 42, 47, 48, 238,

66, 116, 120, 121, 218, 241, 299 299, 312 Brisbane, 118, 120, 165, 202, 217, Cameron, C.R., 69

218, 219, 220, 223 Cameron, D., 31, 220, 294

Broadby, R.R., 57, 59, 67, 68, 69, Cameron, K.A., 256, 262, 275-6, 182, 183, 187, 191, 192, 193, 197, 277, 289, 306, 314

212 Cameron, R., 314

Broadmeadow, 303 Campbell, E.W., 229, 244—5 Broken Hill, 97, 258, 261, 273 Canberra Code, 253 Broken Hill Proprietary Co Ltd Canberra, 159, 242 (BHP), 80, 85, 89, 90-2,95,97— Cantor, M.E., 96, 97, 103, 108, 101, 105, 107, 108-9, 110, 111, 111-2, 115, 137, 160, 316 112, 113, 114, 115, 160, 225; as Captain’s Flat, 265 coalowner, 90, 249, 260, 265-7 Carney, J.H., 129, 141, 142, 143

Browder, E., 91 Casey, R.G., 170, 200

Brown (J. & A.) and Abermain Cashman, E., 80 Seaham Collieries Ltd, 249 Catholic Action, 110, 140, 147, 235,

Brown J.J., 69, 136, 142, 183, 184, see also Movement 185, 187, 188, 190, 191, 192,195, | Catholic Church, 8, 56, 116, 123, 228 199, 202, 204, 205, 208, 209, 238, Catholic Worker, 295

. 243 catholics, 9, 160, 193 Bruce, S.M., 5, 7 Catley, R., 36

Building Industry Congresses, 78 Cessnock, 255, 302, 307, 315 Building Workers’ Industrial Union Chalmers, J., 299 of Australia (BWIU), 149, 178- Chamber of Commerce: federal, 76,

80, 186, 196, 204, 207, 241 77, see also Associated Chambers

Index 391 of Commerce of Australia; state, Clark, C., 44, 163

76, 77, 81 Clark, D., 36, 40

Chamber of Manufactures: federal, closed shop, 169 76, 77, see also Associated Cham- Clyde Engineering Co, 176 bers of Manufactures of Australia; | Coal Authority, 253 state, 76, 77, 126, 155; NSW, 77, | Coal Commission, 252, 253

81; South Australia, 77, 86, 87; Coal Commissioner, 111, 252, 253,

Victoria, 77, 78, 81, 85, 132, 134, 256 136, 138, 139, 142, 143, 179; Coal Industry Acts 1946, 255-6,

Western Australia, 77 257, 260, 264 Chandler, J., 179 160, 249, 257, 259, 268, 270, 274, Chapple, E., 168 277-290 passim, 315, 316; no Chambers, C., 303 Coal Industry Tribunal: 3, 79, 149,

Chifley, J.B.: background, 18-21; strike orders, 260, 261, 263, 264, anglophilia, 39, 40; character, 21-— 280, 283, 284-5, 287, 293, 295,

9, 319-20; communists, 27, 110, 306 138, 166, 167, 310-11; dissem- Coal Mines Regulation Amendment

bling, 24, 31, 32, 104, 131, 138, Act 1938, 258 244, 293-4; domination of col- Coal Mining Unions’ Council leagues, 24, 25, 26—7, 28, 29; eco- (CMUCQ), 273, 274, 276, 279, 283,

nomic policy, 1-2, 26, 31-52, 88, 288, 289, 295, 306-7 89, 110, 125, 130, 132, 139, 151, Coal Reference Boards, 73, 252,

153, 193, 233, 238, 239, 240, 253, 257, 258, 284, 299, 304 244—5, 247, 310, 316, 318, 320; coal unions, 52, 306, 307; coal

fear of inflation, 15, 16, 23, 25, unions (craft), 251, 257-8, 277, 32, 38, 40, 45, 50, 101-2, 104, 279, 282, 283, 284—5, 287, 307; 132, 161, 193, 279; government’s see also separate titles powers, 1, 30, 37, 38; miners, Coalcliff, 253 248, 256, 259, 264, 266, 270,274, coalminers: 11, 55, 56, 70, 72, 73, 279, 288, 290, 291-2, 293-4, 304, 74, 190, 204, 205, 211, 222, 234;

309-10, 314, 316; private enter- absenteeism, 252, 260, 275, 278; prise, 19, 36, 61, 88, 115, 131, demarcation disputes, 106; sup150, 233, 234; Queensland railway port for meatworkers, 121, 123;

dispute, 216, 220; relationship long service leave, 260, 264, 273with public servants, 22; unions, 90 passim, 306, 308, 309, 311, 1-2, 19, 24, 27, 29, 42, 61, 62-5, 315-6; outlook and character, 89, 101-2, 103, 104, 108, 109, 250-1, 260, 267, 268—9, 280, 285, 121, 122, 125, 126, 131, 134, 135, 292, 298, 299, 305, 307; pensions 141, 148, 150, 174, 318; views on and retirement, 251, 252, 258,

arbitration, 19, 121, 126, 150, 259, 275, 276, 278, 289; postwar 151, 152, 158, 159, 160, 220, 300 aggression, 99, 131, 237, 241; child endowment, 10, 25, 39, 311 post-depression offensive, 8, 251-

Chullora, 304 2; recruitment, 51, 260; shorter

Churchill, W.S., 226, 234 hours, 102, 252, 258, 262, 273-90

Citrine, W., 58 passim, 308, 311, 315, 316; supCivil Construction Corps, 16, 53 port for steelworkers, 106, 107, Clarey, P.J., 57, 58, 60, 63, 64, 74, 108, 109, 111, 114, 237; view of 88, 108, 126, 131, 133, 134, 139, arbitration, 251, 265, 267, 281; 143, 175, 186, 209, 220, 289, 298, war effort, 11, 252-3; see also

306 ACSEF

392 Division of Labour coalmining, 86; amenities, 255, 256, . Commonwealth Bank, 32, 47, 49,

257, 259, 269, 273, 274, 279, 281, 256 315; bitter history, 250—5, 257; Commonwealth Court of Concilia-

bottleneck, 51, 248-9, 254-5, tion and Arbitration: 1, 67, 77, 256, 268, 282, 316; coal shortage, 96, 97, 122, 126, 140, 148, 162,

69, 99, 100, 101; Davidson In- 163, 168, 169, 174, 178, 185, 189, quiry, 255; disputes, 258—9, 260, 192, 193, 195, 224, 237, 244, 251,

278; 1909, 251, 298; 1916, 251; 252, 290; anti-communism, 3, 1917, 251; 1929-30, 7, 251, 271, 149, 160, 180; common rule, 10, 280, 281-2, 298; 1938, 251, 287, 152; conciliation committees, 298; 1940, 9, 252, 287, 298; 1948, 150, 151, 155; conservatism, 2, 3,

260-1, 262—4, 265-7, 293, 304, 7, 64, 79, 149, 152, 153-4, 155310; 1949 prelude, 272-90; 29, 7, 158-61; contempt of, 64, 145, 65, 159, 163, 210-12, 213, 225, 151, 152, 173, 247, 291, 296-7, 247, 256, 261, 264, 266, 267, 314, 316; margins, 46, 127, 135, 291-316; wildcat, 60, 252-3, 260, 136, 138, 141, 144, 146, 147; re261, 282; grievance procedure, sponse to pressure, 46, 69, 131, 253, 261-2, 263, 276; health and 145-6, 148; see also arbitration, safety, 250, 251, 255, 256, 258, Basic Wage Cases, 40 hours Week 260, 315, see also mechanization; Case living conditions, 255, 256, 257; Commonwealth Employment

mechanization, 255, 257, 258, Service, 48, 52 259, 260, 275, 276, 277, 278, 286, Commonwealth Housing Commis-

289-90, 309, 315, 316; sanctions, sion, 62 248, 253, 255, 257, 258, 260, 262, Commonwealth Investigation 263, 264, 266, 275, 282, 284, 286, Service, 195, 203, 208, 309-10 291, 293, 294, 298, 303, 312, 315; | Commonwealth Reconstruction

structure and output, 248-9, 253, Training Scheme, 60, 177-8

264, 316 Commonwealth Steel Co Ltd, 90, 98 coalowners, 255, 259, 260, 261, 264, . Communist Party Dissolution Bill

295, 298, 304, 316; aggression, (1950), 312 85, 90, 249, 250, 253, 261, 262, Communist Party of Australia 270; outlook, 257, 258, 259, 260, (CPA): 8, 56, 66, 85, 109, 128, 281, 282, 285, 290; run-in to 1949 153, 174, 192, 206, 208; analysis

strike, 274-90 passim, 294 of disputes, 115, 120, 147, 199,

Cockerill, F.H., 271, 307 207, 235-47 passim, 286, 319; Coghlan, W., 171, 172 attitude of arbitration judges, 3, Cold War, 2, 3, 29, 75, 149, 163, 74, 149, 160, 314; Browderism, 166, 171, 173, 174, 175, 207, 225, 91; coal strike, 267-70, 274, 286226, 227, 230, 232, 247, 255, 265, 7, 309-10; control of unions, 2,

285, 311, 313, 318, 319, 321 12, 71, 78, 79, 93, 143, 165-6,

Cole, E.A., 164 193, 198, 201, 204, 206-9, 223,

Collie, 72, 267, 292, 299~300 225-47 passim, 251, 252, 264, Combined Colliery Proprietors’ 286; criticism of ACTU, 65, 239; Association of NSW, 249, 273, delusions, 2, 117, 207, 209, 217,

293 218, 223, 226—47 passim 270, 313, 310, 315 199, 207, 230-47 passim 319;

Comerford, J., 278, 298, 308, 309, 318, 319; economism, 184, 192,

Cominform, 227, 240, 269, 286 female pay, 54, 237; influence of

Comintern, 226, 229, 230 USSR 9, 11, 12, 110, 128, 161,

Index 393 165, 205, 225, 226-7, 228, 231, Crane, W., 306 234, 252; membership, 225, 243, Cranwell, J.A., 128, 130, 133, 137, 313; proscription, 9, 11, 86, 166, 138, 139, 140, 141, 142, 143, 147, 202-3, 207, 225; raids on, 9, 291, 215, 218, 219, 222, 236, 246, 313

297; splits, 229, 231; union of- Cresswell, F., 307 ficials, 70, 71, 74, 89-90, 91, 93, Crimes Acts, 5, 63, 85, 247, 293,

118, 120, 127, 128, 142, 160, 161, 294 162, 165, 168, 171-2, 178, 184, Crisp, L.F., 23, 25-7, 28, 147 185, 188, 196, 199, 204, 230, 232, Crofts, C.A., 59, 136 242, 246, 319, see also ACSEF; Crook, W., 263, 271, 272, 296, 298,

views on ALP, 109, 110, 187, 299, 306, 307, 314, 315 192, 226, 227, 228, 233-47 Cullen, A.C., 197 passim, 248, 270-1, 286, 318; Curtin, J., 8, 15, 20, 21, 24, 25, 26, vocabulary, 85, 227, 245, 313 28, 36, 42, 91, 101, 105, 233, 234, communist plot thesis, 2, 3, 69, 72, 253; government, 11, 23, 110, 73, 74, 78, 83, 85-6, 89-90, 101, 161, 164, 252-3 102, 105, 106, 109, 110, 120,122, | customs and practices, 119, 121,

123, 125, 128, 137, 140, 143, 144, 122, 123, 255 153, 162, 164, 166, 167, 169, Czechoslovakia, 202, 217, 219, 235 171-2, 173, 181, 182, 187, 189,

191-2, 194, 195-6, 198, 200-1, d’Alpuget, B., 159, 170, 172, 173,

202, 206-9, 213-24, 225-47, 175

248-316 passim 318 Dabscheck, B., 157, 160 .

company unions, 90, 122, 123 Daley, F., 299 concentration camps, 292, 299 Darby, E.D., 171

Conciliation and Arbitration Act, Darling, H.G., 85 1904, 104; amendments, 1947,2, | Davidson, A., 225, 227, 231 62, 63, 64, 80, 137, 146, 149-61, Davidson, C.G.W., 255, 258, 259 169, 195, 244, 295, 296; 1949, 65, Davis, R., 70 71, 179; 1951, 160; 1956, 157, 160 DeBaun, A.J., 161

Connelly, R., 202 Dedman, J.J., 28, 35, 42, 46, 47, 50 external affairs power, 101 308

Constitution: defence power, 30; Deery, P., 249, 286-8, 293-4, 296,

48 Act 1946, 30, 154 Corio, 163—4 Department of Immigration and

Coombs, H.C., 28, 31, 35, 41, 47, Defence (Transitional Provisions)

Cornish, S., 41, 42 Information, 42, 47

Corser, B., 169 Department of Labour and National Cosgrove, R., 70 Service, 20, 27, 42, 44, 46, 47, 50, cost of living, 12, 38, 87, 134, 238, 52

239, 240, 243, 247, 318, 320, see Department of Munitions, 20, 53

also Chifley Department of Post War Recon-

cost-plus pricing, 12 struction, 24, 35, 40, 41, 42, 44,

Country Party: 238; coalition gov- 45, 46, 47,51, 60 ernments; federal, see Fadden, Department of Supply and Develop-

Page; Victoria, 3, 181, 182, ment, 53

195-205, 209-213; Opposition, Department of Supply and Ship-

Victoria, 212; Queensland, 216 ping, 46

Courtice, B., 50 Department of Taxation, 47 Cousland, J., 187 Department of the Navy, 53

394 Division of Labour Department of Works and Housing, —_ Electrical Trades Union of Australia

42 (ETU), 121, 123, 186, 302 Depression, (1930s), 1,5, 7, 8,51, Electrolytic Refining and Smelting 90, 116, 243, 251, 318 Ltd, 95

Deputies’ and Shotfirers’ Associa- Elliott, E.V., 109, 162, 164, 219

tion, 249, 279, 307 Employers’ Federation: state, 76;

Dethridge, G.J., 128 ACT, 78; Northern Territory, 78; Devereux, J.P., 218, 219, 222 NSW, 77; Queensland, 79, 86;

dilution of skill, 9~10, 11, 60, 129 South Australia, 77, Tasmania,

displaced persons, 51—2 78; Victoria; 77, 79, 81; Western Division of Industrial Development, Australia, 77, see also Australian

47 Council of Employers’ Federa-

Dixon, R., (AMIEU), 118, 122, 123 tions

Dixon, R., (CPA), 208, 228, 234, employers, 2—3, 5, 7, 45, 52, 66, 235, 236, 238, 239, 240, 241, 242, 75-88, 127; aggression, 7, 90, 91,

244, 245, 268, 269 114, 117, 119, 120, 121, 123, 142,

doctors, 39 133—4, 207; and federal govern-

Dougherty, T., 304 ment, 36, 41, 43, 63, 75, 79-80, Downing, R.R., 257, 314 82, 83, 84, 111, 131, 190, 264,

Drake-Brockman, E.A., 14, 67, 68, 320; bargaining tactics, 139, 14169, 131, 132, 133, 136, 138, 139, 2, 143, 147; and controls, 75, 84; 143, 144, 154, 158, 160, 189, 190, and women, 79—80; and unions,

192, 193, 194, 251, 252, 253 76, 103, 119, 129-30; and com-

Drakeford, A.S., 26 munists, 78-9, 83, 84, 85-7, 88, Duggan, J.E., 214, 216, 219 91, 179, 264, 318; and arbitration, Duggan, W.J., 58 64, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 82, 150, Dunphy, E.A., 71, 72, 73, 74, 160, 151; and human relations, 84—5;

180, 314, 316 and protection, 77; and public re-

Dunstan, A.A., 144, 205, 209, 210 lations, 76, 78, 80—3, 84, 92, 100,

Dutton, W., 285, 306 114, 120, 132-3, 282, 290, 294; divisions, 77, 79, 136, 138-9,

East Sydney, 313 164; expectations, 83—4; illegal Eastern bloc countries, 85, 198, 227, inducements, 12; management

see also individual nations prerogative, 78, 82, 89, 92, 97,

economic trends, 30-52 98-100, 114, 117, 118, 119, 120, Edwards, S.T., 163, 164 121; railways, 185, 215, 219, 223;

Eggleston, R., 160 tramways, 67-70, 184—202; see

elections, general: federal, 1922, also coalowners and individual 229; 1925, 5, 19; 1928, 7, 19; employer associations and firms 1929, 7; 1931, 19; 1934, 20; 1937, Englart, E., 219, 223; equal pay, 65, 20; 1940, 20; 1943, 36, 110; 1946, 155, 247, see also wages, women

21, 29, 127, 130, 150, 188, 235; workers 1949, 21, 27, 29, 174, 311-2, 313, Esler, J., 223 320; 1951, 21, 29; state: NSW, Essential Services Act (Victoria) 20, 137, 141, 153, 159; Queens- 1948, 63, 163, 182, 196-213, 242,

land, 141, 153; South Australia, 245

240; Tasmania, 240; Victoria,27, | Evans, W.P., 176

182, 194, 212, 240; Western Evatt Brains Trust, 159

Australia, 71, 73, 240 Evatt, H.V., 24, 26, 36, 150, 151, electoral redistribution, 311 233, 246, 305, 310, 312, 320

Index 395

Fagan, R.F., 300 Firth, G.G., 44, 45

Fair, A.E., 128, 142 Fitzgibbon, M.M., 293, 297 Fallon, C.G., 66, 116, 223, 304 Fitzpatrick, B., 36 Farmers’ and Settlers’ Association, Fitzroy, 243

77 Flanagan, A., 139, 233

Federal Labour Advisory Commit- Food Preservers’ Union, 58

tee, 49, 63, 65 Forde, F.M., 24, 169, 320

Federated Artificial Fertilisers and Foster, A.W., 135, 136, 139, 156, Chemical Workers’ Union, 94, 158, 159, 160, 161, 168, 170, 176,

95-6 179, 180, 296—7 Federated Clerks’ Union (FCU), 71, Fountain, H.A., 141, 142 120, 121, 123, 233 France, 9, 227, 247, 252

Federated Engine Drivers’ and Fire- Franco, F., 8 men’s Association of Australasia Fraser, A., 294

(FEDFA): 106, 108, 111, 116, Fremantle, 72, 166, 170 120, 121, 123, 134, 139, 140,141, fund freezing, see coalmining; sanc-

142, 149, 186, 204, 212, 249, 300, tions

306; independence, 176 Funnell, W., 47, 48

Federated Ironworkers’ Association

(FIA): 49, 52, 54, 56, 135, 160, Gair, V.C., 216, 219 206, 207, 218, 230, 232, 233, 243, Gallagher, F.H., 257, 258, 259, 260, 246, 293, 310, 312; affiliation to 261, 262—3, 264, 265, 266, 269, CPA, 246; amalgamations, 93, 94, 271, 273, 277, 278, 279, 280, 281,

95-6; arbitration, 95, 96, 97-8; 282-3, 284-5, 286, 287, 290, 295, attitude to women, 15; Balmain 300, 306, 314-5, 316 dissidents, 12, 93, 95, 96, 243; de- Galvin, J.M., 156, 157, 179 registration, 95, 96, 97-8, 102-3, _gaolings, 9, 64, 72, 159, 160, 163, 105—6, 108, 111, 112, 113-4; de- 166, 172, 174, 223, 247, 266, 271,

votion to war effort, 79, 91, 93; 291, 293, 294, 295, 296, 298, 302, finances, 55, 109, 147; metal 303, 306, 308, 311, 314, 315, 316 trades dispute, 131-47; organisa- Garden, J.S., 229 tion and history, 93-7; steel dis- Garland, T., 66, 67, 69 pute, 89-115; wages and condi- Gas Employees’ Union, 140, 141

tions, 11 Germany, 9, 11, 12

Federated Mining Mechanics’ Giblin, L.F., 31, 44, 45, 161 Association, 249, 279, 307 Glassworkers’ Union, 66 Federated Moulders’ (Metals) Glenhuntly, 194

Union of Australia, 131 Gollan, D., 16

Federated Ship Painters’ and Dock- Gollan, R., 227, 251, 267 ers’ Union of Australia, 186, 204 good conduct leave, 67 Federated Storemen and Packers’ Graham, A., 223

Union, 58, 219 Grant, G.W.S., 263, 267, 271, 272,

Ferguson, J.A. (ARU), 66, 107, 279, 280, 284, 293, 296, 299, 314 219, 221, 295, 301, 302, 303,304 Granville, 176

Ferguson, Justice J.A., 112 Graziers’ Federal Council of AustraFibrous Plasterers’ Union, 65, 127 lia, 77, 78

Field, H., 118 Green, F.C., 28

Findlay, G.A., 157 Gregory-Foster, H., 262 Fire and Accident Underwriters’ Gregson, K., 178 Association, 78 grievance procedure, 103

396 Division of Labour

Grose, H., 85 Hoskins, C., 85, 91, 92 Guyatt, J., 221 Hoskins, C., 85, 91, 92 hours of work: 8, 13, 16, 44, 67, 68,

Haas, W., 300 69, 119, 138, 150, 151, 172, 174, Hagan, J., 76 183, 186, 187, 188—202, 215; 44

Haligonian Duke, 210-12, 305 hour week, 8, 13, 161; 40 hour

Hamilton, R., 298, 309 week, 8, 43, 45, 46, 47, 49, 67,

Hancock, K.J., 148 70, 72, 87, 101-2, 103, 104, 106,

Hanlon, E.M., 66, 117, 119, 121, 125, 126, 127, 130, 137, 148, 191, 122, 123, 162, 202, 214, 215, 216, 196, 215, 234, 237, 240, 244, 252, 217, 218, 219, 220, 221, 222, 223, 273; 40 Hours Case, 104, 106,

224, 245, 246, 298 126, 127, 130, 131, 132, 136, 139,

Harrison, E.J., 144, 264 147, 188, 194; 38 hour week, 196;

Hartnell, B.W., 41 35 hour week, see coalminers; legHawke, A.R.G., 300 islation, NSW, 137, 147, 183, Hawke, R.J.L., 58 193, 301, Queensland, 147-8, 214

Hay, J.R., 82 housing, 16-17, 37, 61-2, 82, 176-

Haylen, L.C., 294—5 7

Healy, J., 159, 165, 166, 168, 172, Howard Smith Ltd, 249 173, 174, 175, 219, 222, 232, 243, © Howard, M.J., 176-7

244, 246, 293 Howard, S., 82

Healy, M., 66, 120, 218, 219, 223 Hughes, J.R., 233, 235, 236, 239,

Heffron, R.J., 20 241, 243

Henry, J.C., 236, 245 HV McKay Massey Harris Pty Ltd,

Herron, T., 279, 306 85, 135

Hewitt, J.M., 169, 173 Hytten, T., 84 Heyward, E.J.R., 41

Higgins, H.B., 127 Illawarra Trades and Labor CounHigh Court of Australia, 14, 27, 28, cil, 97, 98, 103 31, 139, 150, 151, 155, 157, 170, immigration, 37, 38, 48, 51-2, 61,

291 83,115,178

Hill, E.F., 191, 192, 199, 206, 207, Imperial Chemical Industries

208, 209 Australia Ltd, 95, 96

Hindmarsh, N., 279-80, 283, 284— — imperialism, 227, 245

5, 289, 306 income distribution, 36—7, 38, 44, Hitler, A., 227 50, 320 Hobart Trades Hall Council, 70,71, Indonesian liberation, 64; shipping

242, 300 bans, 64, 163, 173, 234

Hobart, 166 Industrial and Economic Research

Holloway, E.J., 26, 27, 42, 46, 49, Service, 83

68, 105, 115, 121, 122, 131, 133, Industrial Conciliation and Arbitra-

135, 141, 150, 220, 294 tion Amendment Acts (Queens-

Holloway, S., 212 land): 1946, 124, 216, 218, 224, Hollway, T.T., 182, 187, 189, 195, 242; 1948, 224

196, 197, 198, 199, 200, 202, 203, Industrial Law Amendment Act 204, 205, 208, 209, 210, 211, 212, (Queensland) 1948, 63, 219, 220,

220, 245, 305 223, 245

Holt, E.G., 23, 200 industrial disputes: 1, 3, 8, 10, 90,

Holt, H.H., 20, 134, 312 116; 1916-21, 1; 1917, 19, 22, 90,

Homebush, 241 108, 303; 1926-30, 1, 7, 114, 158, Horan, J.P., 175 168, 294; aborigines, 72; Adelaide

Index 397 tram, 67-70; cost of, 147; de- Katoomba, 162 marcation and jurisdiction, 95-6, Katz, F., 294 106, 111, 265—7, 305; foundries, Keane, R.V., 26 131, 132, 133, 134; Garratt, 72-3; Kearney, M., 122, 123 gas, power, 67, 134, 136, 139, Kelly, F., 66, 108 141, 142; meat, 89, 116-24, 186, Kelly, W.R., 64, 154, 156, 157, 217, 218, 235, 236, 245; metal 158, 159, 160, 161, 163, 164, 179, trades, 63, 66, 67, 125, 127, 130-— 180, 193, 266—7, 293, 296, 318

47, 153, 154, 176, 182, 183-4, Kemira Tunnel, 265-7, 304, 310 186, 188, 192, 193—4, 201, 207, Kennedy, J.A., 198 210, 214, 218, 240, 245; Queens- Kennelly, P.J., 140, 142, 191, 192,

land railways, 64, 117, 163, 172, 212 186, 202, 213-24, 242, 245, 269, Kenny, J.D., 66, 176, 295, 314 286, 301; shipping, 162—4; steel, Kent Hughes, W.S., 196, 197, 202 56, 63, 69, 89-115, 126, 147, 163, Kerr, P., 24 235, 236, 237, 245, 258, 287, 305; Kiewa, 196 transport, 67, 127, 130, 131,133, King, J.H., 293 140, 141, 142, 188-202, 243,301, King, R.A., 65, 239 304; waterfront, 131, 134, 169- Kinsella, E.P., 111, 112 74; see also coalmining, public Kirby, R.C., 157, 159, 160, 165,

opinion, Bunnerong 166, 167, 169, 170, 172, 173, 174,

Institute of Marine and Power 175, 179, 285, 314, 316

Engineers, 163—4 Kissick, T., 124, 217

Institute of Public Affairs (IPA), Knight, H., 102, 105, 111, 162

81-2 Korean War, 156 International Labour Office (ILO), kulaks, 228 101

Interstate Conference of Employers, labour market: effects of full em-

77,78 ployment, 11-12, 40-1, 67, 75,

Investment and Employment Com- 84, 115, 165

mittee, 47-52, 154 Lachberg, M., 74

Ipswich, 218, 299 Lake Macquarie, 295 ) Italy, 227 Lakes Creek, 119, 122

Land Transport Group of Unions

Jack, R.P., 256 (NSW), 107, 299, 303, 304

James, R., 152 Lang, J.T., 18, 19-20, 21, 22, 96,

253 Laurie, E.A., 206 Johnson, C., 39 Lazzarini, H.P., 42

Japan, 8, 11, 43, 161, 173, 227, 252, 102, 131, 132, 200, 295, 304, 309

Johnson, F., 199 Leichardt, 131

Joint Coal Board (JCB), 255, 257, Leigh Creek, 249, 265 259, 268, 269, 270, 273, 274-8, Leningrad, 228 280, 281, 282, 284, 286, 287,298, Lewis, Essington, 20, 21, 28, 85,

305, 309, 314, 315; disciplining 92, 101, 108, 111 workforce, 260-4; objectives, Liberal Party: 81, 238; coalition

256 governments; federal see Bruce,

Jones, C., 246 Page, Lyons, Menzies, Fadden;

Jordan, M.C., 65, 202 NSW, 161, 251; South Australia Julius, M., 219, 223 (Liberal Country League), 66; see juniors’ pay, 11, 151 also Playford; Victoria, 3, 181,

Junor, T., 183, 187 182, 195-205, 209-213, see also

398 Division of Labour Hollway; Western Australia, 74; McFarlane, S.G., 47, 48

State Opposition: NSW, 108, McGirr, J.J.G., 66, 86, 177, 193, 171; Queensland, 216; Victoria, 221, 262, 263, 265, 288, 301, 303, 27, 143, 144, 147, 191; Western 305 Australia, 73; employers, 75, 81 McHenry, P., 112, 113

Limestone (WA), 72 McKay, C., 85 Lithgow, 21, 50, 256, 313 McKell, W.J., 66, 96, 103, 104, Long Bay Gaol, 310, 316 105, 136 long service leave, see coal miners McKenna, C., 72 Lovegrove, D.D., 65, 126,220,295 McKenna, N.E., 44, 49, 150

Lowe, C., 179, 206, 207 McLaren, I., 184, 191 Lyons, J.A., 8, 19, 21, 128, 158 McLelland, D., 290

Lysaghts Bros and Co Pty Ltd, 90, McLeod, D., 72

97, 108 McPhillips, L.J., 24, 64, 159, 160, 166, 172, 174, 247, 271, 293,

Macdonald, A., 218 302

Macintyre, S., 74 meat processors, 85, 89, 117-24

Mackay, 165 media, 2, 83, 90, 94, 95, 100, 102, Macquarie: district assembly, 19, 105, 109, 111, 112, 113-4, 117,

295; federal electorate, 19 120, 122, 123, 130, 133, 140, 142,

Maitland, 303 145, 153, 165, 167, 169, 170, 173, Makin, N.J.O., 23, 24 175, 181, 183-4, 189, 196, 200,

Maloney, J.J., 299 201, 207-8, 217, 218, 220, 221, Malvern, 186, 194 222, 223, 227, 228, 238, 239, 244, Maney, L.J., 300 253, 255, 262, 264, 265, 266, 274, Mannix, D., 193 276, 287, 288-9, 291, 292, 294, manpower restrictions, 8, 10, 11, 295, 296-7, 298, 301, 305, 307, 16, 92, 98, 183, 186, 255, 258 312, 315; see also radio stations; Manpower, Directorate of, 15—16, newspapers

47,53 Melbourne, 98, 106, 127, 130, 133,

Mao Tse Tung, 228 134, 136, 139, 140, 143, 144, 163,

margins, 2, 10, 46, 47, 49, 50, 74, 166, 168, 170, 174, 190, 202, 241, 87, 127, 135, 138, 141, 145, 146- 249, 301 7, 148, 153, 154, 156, 157, 194, Melbourne and Metropolitan Tram-

212, 214~—24, 244 ways Board, 184-202

Maritime Industry Commission: 3, Melbourne Building Agreement,

79, 149, 160-4; sanctions, 161 180

maritime unions, 64, see also indi- Melbourne Club, 158

vidual titles Melbourne Trades Hall Council, 57,

Markus, A., 24, 48 58, 59, 65, 126, 135, 139, 140, Marshall Plan, 247 145, 186, 188, 189, 190, 194,

Master Builders’ Association, 178 198-9, 201, 202, 203, 204, 205,

Matthews, B.J., 216 206, 207, 209, 210, 211, 241, 295,

Maxwell, H., 187 296

May Day, 145 Melville, L.G., 44, 47

McCarthy, J., 206, 291 Menzies, R.G.: 58, 91, 94, 144, 157, McDonald, J.G.B., 182, 185, 196, 200, 294, 313; governments:

198, 203, 204, 209, 212 1939-41, 8, 9-11, 20, 21, 60,

McEwen, J., 312 149, 150, 166; 1949-66, 36, 157, McFarlan, I., 186 160, 162; opposition: banking, McFarlane, B., 36 311; communists, 9, 166, 169,

Index 399 225, 265, 288, 312; controls, 35, Murrarie, 119, 123 37; criticism of government in- Murray River, 301 dustrial policies, 104, 130, 134, Murray, R., 66 142, 143, 144, 152-3, 167, 169, Mussolini, B., 227 264, 293, 304; election policy, Muswellbrook, 292, 305, 306, 307,

130; establishment of Liberal 308, 309

Party, 81; female wages, 14;

arbitration, 152—3, 157; social National Emergency Coal Strike

security, 64 Act, 1949, 291, 292, 293, 294-5,

Merrell, C., 218 296, 314

Metal Industries Association of National Security Act 1939: 10, 30,

South Australia, 78 31, 101, 130; Regulations, 2, 3,

Metal Manufactures Ltd, 95 10, 11, 12, 13, 27, 30, 46, 69, 80, Metal Trades Employers’ Federa- 84, 91, 92, 98, 104, 106, 121, 126, tion (MTEA), 10, 12—13, 64, 77, 127, 129, 130, 132, 133, 134, 135,

78, 81, 85, 133, 134, 158 136, 137, 138, 141, 149, 150, 154,

Metal Trades Federation of Unions, 155, 161, 162, 190, 193, 233, 234,

59, 103, 129, 131, 137, 139 237, 244, 252, 258, 318 metal trades award, 11, 59-60, 77, nationalization, 62, 63, 81, 136, 177,

129, 146, 154, 155, 156, 194 255, 258, 268, 269, 270, 273, 289, metal unions, 52, 60, 92, 93, 129, see also banking

vidual titles 72 Mighell, N., 111, 252, 253, 255 Neilly, G., 315

154, 155, 214, 273, see also indi- Native Affairs Department (WA),

Miles, J.B., 228, 230, 234, 235,237, Nelson, C., 230, 251

238, 240, 244 Nelson, T., 168

Moch, J., 227 Neumann, A.J., 118, 123, 124 Monk, A.E., 57, 58, 59, 60, 63,64, © New Guard, 229 74, 87, 134, 135, 137, 139, 179, New South Wales Co-operative

212, 239, 289 Wholesale Society, 295

Mooney, G.A., 138, 139, 140, 141, New South Wales Milk Board, 304 144, 145, 146, 154, 155, 194,195, New Zealand, 168, 258, 273

196, 200, 214, 217, 301, 318 Newcastle, 90, 91, 95, 96, 98, 99,

Moore, W.M., 275 100, 101, 105, 106, 107, 10s, 114, Moran, S., 168, 172 115, 165, 174, 243, 303 Morgan Gallup Polls, 311-2 Newport, 141, 142, 186, 189, 196

Morrison, D.V., 168, 169, 171,173 newspapers and journals: Advertiser,

Morrison, P.J., 227, 229, 230 68, 69; Age, 200-1; Argus, 145,

Morrow, W., 294 193, 195, 199, 298; Australian

Morts Dock Engineering Co. Ltd., Digest, 159; Australian Law four-

133 nal, 159; Barner Daily Truth, 267;

Movement, 9, 56, 58, 70, 116, 124, Bathurst National Advocate, 19, 178, 181, 228, see also Catholic 20; Bulletin, 114, 162, 164, 172;

Action Century, 145; Common Cause,

Mt Edgar (WA), 72 263, 267, 287; Commonwealth Law

Mt Isa, 265 Reports, 159; Communist Review, Mt Keira, 265 208, 209, 233, 240; Daily Tele-

Mt Kembla, 265 graph, 247, 290; The Harbour, 83, Mundy, C.E., 142 86; Herald, 191, 298; IPA ReMunicipal Tramways Trust view, 81—2; Labor Call, 31, 197, (Adelaide), 67-9 205, 211, 212, 297; Labor News,

400 Division of Labour 94; Miner, 315; News Weekly 285, 297; maintenance workers, (Freedom), 56, 97, 110, 133, 140, 72, 140, 185; match workers, 203; 145, 186, 187—8, 192, 193, 195, meatworkers, 117-24, 241, 273;

210, 295, 296, 297, 315; Railroad, metal miners, 66, 97, 258, 261, 221; Rydges, 83, 84, 87; Smith’s 265; metalworkers, 8, 9, 11, 12, Weekly, 200; Standard Weekly, 54, 56, 64, 66, 93, 112, 126, 139, 309; Sun News Pictorial, 145; 154, 156, 182, 234, 243; muniSun, 101; Sunday Mail, 219; Syd- tions workers, 14, 95, 109; pasney Morning Herald, 102, 163, toral workers, 56, 66, 72, 214; 166, 171, 172, 212, 264; Trade police, 71, 100, 122, 196, 208, Union News, 205, 210; Tribune, 209, 211, 219, 220, 221, 223, 251, 204, 234, 240, 304; West Austra- 253, 297, 299; postal workers, 56; lian, 300; Workers’ Weekly Herald, printers, 8, 102, 103, 104, 126,

68 142; process workers, 135, 146;

Nichol, W.H., 309 rail workers, 54, 67, 70, 72, 74, Nicholls, R.W., 167, 168 107, 121-2, 127, 138, 139, 143,

Nieass, F.K., 54 182-213, 214-24, 273, 301-4; Nolan, F., 215 road transport workers, 70; rubNorthern Territory, 78 ber workers, 14; seamen, 11, 12, NSW Emergency Powers Act 1949, 55, 56, 72, 100, 106, 108, 109,

292-3 111, 149, 160-4, 196, 205, 206,

NSW Labor Council, 57, 65—6, 102, 208, 210, 211-12, 214, 296; 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 110, 121, shearers, 66, 137; ship building

139, 142, 221, 241-2, 244, 288, workers, 93; see also FIA, Bal-

302, 315 main; ship’s engineers, 163—4;

NSW Trade Union Act, 97 ship’s officers, 163; steelworkers,

NSW Wire Workers’ Union, 94 90-115, 243, 273; textile workers,

Nyland, C.T.,5 14, 49; tradesmen, 8, 9-10, 90,

93, 127, 131, 139, 140, 144, 145,

O’Brien, M., 59, 215 146, 182, 214, 218; train drivers, occupations: apprentices, 142, 143, 72-3; tramworkers, 54, 55, 67— 151; bakers, 56, 196, 203; boot- 70, 72, 127, 140, 182-213, 273; makers, 74; building workers, waitresses, 56; wharfies, 11, 55, 142, 176-80; butchers, 70, 119; 56, 70, 72, 73, 121, 123, 134, 149, cane-cutters, 66; carpenters, 74, 163, 164—75, 182, 244, 285; see 180, 196; clothing workers, 14, also individual unions 46; crane drivers, 140, 176;

domestic servants, 214; engine- O’Flaherty, S., 294 men, 106; farmers, 114,119,214; O’Halloran, M., 87 firemen, 163-4, 273; fitters, 10, O’Mara, T., 129, 131, 158, 159, 160 139, 146, 214; food processors, O’Neill, J.H., 71 14; foundry workers, 66, 131-2, O’Neill, W., 301 135, 136; gas and power workers, Operative Bakers’ Union, 196, 203 67, 102, 103, 104, 134, 136, 138, Operative Painters’ and Decorators’ 139, 140, 141, 143, 144, 186, 196, Union, 178, 199 203, 204, 211, 273; government Ormonde, J.P., 298, 309, 310 workers, 72, 273; hospital work- Orr, W., 251, 267 ers, 14, 273; journalists, 102; O’Shea, C.L., 183, 184, 185, 193,

labourers, 11, 146, 147, 223; 196, 197, 204, 208, 210 lawyers, 57, 151, 154, 156, 159, Oxley, 119

Index 401

Packer, F., 247 production drive, 11, 12, 49, 63, 87,

Page, E.C.G., 5 88, 256, 258, 276 Parker, D., 97, 98, 99, 103, 108, productivity, 42, 45, 84, 87, 167, 111, 112-3 177, 249, 262, 270, 275

Parkinson, W., 267, 271, 293, 297 public holidays, 13, 16, 150, 162,

Paterson, J.H.O., 28 168, 252, 261, 262

Paterson, F., 206, 220 public opinion, 1, 17, 38, 62, 68, 70, People’s Front, 240, 241, 242, 269 75, 80—3, 84, 86, 114, 185, 191,

Perlman, M., 151, 166, 172, 316 201, 223, 247, 253-4, 265, 267,

Permanent and Casual Wharf 270, 290, 294, 317

Labourers’ Union, 168 Purse, F., 179, 180

Perth, 72

Pilbara, 72 118 Pilkington, G., 60 Queensland Meatworks’ Companies petrol rationing, 39, 311 Queensland Meat Industry Board, Piper, H.B., 158, 160, 164, 167, Committee, 117, 119, 121, 123 168

Pirie, W., 118, 122 radio stations: 2CA, 294; 3KZ, 31; Playford, J.D., 229, 230, 231 ABC, 298 Playford, T., 66, 87, 304 Rawson, D.W., 230

Pollitt, H., 242 Re-establishment and Employment

Pope, B., 86 Act, 1945, 53

Port Kembla, 8, 90, 95, 99, 100, Redbank Meatworks, 119 102, 103, 105, 107, 111,114,115, Reed, G.S., 310

243 referendums: 130, 182; 1944, 36,

Port Waratah, 303 37, 80, 82, 84; 1946, 37, 80, 84, Porter, W.J., 142, 143 130, 150; 1948, 29, 31, 83

Portus, J.H., 67, 68 Reid, A., 23

postwar reconstruction, 37-8,61-2 retraining, 60, 61, 83, 129, 177-8

Powell, G.T., 5 Roach, E., 159, 171, 172, 173, 174, power and transport restrictions: 175, 293

NSW, 104, 108, 110, 114, 262, Robertson, P., 39 264, 266, 288, 290, 302; Queens- Robinson, L., 88 land, 122; South Australia, 163; Rockhampton, 118, 222 Victoria, 142, 163, 190-1, 205, Rosevear, J.S., 220

210; Western Australia, 73 Rosewood, 299

Power, C., 127 Ross, E., 237, 267-8, 269-70, 290, preference: ex-servicemen, 14, 37, 310 53, 60; unionists, 53, 60, 103, Ross, L., 40 120, 151-2, 157; women, 60 Ross, R.S., 267

price control, 12, 23, 30-1, 37, 38, rosters, 67, 72, 125, 183, 186, 189-

45, 46, 47, 48-9, 50, 102, 134, 202 passim, 301 135, 157, 239, 318, 320 Rowe, E.J., 129, 133, 138, 139, 141,

Prices Branch, 44, 45 142, 143, 145, 147, 194, 218, 219, Printing and Allied Trades Em- 222, 223, 232, 234, 235, 236, 237,

ployers’ Federation, 102 241, 246

Printing Industry Employees’ Rowlands, E.H., 68 Union of Australia, 102, 116 Royal Commissions: Common-

Privy Council, 311 wealth, 159, 166, 255; NSW, 159, Producers’ Advisory Council, 77 252; Tasmania, 70, 159; Victoria,

402 Division of Labour 179, 184-5, 191, 206, 207, 208, Southwell, C.M., 142, 241

297 Spanish Civil War, 8-9

Rydge, N., 81 Spender, P.C., 312

Rylands Bros (Aust) Pty Ltd, 90, St. Patrick’s Day, 220, 222, 246

100 Stalin, J.V.D., 228

state of emergency, 122, 217, see also

Sacco-Vanzetti case, 22 Essential Services Act

safety, 169, see also coal mining Stevedoring Industry Commission, Santamaria, B.A., 9, 56, 97, 110, 3,79, 149, 159, 160, 164-75

116, 187, 320 Stevens, B.S.B., 161 Scanlon, H., 271 Stewart, J., 314 Scott, T., 204 Stewarts and Lloyds (Aust) Pty Ltd, Scullin, J.H., 19, 21, 151 90 Scully, F.R., 184 Stoneham, C.P., 189, 192

Seamen’s Union of Australia(SUA), Stout, J.V., 59, 65, 179, 186, 189, 106, 107, 108, 161, 186, 203, 204, 198, 199, 205, 206, 209, 210 205, 208, 211, 218, 219, 231, 321 strike: right to, 70, 72, 263, 264,

policy, 162—3 272, 281-2, 284, 312, see also

Secondary Industries Commission, gaolings; secret ballots, 73, 86,

48, 49, 61 119, 122-3, 124, 143, 151, 152,

seniority, 43, 90, 91, 97, 98, 100, 189, 190, 197, 198, 204, 212, 215, 105, 112, 115, 118, 119, 120, 121, 224, 255, 312; use of troops, 164,

123 167, 209, 211, 248, 292, 303, 305,

Shard, A.J., 67 307, 308, 312; wildcat, 88, 187;

Sharkey, L.L., 166, 172, 227-228, see also coalminers, industrial 229, 230, 234, 237, 238, 240, 242, disputes 245, 246, 247, 268, 271, 302, 320 Stuart, M., 301 Sharpley, C., 191, 206, 207, 208, Stuart, N.F., 262, 263, 278, 289,

209, 232-3 290

Sheet Metal Workers’ Industrial Sugerman, B., 139, 159 Union of Australia, 147, 233,242 Sullivan, G.T.A., 296-7 Shell Company of Australia Ltd, Sunshine, 85, 135

219, 222 Surry Hills, 243

ship owners, 163, 166—7, 168, 169, Swift, Australian Co. Pty. Ltd., 117

170, 174 Sydney City Council, 102

Shortell, J.H., 289 Sydney Domain, 171, 172, 274, 299,

sick leave, pay, 11, 119, 150, 168, 302

170, 189, 259 Sydney, 102, 106, 107, 109, 129, Singleton, 309 168, 170, 171, 241, 242, 243, 249,

Simpson, J.B., 271, 307 130, 133, 134, 139, 142, 165, 167,

Slater, J., 235 261, 295, 297, 299, 301, 303, 310, social security, 26, 31—2, 37, 39, 44, see also NSW Labor Council 45, 50, 65, 82, 139, 247, see also

child endowment Tangney, D., 72

South Australia, 66-70, 95, 118, Tanny Morel, 299 131, 143, 158, 178, 237, 240, 242, Tasmania, 66, 70-1, 87, 136, 178,

249, 251, 304; playmander, 66; 240, 267; coalmining, 249, 292,

relative harmony, 66, 87 300

301-2, 303 70-1

South Maitland Rail Company, Tasmanian Trades Union Council,

Index 403 taxation, 7, 16, 25, 31, 32, 36-7, 38, nomic naivety, 38, 40, 125, 320;

39, 40, 44, 49, 82, 125-6, 127, elections, 86, 93, 124, 165, 168, 130, 135, 139, 234, 247, 311 179, 184, 185, 187, 193, 206-7,

Taylor, $.C., 112 208, 210, 232, 243, 271, 301, 314, Taylor, W.C., 28 315; postwar outlook, 62; rank Theodore, E.G., 19 and file aggression, 12, 40, 43, 46, Thomas Borthwick and Sons 56, 89, 93, 102, 118, 119, 123-4,

(Australasia) Ltd., 117 127, 133, 136, 138, 139, 140, 147, Thompson, A.B., 67, 87 165, 170, 176, 184, 186, 187, 188, Thomson, D., 178, 199 193, 194, 195, 215, 246, 301, 319; Thornton, E., 24, 58, 91, 92, 94-5, rank and file independence, 12, 101, 142, 230, 232, 236, 243, 244, 93, 102, 119, 137, 140, 165, 168,

246, 310 170, 176, 179, 185, 187, 188, 193,

Thornton, W., 124, 239 194, 208, 222, 232, 244, 260, 302,

Titmuss, R., 32 303; regulation of internal affairs, Tito, J.B., 228, 240 63, 65, 86, 124, 224, 318; shop Tivey, J.P., 264 delegates, stewards, 108, 109, Toowoomba, 219 163, 307, see also Parker, D., Townsville, 118, 242 Ward, F.S.; shorter hours, 101Trade Union Industrial Council 2, 103, 136; view of employers,

(WA), 73-4 89, 103, 114, 118, 119, 133; see

Trades Hall and Labor Councils, 8, also ACTU, ALP, individual 94, 103, 139, 232, 242, 243, 319, unions

see also individual centres United Graziers Association, 119 Transport Workers Act, 1928, 7 United Kingdom, 8, 12, 18, 37, 39, Transport Workers’ Union (TWU), 40, 48, 127, 142, 143, 166-7, 168,

55, 107, 123, 190, 202 200, 227, 242, 293, 299

transport unions, 107, 292, 299, United Trades and Labor Council of 303, see also individual titles South Australia, 66—7, 68, 87, Treasury, 19, 20, 21, 23, 25, 26, 32, 241

33,41, 42, 44, 45, 46, 47 USA, 12, 35, 39, 50, 84, 91, 95, 118, tripartite summit, 49, 63, 87-8 164, 227, 231, 237, 291, 316

Trotskyites, 102 USSR, 9, 10, 11, 12, 70, 79, 87, 91, Trudgett, H.W., 71 128, 163, 205, 225, 226, 228, 230, True Believers, 248 234, 247, 252, 266, 311 Turnbull, C., 298

turnover, 49 Vesteys Bros Ltd., 117

Twomey, F.P., 128 Victorian Building Trades Federation, 178 Victorian Iron Foundries Em-

unemployment, 7, 142, 251 ployees’ Union, 94 unions, 53—74; affiliation to ALP, Victorian Timber Merchants’ and 70, 116, 187, 216, 224, 246, 314; Sawmillers’ Association, 179

amalgamations, 93, 94, 95-6, Vietnam War, 8, 229 152, 178; attitude to female workers, 13-15, 53~4, 80, 154-5, 187; | wages: anomalies, 13, 80; aborigine,

attitude to immigrants, 52; shop 72; attraction, 48, 49; depression committees, 55, 78-9, 188, 204, cuts, 7, 130; drift, 157; female,

301-2; civil law immunity, 86; 10, 13-16, 53-4, 70-80, 150, donations, to ALP, 70, 73; eco- 151, 154-5, 156, 237; incentive

404 Division of Labour schemes, 7, 41, 42, 49, 63, 87-8, White, E., 200 115, 129-30, 263, 275, 276, 316; White, K., 191, 192

indexation, 10, 12, 38; over- White, W.H., 128 award, 12, 50, 87, 115; overtime, Whitington, D., 29, 200 43, 46, 72, 129, 130, 132, 133, Whyalla, 95 135, 146, 147, 170~-1, 172, 183, Williams, I., 262, 267, 271, 272, 188, 189, 194, 203, 234, 238; peg, 277, 280, 283—4, 286—7, 293, 296, 2, 3,11, 16, 24, 38, 40, 41, 44, 45, 297, 315

46-7, 48, 49, 68, 69, 104, 106, Williams, J., 173 125, 127, 129, 130, 131, 135,137, Willams, T.F., 152 138, 148, 153, 170, 190, 233, 234, Willis, A.C., 253 259, 318, 320; penalty rates and Wilson, A., 302 allowances, 11, 67, 125, 136,140, Wilson, R., 44 141, 150—1, 156, 162, 170, 179, Wise, F.J.S., 72, 73 183, 185, 187, 189, 190, 191,192, Wollongong, 307 193, 213, 214, 218, 222, 224, 259, women workers, 10, 13, 53—4, 60,

301; prosperity loading, 43; real, 187, see also wages, Women’s

13, 38; war loading, 10-11, 43, Employment Board, unions 119; war risk bonus, 110, 161, Women’s Employment Board 162, see also Basic Wage, margins (WEB), 14-15, 79-80, 149, 155,

Walker, K.F., 166 156

Wallwork, W.J., 300 Wonthaggi, 190, 204, 211, 212, 256,

Wangarella, 162 273, 276, 280, 281, 289, 305

Warburton, A.E., 256 Woodhouse, D., 178

Ward, E.J., 15, 28, 80, 101, 115, Woods, H., 278, 298, 309, 315 220, 238, 294, 305, 308, 310,313 Woomera, 63

Ward, F.S., 108 workers’ compensation, 57, 159,

Waters, W.J., 36 259 Waterside Workers’ Federation World Federation of Trade Unions, (WWE): 49, 116, 121, 122, 124, 59 149, 159, 160, 190—1; 196, 211, World War I, 5, 83, 93, 100, 118, 218, 219, 222, 231, 232, 244, 293, 317 312; structure and outlook, 164-6 World War II, 9-17, 20, 32, 40, 43,

Watt, A., 268 78-9, 79-80, 90, 91, 94, 117, Watts, R., 24, 31, 37 118, 128, 149, 161-2, 164, 167, Webb, W., 118 214, 216, 225, 252-5, 317

Wells, H., 103, 108, 110, 233,239 Wright, T., 58, 104, 233, 234, 241Western Australia, 66, 71—4, 142, 2, 243 158, 160, 182, 240, 249, 299 wrongful dismissal, 119, 124, see

Western Australian Council of also Parker, D.

Trade Unions, 73—4 Wyatt, $., 299

Wheeler, F.H., 41, 44, 47, 50 White Paper on full employment, Yallourn, 140, 142, 190, 249, 265

35, 38, 41~3, 51, 61, 62, 126 Yugoslavia, 240