5.
In the trenches
Having fatally wounded Medibank, Fraser and his supporters gained immensely in confidence. Even so there were many on both sides of the class divide who recognised there had still been no decisive test of strength. During the Constitutional Crisis, and again over Medibank, there had been short political strikes and much agitation, but in both cases a real confrontation had been headed off by the ALP leaders and the union officials. Union militants felt neither they nor their opponents had really been tested. Perhaps political strikes were hard to sustain, but what would happen if an entrenched, well organised group of workers took on the bosses or the government in a traditional economic “stoush”?
Over the following year or so, two traditionally strong groups of workers made the attempt. However both the Fairfax printers in Sydney and the Latrobe Valley power workers were to learn that major economic struggles were also political, and that they were harder to win in the new industrial climate. They were so comprehensively defeated that many observers concluded their strikes had been more or less unwinnable. Leonie Sandercock, for example, wrote that the Latrobe Valley dispute “demonstrated the dangers inherent in an isolated action...in which those directly concerned lacked the industrial strength to win their demands but were unable to call on other unions for the measure of support which might have ensured their success.” Was it really so hopeless? Or could both strikes could have been won with different strike organisation, politics and leadership?
Showdown at Fairfax
The 1970s brought a technological revolution to the newspaper industry, with Australian trends following those overseas. New techniques had already restored profitability to the US newspaper industry, and Australian firms such as Fairfax were anxious to follow their lead. The company's printing workers were naturally concerned that the changes might jeopardise their jobs. After some exchanges before the Arbitration Commission during 1976, the Printing and Kindred Industries Union (PKIU) concluded that despite some vague assurances from Fairfax management, there was a real threat to employment. The union had some clear grounds for concern, given that a company booklet entitled Automation Plan stated: “PKIU employees in redundancy areas will be invited to apply for transfer to new duties created or to other vacancies in the company provided they are, in the opinion of the company, competent to be retrained.” (Emphasis added.)” This was hardly a firm guarantee of job security.
The Fairfax printing workers began to demand better guarantees, but found the company unwilling to provide them. PKIU State Secretary Frank Kelly complained that “we've had 14 meetings with management and been faced with the repudiation of existing agreements which were 18 months old.” He said Fairfax had said it would need 300 fewer printers and “we know what that means”. A fight would be required.
Fortunately, by August 1976 management was facing more than the PKIU. A Combined Unions Committee had been established at Fairfax, bringing together not only the printers and the traditionally militant metal workers, but a number of other unions including carpenters. In the interest of unity, the PKIU allowed itself to be under-represented on the committee. While it accounted for some 1100 out of 1500 printing workers, it had only three people on the CUC: two workers and one official. The six other unions were represented by one worker and one official each.
The printers' job organisation was strong and steeped in tradition. Delegates existed in all sections, and the quaintly named Father of the Chapel was free to do union work at any time, making him virtually a full-time officer. The formation of the CUC followed an important change in the Chapel leadership in July, when the old, conservative leadership of Leo Sommer had been replaced by a militant team. The new Chapel Father was a thoughtful, left-leaning man named Don Paget, his deputy a spirited young activist named Ian Joliffe. From August onwards the new rank and file leaders began preparing for a showdown, gradually building up commitment and unity in a series of mass meetings, go-slows and short stoppages.
The company also began to prepare, knowing it could count on a large number of non-union “staff” maintained beyond normal production needs. In addition, the journalists were willing to work during a strike. In earlier years, journalists had fought together with the printers more than once, taking joint strike action and publishing their own newspapers, but in the 1970s management had convinced the Australian Journalists' Association that they would get most if not all of the work on the new equipment -- and conversely that if the printers won, journalists' jobs might suffer. Offers of solidarity by the blue collar unions if journalists were sacked failed to win them over. Advertising staff, represented by the conservative Federated Clerks' Union, were likewise prepared to work during strikes.
Following some minor stoppages in September and October, Fairfax management decided to take the offensive during one walk-out and secured an order from Justice Cahill of the NSW Industrial Commission, instructing the unions to desist from striking. The company then announced that on their return to work, PKIU members would have to handle work done by staff during the strike. They refused and began organising mass picketing. What had started as a one-day stoppage now became an indefinite strike for the unions' log of claims.
The claims were for a 35 hour week to result from reduced workloads as new technology was introduced, a company guarantee that no redundancies would occur as a result of technological change, payment of Medibank levies by the company, and a $20 rise. While the media made much of the other three claims, declaring at every opportunity that they were outside the indexation guidelines, the strikers' attention was riveted on the call for job security. The company insisted its ambiguous statements satisfied this demand, and put the union's alleged obstinacy down to the irresponsibility of a disruptive minority, occasionally hinting at connections between Don Paget and the Communist Party.
At the outset few of the unionists expected a really prolonged dispute. Militants told me that had anyone proposed an eight-week stoppage in October it would have been overwhelmingly rejected. Ian Joliffe joked that initially, “I said we'd last about a week.” But once underway the strike gained momentum.
The mass pickets, held daily between 10 am and 1 pm in an attempt to disrupt distribution of the mass circulation Sun, became the heart of the strike. Picket lines are normally carried by a minority, and by conventional standards the roll-up outside the Fairfax building was usually quite respectable. At its height, more than 300 workers were present while others were elsewhere engaged in raising money or organising solidarity. The gatherings provided a rallying point on a daily basis, with an opportunity for discussion of issues and tactics. On the other hand, as the Fairfax workers gradually began to realise, this would be an exceptionally difficult dispute to win.
The strike organisation was not entirely adequate to the task. The CUC leaders had an organised base in the rank and file, but it was too thin; they had links in the wider labour movement, but these were underdeveloped compared to the magnitude of the task they would face; they had considerable political nous, but still they placed too much faith in union officials and in the State Labor government.
A picket committee elected from amongst volunteers turned out to have little idea what to do, and a new committee had to be assembled on the spot. Even then, the picket line seemed only to be effective when union officials or Chapel leaders were present. When they had to be somewhere else, workers often hung about the front of the building idly, waiting for lunch and scarcely harassing strike breakers who came in and out. Even at crucial moments, the picket line could be indecisive. For example, the strikers periodically rocked delivery vehicles back and forth, but the effect was purely theatrical. Had a dozen people been organised to tip over one or two delivery vans, the picketing workers could have gained a psychological advantage; as it was, the initiative on the street gradually shifted into the hands of the company and the police.
The Combined Unions Committee seemed to be in constant session, its members increasingly overworked. Not only did it have to leave the picket line leaderless far too often, but there were important tasks it never addressed. For example, a few wives of strikers came down to join them outside the Fairfax building in Jones Street, but although at one meeting a printer insisted they needed “a street full of wives”, nothing was ever done to organise them. Don Paget later conceded it would have been valuable, but said the CUC lacked an experienced person to do it.
The picket line was also the focus for solidarity action from other workers and radical students, who swelled the numbers and while they were at it got a firm grasp of the issues, enabling them to take the arguments back to their workplaces or to nearby Sydney University. In addition, delegates from the CUC toured industry. Printers who had previously taken a dim view of militant watersiders found themselves on the wharves getting a rousing reception. The Fairfax metal workers, trading on their union contacts and organisation, raised money by visiting factories. PKIU Chapels at newspapers throughout NSW and in Melbourne also raised many thousands of dollars. By the end of the struggle $114,000 had been collected, hardly a fortune, but enough for the CUC to pay up to $65 a week to strikers who were actively involved in the strike.
When they visited workplaces the Fairfax strikers took along copies of their strike paper The Fair Facts, of which four issues appeared with a total distribution of hundreds of thousands, one issue being called the Sin in parody of the the Sun. As a result there was a slow but steady growth in support for the Fairfax workers. It was a good start, but it was not to be enough to win this dispute.
Uncertain solidarity
On 27 October Sir Warwick Fairfax told his Annual Meeting:
We shall fight it to the finish, and we do it in defence of the press itself, of the Industrial Commission, and of all the citizens of this country.
On the following day, postal workers escalated the struggle to a new level by placing a total ban on mail to the Fairfax newspapers -- an anonymous editorial punster called it a case of “black mail”. The CUC had requested this ban by the postal union APTU. At the same time, members of the telecommunications union ATEA banned repairs to phones and teleprinters. Earlier, printers at The Land newspaper had stopped work over the transfer of printing material to the Fairfax plant, since it would be handled by non-union labour. The solidarity actions, and the mail ban in particular, made the struggle a national issue and stung the federal Liberals into responding.
On 3 November, Supreme Court Justice Taylor ordered the APTU to lift its mail ban. At that stage 28,600 items were being held, including 3,500 intended for the Sun's Abba Fan Club. Next day Liberal backbencher Billy Wentworth told federal parliament that the strikers were using “strong arm operations...to hold the community to ransom.” If this situation continued, he said, Australia could become a “totalitarian dictatorship. It's a rehearsal for revolution.” Though Wentworth was a buffoon, his jibe showed how political the dispute had become. The strikers were up against politicians as well as the Fairfax management.
The unions defied the court order, leaving the next move up to Malcolm Fraser. Milton Stevens, State manager of Australia Post, urged the government to keep cool and told Fairfax, in response to their persistent public demands, that if he personally handed over their mail, “I would cause a riot.” But the politicians were determined to intervene. On the 11 November, federal Cabinet authorised minister Eric Robinson to suspend workers if they refused to lift the ban; the following day, Australia Post management stood down four employees. This was a major test for the APTU. Management was terrified the union would respond by stopping mail distribution on a wider scale but the union's federal leader, George Slater, who was also a Postal Commissioner, signalled that this was not on the cards. He told ABC radio:
I advised the NSW branch that if members were suspended or dismissed they should remain at work -- and not be placed in a position by Malcolm Fraser where the people of NSW are going to be deprived of their mail service.
The seemingly defiant rhetoric was really a signal that the dispute would not be widened -- indeed the suspended employees would work for nothing to ensure the mail got through. The strikers' federal union officials were working against them as surely as was Eric Robinson. Encouraged by Slater's statement, management suspended six more postal workers over the next few days.
During this same week the Combined Unions Committee at Fairfax had a visit from the NSW APTU leaders, who told the CUC in no uncertain terms that the ban must be lifted. To defend the suspended workers would require a national strike, for which Slater had no enthusiasm. In any case, it was likely the postal workers themselves would vote to lift the ban. The CUC had relied on the APTU leadership not only to slap on the ban, but to explain it to their rank and file. This turned out to be a grave error. No meetings had been held at the Redfern Mail Exchange. Circulars explaining the issue, produced by the CUC, were still sitting in the union office when the Redfern posties finally met on 15 November.
At that meeting the officials arrived with a face-saving “request” from the Fairfax unions to lift the ban. While this saved them from losing a formal vote, they did not escape a backlash from the membership. Militants and leftists were well represented at Redfern but they were on the defensive that day, as one right winger after another rose to attack militant trade unionism and solidarity actions. The left was reduced to making an elementary defence of basic trade union principles. At a time when the Fairfax workers and their allies needed to develop a higher level of political awareness in the labour movement about the nature of the struggle, they were in fact pushed backwards. Later the APTU officials had to face the media with red faces. When challenged by ABC radio about his failure to consult members earlier about the ban, the union's State president Alex Saint replied lamely:
Well, that is correct. But … where the livelihood of trade union members who are on strike is threatened, then sometimes you have to take quick action without reference to the members. We have done it in the past, we have been chastised for it, and we take the chastisement.
The excuses were transparent. The APTU officials had had well over a fortnight to explain the issues to their members. The CUC's mistake lay in relying on them to do so, rather than establishing direct links with militants at Redfern, which would not have been at all difficult. Their failure to build these links ensured that their greatest single source of industrial leverage was not only squandered, but was transformed into a propaganda victory for the employers.
Meanwhile the strikers were taking something of a battering on the picket line. Initially, the police had been rather restrained, even though the picketers rocked trucks from side to side. Sometimes they marched along lines of vehicles, harassing the drivers, and on one occasion a cop was obliged to climb in with a frightened driver and comfort him. As it became clear the picket line was having an effect, however, the police grew more aggressive. Their change in attitude seemed to coincide with a charge by Liberal leader Eric Willis that Neville Wran had instructed police not to prosecute picketers “when they commit such offences as assault, theft, offensive behaviour...and lighting fires in public places.” When Wran failed to defend the rights of union picketers, the police apparently took it as encouragement to crack down.
One of the more effective picket line tactics involved the use of loudhailers to harass strikebreakers, who were informed by the relentless voice of Ian Joliffe that they were “nothing but a foul scab, the lowest form of life, the foul scrapings of the human barrel.” By mid-November several additional loudhailers had appeared, and Editorial Manager Graeme Wilkinson found himself surrounded one day by four unionists dinning “scab!” into his ears as he directed cars into the loading bays. A Sydney Morning Herald editorial virtually ordered the police to act and they hastened to do so, banning loudhailers and prohibiting use of the word “scab”. This became a test case.
The printing workers, though flummoxed at first, soon decided to force the issue. One hundred and fifty pickets marched in a circle chanting the word in unison. The police looked sheepish, and were able to make only one arrest. The picketers began singing “Scabs are working at the Herald“ to the tune of Solidarity Forever, insolent grins on their faces. They then held another meeting, flushed with victory. At this stage the union officials could have defied the ban on loudhailers, and rank and filers called repeatedly for someone to do it, but the officials were too timid and the rank and file too disorganised to take the initiative. In itself a minor issue, still this highlighted a weakness in the strike: if the officials wavered, the militants were not capable of independent action. In fact, their position weakened as the strike went on, partly because of growing police repression.
Some arrests involved students, as the authorities played the “outside agitator” card. The CUC boldly told the media they supported the students. More important in their impact were the arrests of unionists, because the militants were singled out and, once arrested, were reluctant to return to the picket line. As the numbers of arrested activists grew, there was an increasing vacuum of leadership in Jones Street. By the final weeks of the dispute, the picket line had deteriorated. The CUC tried morale-building exercises, such as a demonstration outside the company's Hunter Street offices, but the trend was irreversible. Demoralisation on the picket line, the heart of the strike, translated itself into discouragement among the general body of unionists.
As the strikers weakened, NSW TLC secretary John Ducker appeared on the scene. The CUC had anticipated involving the TLC in final negotiations, but Ducker's role was to be much greater than they wished. When he contacted management in early December, the bosses asked to see him alone. Knowing the strikers would never accept this, he insisted that officials from each union go along, but no rank and filers were allowed to attend even if they were the day-to-day leaders of the dispute. The CUC was hardly pleased, and a crowd of strikers assembled at the Fairfax building when Ducker's delegation arrived, yelling “no sell-outs!”
Ducker couldn't end the dispute, but he could sway the union officials. In exchange for a company offer to withdraw deregistration proceedings (initiated by the employers precisely to create a bargaining chip), the officials agreed to raise the idea of a return to work with the CUC. Accounts differed on this agreement: while Fairfax claimed PKIU secretary Frank Kelly had agreed to recommend a return to work, Kelly more or less denied it later in a waffly speech. However it is likely Ducker believed at this stage that the dispute was under control.
He was mistaken. The CUC angrily rejected any return to work. Its recommendation to stay out was carried at the next mass meeting by a margin of three or four to one. However the vote was rather closer than the ten-to-one margin at a previous mass meeting the fortnight before, and for the first time a back-to-work movement appeared, with some 60 workers organised to sit in front of the microphones and cheer for right wing speakers. One of these complained that he saw “the company getting stronger and stronger, and us getting hungrier and hungrier. I can see new technology coming in, and we are not going to get a chance to learn that new technology.” It was now mid-December, and like other unionists, he saw Christmas looming. It is not easy to sustain a strike over the Australian summer holidays.
Ducker prepared to intervene again. He knew that Kelly and most other officials in the CUC were wavering, plus he had a new angle: the mass meeting had called for a total union black ban on Fairfax, something only the Labor Council could officially impose. Ducker used this to bring himself into the centre of the dispute.
He could be confident that morale was still weakening. Led by former Chapel Father Leo Sommer, a group that had played no role on the picket line suddenly appeared with a petition demanding a return to work, and arguments were underway behind the scenes. Ducker set out to manipulate the demoralisation. He wrote letters to the unions still working at Fairfax, knowing that these would show no interest in black bans, then took a stack of discouraging replies to the next mass meeting on 16 December. He also had one minor concession to point to. The company's commitments on job security had originally applied only to employees hired before a certain date, but Fairfax now agreed to extend them to all employees. It was small potatoes, but Ducker reckoned the demoralised workers would seize on it as a rationalisation for ending the strike.
He told the meeting that a total black ban was “just not on”. The other unions would not participate, and it would be undemocratic to force them. There were “not a lot of people rushing to get into a dispute seven days before Christmas.” The concession on job security was an “important victory to be recognised and built on, and shoved down the throat of every boss.” Frank Kelly added to the gloom: Ducker had done a wonderful job and got all that he could get for the workers. The settlement Kelly had rejected eight days earlier was now portrayed as a major achievement.
Faced with the collapse of their officials and Ducker's manoeuvres, the printing workers lost heart. Militants were jeered for suggesting the strike could still be won, and the vote to end it was overwhelming. Gloomy CUC members met briefly then went off to negotiate a return to work.
Over the following weeks, their spirits lifted. Don Paget remarked that “we didn't gain what we hoped, but the company didn't gain anything at all. They spent millions to break us, but our organisation is as strong as ever.” And in fact, the CUC did seem to enjoy a greater prestige at Fairfax than before the strike. The workers' view of the world was also greatly changed. They had become used to mixing with radical students and to meeting other unionists with different politics. Ernie Fairbrother, who had collected money on the wharves, told one mass meeting: “A lot of us ... used to talk about the wharfies as stirrers and commos. Now I see things differently.”
Still, their defeat was undeniable. They had not budged the company, despite strong union organisation and a long strike. To win would have required a better understanding of the vacillating, relatively conservative nature of full time union officials, and stronger organisation by the militants to counteract it. It would probably also have required more daring tactics, such as an occupation of the building to stop production. There had been a brief occupation of sorts a year earlier, when unionists had been declared “on strike” by management but had refused to go home. However the CUC did not attempt to build on that experience.
The employers' tenacity came as an unnerving shock to unionists grown used to easier victories during the prosperous postwar years. In the new climate of high unemployment and low profits, with an aggressively anti-union government in Canberra, employers were harder to beat. Something resembling a “rehearsal for revolution” was in fact required: stronger and more political organisation by rank and file workers, across union lines. Victorian power workers were also to learn this the hard way.
The Latrobe Valley strike
By early 1977 the Fraser Government seemed to have won its initial battles fairly easily, and ironically some observers suggested this might cause it a few headaches. After 18 months of austerity under the Liberals, the economy was still performing badly. Without some major industrial dispute to serve as a scapegoat, it might be hard for Fraser to avoid shouldering some of the blame and consequently, the National Times suggested, “the Government may be looking for a test of strength with the unions by April or May next year.”
They needn't have worried; the unions were proving resilient. In the middle of the year the conservatives had several disputes to choose from. Twenty Transport Workers' Union members were jailed in Fremantle after picketing a Golden Fleece terminal, and the TWU threatened a national stoppage. Pilots' strikes grounded the major domestic airlines, and mail drivers walked off the job in Melbourne. In early August, the postal workers held a national 24 hour strike, as did Melbourne's transport unions -- in fact Victoria was once again emerging as the main centre of industrial militancy. On 4 August, The Age reported strikes in pubs, the Gas and Fuel Corporation, Telecom and the State's high schools.
Occasionally the papers mentioned a small dispute in the Latrobe Valley east of Melbourne, where maintenance workers with the State Electricity Commission (SEC) were seeking wage parity with their NSW equivalents, but it was not until September or October that the public -- and the strikers -- began to realise that Victoria's Liberal Premier Rupert Hamer had chosen the SEC for the crucial industrial confrontation of the year. It was the Victorian government who led the attack on the unions, though the Federal Government stuck its oar in wherever possible. One of Premier Hamer's objectives was to distract attention from scandals over land sales. Hamer, however, played the role of a relative moderate in the dispute compared to hardliners in his cabinet who welcomed a long bitter conflict as a means of thoroughly crushing militancy in the SEC.
The origins of the dispute went back to 1972 when the SEC joined the State Incremental Payments Scheme, and the Commission's maintenance workers lost a “special payment”. This payment was absorbed into a State-wide overaward, and while the maintenance workers gained a net pay rise, they lost ground relative to other public employees. By 1977 they reckoned they were $27.50 behind their rightful wage level, and this was the “real” demand behind their $40 “ambit” claim.
In March 1977 the Central Gippsland Trades and Labour Council (CGTLC) served an 11 point log of claims on the SEC on behalf of its maintenance workers. The key components were a $40 rise and a 35 hour week. They also sought increased overtime payments and meal allowances, a holiday for Easter Tuesday and increases in penalty rates. They argued that electricity commission workers in other States, particularly NSW, were earning $15-20 more. In addition, union surveys showed the SEC workers had fallen well behind plumbers at the State Gas and Fuel Corporation and metal tradesmen elsewhere in Victoria. They were also angry at being paid significantly less than maintenance workers employed by private contractors, who were doing the same work right alongside them. Finally, the unions argued productivity: in 1967, generating capacity had been 0.143 megawatts per employee, but by 1976 the figure had risen to 0.255.
The State Government took an intransigent line. It was aware that the SEC had managed to divide its workforce by giving preferential treatment to white collar technicians (members of the Municipal Officers Association -- MOA) and to coal-dredge operators (members of the Federated Engine Drivers and Firemen's Association -- FEDFA). These unions stood largely aloof throughout the strike. Consequently, the SEC management was instructed to give no ground. Its industrial advocate challenged numerous details in the union claim, but the crucial sticking point was the litany trade unionists had been hearing for nearly two years, that no wage claims could be allowed outside the indexation guidelines.
In the dispute's early months, the initiative remained with the shop stewards. When the SEC told them that only the union officials in Melbourne could make claims for a new State Award, the stewards ignored the argument. Angered by management intransigence, they called a mass meeting in Morwell on 15 June, at which 2300 maintenance workers voted to impose overtime and availability bans.
June was also the month when Acting Premier Lindsay Thompson first hinted that the SEC maintenance workers' campaign would become a political football, when he suggested it might be a case for the Industrial Relations Bureau which was being established at the time. Showing a rare command of the industrial relations cliche, Thomson called on the power workers to “accept the umpire's decision” after arbitration, warning that he would be “standing up for the people of Victoria” if they didn't, because “Communists, left-wingers and anarchists” were trying to “put this country out of business” by “holding the country to ransom”, and something must be done “before the unions wreck Australia”. Thomson denied he was union-bashing. ETU State secretary Charlie Faure retorted that “we don't take much notice of what Mr Thompson says”, but this was a mistake, for the government meant business.
Meanwhile the conflict escalated between the SEC and the unions, with another mass meeting at Morwell Oval voting to strike for a week. A week later the workers voted to remain out until Commissioner Vosti heard the ETU's claim on 23 August. Management remained confident that the power stations were in good shape, however, and Vosti decided the hearing would not proceed until the men returned to work. They were persuaded to do so, but not for long. The Commission met on the 24th, but then adjourned. Feeling cheated, about 1000 workers were back on strike within 48 hours; Charlie Faure said they had “just drifted off the job” in protest at the delays. Strikes continued into the following month, and in mid-September they spread briefly to Melbourne, where a mass meeting at Dallas Brooks Hall endorsed a 48-hour stoppage. For the first time, too, SEC management conceded that power generation levels were deteriorating, meaning shortages were likely.
When the last days of September finally brought power restrictions, the strike came to dominate life in Melbourne almost as much as in the Valley itself. Industry had virtually no power so around 500,000 workers were stood down, tram and train services were cut in half, heating and lighting were radically reduced. You could only watch television from 3 to 11 pm, and at one point TV coverage of the Australian Rules Grand Final was even in doubt -- though given the small amount of power drawn by television sets, this may have been a deliberate government tactic to turn public opinion against the strikers.
All sides became more aggressive. Commissioner Vosti “ordered” the unions to hold a meeting within 48 hours, which the unions promptly announced was impossible -- the shop stewards must meet first. There were picket line clashes at Yallourn. The press grew more rabid, with The Age one day appealing to the rank and file to rebel against the “belligerence and intransigence” of the shop stewards, and the next day describing the rank and file themselves as “cynical and callous”.
The Age also warned that “if the trade union movement will not act to curb this madness then the community, through its elected governments, will have to take emergency measures to defend itself.” The paper seemed to know Hamer's intentions, for on that same day the Premier threatened to declare a State of Emergency, using the Essential Services Act which provided for fines and jailing of unionists. His tone was similar to the editorial:
It's time for responsible unionists to take over. I include the Trades Hall Council, which so far has stood aside and allowed the dispute to be conducted by shop stewards in the Latrobe Valley.
It was an unusual line of argument for Hamer, who like all conservative politicians normally blamed union officials for dragging reluctant members into strikes. Now he was demanding that Trades Hall intervene to stifle the most democratically run strike in years. Not that the Trades Hall officials were really averse to trying. They did want the strike ended, but they knew that the government did not; hence both State ALP leader Frank Wilkes and Trades Hall secretary Ken Stone found themselves making curious criticisms of the Premier. Wilkes said Hamer “should have waited until today's [mass] meeting before saying anything about invoking the Essential Services Act.” (Thereafter it would apparently be all right.) Stone similarly said Hamer's threats were “provocative and ill-timed”. He feared they would only strengthen the strikers' resolve, and so it proved when a Yallourn mass meeting voted by 2000 to 30 to stay out till substantial progress was made. The Government then responded by rushing through amendments to the Essential Services Act to tailor it to the power strike, as well as considering moves to deregister the unions.
Although there was talk of the government sending in troops, the power workers were by no means cowed. They pointed out that only one army unit was capable of operating a power station -- a unit made up of SEC maintenance workers. George Wragg told the media that “if we had to we could take to the hills -- there's 10,000 square miles of country round here,” adding that Hamer would get nowhere fining unionists because they didn't have $2000 to pay the fines. “They have not got 2000 cents. It would be like trying to get blood out of a stone...I can't see them taking 2300 of us away to jail.” FEDFA secretary Stan Williams warned that punitive action against the maintenance workers or their unions would bring his organisation into the fray. This last point was the crucial one.
If the SEC workers were better prepared to confront the repressive forces of the state than those at Fairfax, this had less to do with the local landscape than with political traditions. Victorian unionists had led the fight to release Clarrie O'Shea only eight years earlier. If a similar fight were needed this time, a layer of militants state-wide could be relied on to respond. Knowing this, the government was obliged to tread cautiously. Unfortunately, the failure of the union leaders to actively mobilise the wider community of militants in any way during the whole dispute contributed to this layer's demoralisation and long term decline.
The main consequence of Hamer's action was that Justice (Sir John) Moore intervened to announce a Full Bench would hear the dispute. Hamer promptly deferred use of the Act to allow hearings to proceed, but the Full Bench offered the strikers no satisfaction whatsoever. It declared that their demands for “money in the hand” before a return to work would contravene the Commission's wage principles, that the indexation guidelines were inviolate, and that existing offers by the SEC should be accepted. By this time the power workers were growing increasingly angry and ignored suggestions from Halfpenny that they return to work, raising the spectre of confrontation -- then at the critical moment Bob Hawke entered stage right to tell a delegation of shop stewards that “he could fix it”:
He would get the Trades Hall Council and the rest of the union movement on side with them. Hamer would come to the party. He intimated he was on good terms with Sir John Moore and that a way out would be found. They would get an anomalies case together. It would work. If they went back he could virtually assure them of something to take back to the Valley.
Hawke insisted that widespread standdowns would turn other workers against the strikers. A majority of the stewards reluctantly agreed to recommend a return to work, and on 13 October a mass meeting reluctantly complied, despite resistance from the militants who thought an anomalies case would achieve little. Meanwhile the ACTU rushed to prepare a new case based on anomalies within the SEC. The case wasn't very coherent, but Hawke apparently expected the Full Bench to allow token wage rises now that his own prestige was on the line. The Full Bench, however, declared bluntly that “on the material put before us, we are unable to find any grounds which would justify granting the unions' claim.”
The embarassed ACTU leader responded with a display of rage which, whether genuine or synthetic, was his only means of retaining credibility with the SEC workers. The decision, ranted Hawke, was “totally absurd”. Even if the claim was incoherent, “those bastards” the Commissioners were paid “enough bloody money” to settle the dispute with a compromise.
The Government was delighted with the decision, which it saw as a green light allowing it to take deregistration action against four unions as well as threatening 2300 striking workers with dismissal. The SEC began advertising for non-union labour, but it soon became clear they had over-reached themselves. The MOA and FEDFA branches in the Valley announced they would stop work if strike breakers were used. Said local MOA secretary Doug Gregory: “What the SEC is trying to do is gather scab labour. We won't tolerate this.”
Bob Hawke, keen to repair his image, warned that scabbing would be “totally opposed by the trade union movement”, while John Halfpenny refused to rule out a general strike, and Hamer's demands that the Trades Hall Council should “take control” of the dispute also backfired. The Council had avoided meeting for weeks, citing a trip to Sydney for the ACTU Congress, the Show Day holiday and...power restrictions due to the strike! This allowed Ken Stone to dodge any responsibility, but it also left time for pro-strike sentiment to build up throughout the Victorian union movement.
When the Council finally assembled on 20 October the left had mobilised. Pat Clancy moved to support the strikers' “fully justified” claims. Ken Stone managed to water down the motion and block calls for financial assistance, but it was clear that the union mood was hardening. Meanwhile in the Valley, Sam Armstrong announced plans for anti-eviction and anti-repossession squads to keep landlords and finance companies from the door. In the face of this response the government again backed away from confrontation. The SEC deferred any sackings until Monday, 24 October; they were then deferred again.
Appeals for strikebreakers had flopped in any case. After announcing plans on 18 October to bring bus loads of them to the Valley, the SEC could only say a day later that “several” people had applied for jobs. The Melbourne Herald reported that two hours after the employment office opened, exactly two had applied, with one then backing out. The printers' union announced it would ban SEC ads seeking strike-breakers.
Had Hawke, the THC or the left union leaders wanted to win the dispute, now was the time. The strikers were still solid, though suffering great financial hardship; government attacks on them had angered unionists across Victoria and even interstate; the MOA and FEDFA would probably have followed a lead from Halfpenny, or at least from Hawke or the THC, and no one doubted they had the muscle to decide the issue. In fact, according to the Latrobe Valley Express, “had the FEDFA members supported the strike it would have been over in one day, or a few at the worst...Victoria would have been plunged into darkness and brought to a standstill.”
The trouble was that the union officials wished only to get back to arbitration with the greatest possible speed. Seizing on a Full Bench suggestion that a “review of work and pay within the SEC” might resolve “relativity problems”, Bob Hawke asked for a hearing before Commissioner Mansini. By the following Monday he had arranged a work value inquiry, convincing a majority of the shop stewards to go along with it.
On the picket line
While arbitration dragged on, the strikers were entangled in the fight of their lives. More than once they returned to work, hoping this would bring a settlement, only to find that management seized the opportunity to make crucial repairs while giving no ground on the issues. When they were on strike, they also faced assaults on their picket lines. On 27 September, after breakdowns had radically reduced the movement of coal by rail, six SEC trucks raced from the Yallourn open cut mine to the briquette factory, then returned to find their way blocked by picketers, who halted five of them by sitting down on the road. After ten minutes of argument the police arrived and cleared a way for the trucks.
Later in the evening the strikers booed and jeered as another convoy was escorted through. The following day a further 20 trucks made the trip, despite a barrage of rocks and eggs thrown by picketers and nails placed on the road. After being ordered to stop throwing rocks, some of the unionists stole onto SEC land to splash paint over the windscreen of one of the trucks.
The problem lay with the Transport Workers Union officials, who had no enthusiasm for the strike, and with the Yallourn branch of that union, who usually drove buses but had been drafted as truck drivers for this exercise. They were used after the Morwell branch of the TWU voted unanimously not to move the coal. Five days later, the Morwell TWU also voted to dissociate themselves from the Yallourn branch, declaring: “To those members who have been conveying coal by road, we say this: it's on your conscience, not ours.” TWU organiser Aub Reeve, who sought to overturn the Morwell decision, was declared a “non-person” after the picket line was breached. The events were such an embarrassment for the union that by the end of the week, its State secretary Jim Davis had travelled to the Valley and the Yallourn drivers had agreed to stop crossing the lines, ostensibly because it was too dangerous.
The maintenance workers and their families showed great tenacity. On 30 September Bruce Ferguson was greeted with cheers at Morwell oval when he told a mass meeting, “I've been out seven bloody weeks and I'm not prepared to go back with nothing.” By this time the prolonged dispute was bringing hardship to the Valley, but the strikers and their supporters in the local community were sustained by a deeply rooted solidarity.
One Lee Martin told the press he had only been working with the SEC for five days when the strike began; he had not even had time to join the union. He had just completed 18 months on the dole, and now had just one week's pay to sustain him through the long dispute, yet Martin promptly signed up with the AMWU, and he and his wife slammed the SEC and the government. Said Helma Martin: “The SEC has been asking for trouble in the Valley for a long, long time. Now they have got it, and we are not going to back down without getting what we want.” Local Labor MP Derek Amos said that “people in Melbourne don't understand the sense of solidarity which operates in an isolated industrial community like the Valley. They're like a people who feel they're at war.”
While the union fighting fund depended mainly on donations from outside the Valley, local people also dug deep. The Latrobe Valley Express reported that one anonymous man had donated more than $1000 -- his entire wages during the strike -- and that the maintenance workers themselves were donating money for the most needy when the bucket went around at mass meetings. It was hard to discern in these ragged trousered philanthropists the people Hamer had charged with a “complete lack of humanity”.
The strikers' wives were solid in support, despite attempts to turn them against the union. From the comfort of Melbourne's affluent suburb of Malvern, one Pauline Mitchell sent a letter to the Latrobe Valley Express: “Women of Morwell, where are you? Stand up and be heard!...I would not let my husband cause this foolishness.” But such calls had little impact, not because all the wives had spontaneously favoured the strike, but because of organising by pro-union forces and because Government statements had polarised the situation. One local woman later recalled arguing with some wives who disliked the strike. “Three days later, Hamer made this bloody lousy statement about it. And...one of them came flying down to me and she said, `we've got to do something. I don't want this strike but they're not going to use my man like that'.”
“They are not only supporting their men, they are urging them to stay out,” remarked Derek Amos. “All the wives I have spoken to don't want their husbands to go back to work without some real concessions.” The media, which would doubtless have seized on any counter-examples, were forced to confirm his observations. An Age headline in early October: “Strikers' Wife: I'll Beg Before Surrender” was matched by a later Herald report that wives of unionists would meet at the home of Maggie Carnduff. All the women were “right behind the men,” said Mrs Carnduff, “make no mistake about that.” In the anti-union Sunday Observer, columnist Jill Fraser suggested the wives be allowed to vote on the dispute, but carefully stopped short of discussing how they would vote, for the answer was all too obvious.
But no unity is impregnable. Every long dispute eventually brings a debate over whether it can be won and whether to persist. Employer claims that a strike is “pointless” or will “achieve nothing” are designed to exploit these rifts, and incipient back-to-work movements arise among those workers who see lost pay and other hardships as outweighing any likely benefits. It took six or seven weeks for such a debate to break out in the Latrobe Valley dispute.
The maintenance men remained very united partly because their solidarity was that of a somewhat isolated community, while most of the people urging them to return to work came from outside the Valley -- a point illustrated when ABC television's Peter Couchman staged a live debate in Morwell. No conservative politicians were game to appear. When Couchman himself, perhaps seeking to fill the vacuum, suggested the maintenance workers were “motivated by self-interest”, the barrage of boos “out-decibelled the Grand Final”. The unionists were not always much better disposed towards their own Melbourne-based officials; they frequently booed Halfpenny at mass meetings, while cheering stewards' chairman Sam Armstrong.
By the seventh week, however, the strikers were becoming increasingly aware that powerful forces were ranged against them, and that their local dispute was assuming State-wide and even national importance. A bread-and-butter claim had become a political cause célèbre. To win it would require widespread solidarity outside the Valley, built through political as well as economic struggle.
Unfortunately, the SEC workers were poorly prepared for these tasks. They had a stronger rank and file organisation than the Fairfax workers, but were geographically isolated and were somewhat provincial in their outlook. Lacking direct links to militants in Melbourne, they found themselves largely dependent on the very union officials they so distrusted. They also lacked anything resembling a political strategy -- oddly, it might seem, given Sam Armstrong's membership of the Communist Party. This meant they were saddled by default with their officials' political approach, which was dominated by fears that Fraser would make political capital out of the strike. Just at the point where it was essential to escalate the struggle, therefore, the initiative passed to forces which were increasingly keen to end it.
Setting a course for defeat
John Halfpenny and Sam Armstrong were key figures in the debate. While they represented different constituencies, as Communist Party members they also had much in common, and Armstrong was Halfpenny's most likely ally among the strikers. The shop stewards' chairman, so often portrayed as a fire breathing radical, was really a moderate. “About 25 years ago,” commented the Australian in an interview, “he would have described himself as an industrial militant, but the world has changed since then, he claims.”
Earlier in the dispute Armstrong, along with all the other shop stewards, had differed with Halfpenny and with the Communist Party leaders in his desire to pursue the struggle to a successful conclusion. But by early October the stewards were under increasing pressure. Halfpenny told them that they lacked support outside the Valley, and found an ideal tactic for wearing down their resolve: the apparently democratic practice of taking them to attend arbitration hearings, which detached them from their rank and file base while they spent hours travelling to Melbourne -- not to promote solidarity but to sit through tedious hearings.
A minority among the activists were more fortunate. George Wragg, Max Strong and Luke Van Der Meulen got involved in speaking to worker and student meetings in Melbourne, where they discovered that the strike enjoyed considerable public sympathy. Wragg, for example, got a friendly reception from wharfies at Seatainer Terminal and tramway workers at Preston Depot, while Strong and Van Der Meulen received substantial support at the West Gate Bridge construction site, at BHP Hastings, and on two campuses. Buoyed by their experiences, these three opposed a return to work at all times. Two other unionists toured Newcastle and Wollongong, including one who had previously voted to return to work; the two sent a telegram to the final mass meeting saying support was excellent and the strike should continue. Had all the activists been offered such experiences, the strike might have built up rather than run down.
Instead the stewards' mood shifted gradually towards capitulation. As early as 30 September, when militants moved to extend the strike indefinitely, Sam Armstrong was counselling a more cautious course (though it was dressed up in pugnacious boxing jargon): “Don't throw the initiative away and turn the tables by putting us into a fixed position. Allow us to go back into the ring and fight the fifteenth round, because that's where we are.”
Throughout October, Armstrong and Halfpenny pushed the stewards towards ending the struggle. By the time Hawke and Moore had arranged a work-value inquiry, they were in a position to win the vote inside the shop stewards' committee, and when the maintenance men met at Yallourn on 25 October the mood was bleak. Sam Armstrong told them a return to work was “the only way at this particular time,” because to box on would provoke “the biggest political fight Victoria has faced in its history”.
Here he was addressing an absolutely decisive question. Halfpenny and Armstrong had always talked about keeping politics out of the campaign, with the latter telling a meeting in October: “We are not prepared to be a political football in this dispute. We began this strike seeking only comparable wages and conditions. Politics were not involved.” Of course such rhetoric could not keep politics out of the struggle, but it could help ensure that at the final turning point the prospect of a political battle frightened most of the rank and file.
Opposing the return to work, George Wragg warned they would gain little from the work value inquiry. “If you accept this resolution,” he argued, “you'll be where you were before the strike started, and it's where you'll be at the end of the work value case. We're already bloodied by the battle. It's better to have the confrontation now.” By this time, however, it was too late for such arguments. Though many shared Wragg's scepticism, most strikers were now too discouraged to continue, and it was tempting to hope that arbitration might still yield results. Moreover the Communist Party paper Tribune was dismissive of suggestions to the contrary:
Some commentators see the return to work in Victoria's power dispute as a total defeat for the workers. Some suggest that arbitration as the final umpire is the kiss of defeat.
Tribune thought the “commentators” were stupid, but unfortunately they were proved correct, for without the pressure of industrial action, the Commission had no incentive to meet the workers' claims. The decision four months later gave them pitiful rises of $2 to $5, with some 30 percent getting nothing at all. This result prompted no re-thinking among the union leaders; the AMWU's Max Ogden drew only trivial lessons from it, and he went so far as to describe Bob Hawke's role as “constructive and positive”. Ogden thought little more could have been achieved, mainly because public support would have declined due to growing hardship:
It was generally discussed that if it went much longer, the public position would have changed. It was amazing how well it was maintained as it was. People simply can't cop it forever.
Of course, popular support may decline if you don't mobilise it, but that was never systematically tried. While Halfpenny had declared that “all the Australian trade union movement must come to the aid of these power workers,” the AMWU organisation outside the Valley had done relatively little to put the sentiment into practice. Yet the potential was considerable. The Latrobe Valley Express reported that outside support was growing at the end of the strike:
A heck of a lot of money is beginning to pour into the SEC maintenance workers' distress fund ...Unionists elsewhere now see this “small strike” by 2300 workers in a new perspective. If they win, everyone else will.
The Express went on to quote Dave Pollock, shop stewards' chairman at GMH Elizabeth (South Australia), who had been stood down because of the power strike, as saying: “We are looking to the strikers to carry through because it means a lot to all workers in Australia.”
The AMWU officials and the Communist Party were particularly fearful that the strike might damage the ALP electorally, but here too their judgement was astray. Fraser was careful not to announce an election until just after the strike ended. Had he seen the dispute as electorally useful, surely he would have gone to the polls earlier. And a Victorian by-election at Greensborough on 5 November also suggested that if anything, the strike had damaged the Liberals. After the Liberal candidate declared it a “hot issue” in the campaign, he suffered a 19 percent swing and Labor's Pauline Toner won the seat.
Contrary to Leonie Sandercock's view, the dispute was by no means unwinnable. The strikers were united until almost the very end, they enjoyed immense sympathy among Victorian trade unionists generally, and the Greensborough by-election showed they were not politically vulnerable. To win the strike, however, would have required a different kind of organisation and leadership: one which set out to build direct links to workers outside the Valley, to mobilise those workers in solidarity action, and to face the political issues and educate workers about them, rather than running away. These tasks in turn called for a revolutionary or at least a militant political organisation of working class activists -- something the Communist Party sometimes still claimed to be, but unfortunately was not. Those forces in the Valley and in Melbourne who did fight for such a perspective were too weak to influence events.
The Liberals led by Fraser and Hamer had won a sort of trifecta: defeats for the unions in the sphere of politics and social programs were now succeeded by defeats in the purely economic sphere, in strikes that had been watched with great interest by large numbers of workers. Under such circumstances, working class militants had a hard time maintaining any sort of morale. In the aftermath of the Latrobe Valley strike, levels of disputation in Victoria, which had been the highest in the country, plunged dramatically.
Industrial militancy was not to revive until later in the decade. When it did, it sealed Malcolm Fraser's fate, a drama which occupies the concluding chapters of this history. Before discussing that we turn in the next chapters to a consideration of the social movements of the time, the distinctive conflicts in Joh Bjelke Petersen's Queensland, and some debates on the Australian left.