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Australian labour movement

The Australia labour movement reaches back to the 19th century and has a long tradition of organised unions of workers. Currently, the most influential branch of the labour union movement are the registered trade unions affiliated to the Australian Council of Trade Unions. This has not always been the case.

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Early history of Australian labour unions

Craft unions in Australia began in the early 19th century as craft associations of highly skilled urban workers who sought to combine to increase their wages and lower their hours.

As the craft union movement broadened, less skilled and rural workers began to organise. When a large number of sheep shearers in Queensland struck against poor conditions and wages that were being lowered, the Queensland police responded with violence and broke up the early craft union movement in the 1880s. As a result many in the labour movement sought a political solution and attempted to dominate parliaments using the manhood sufferage and the emerging Australian Labor Party.

Growth of the trade and industrial unions

At the beginning of the 20th century the union movement was in disarray across Australia. Only a few tough craft unions had survived. The majority of workers were ununionised. A variety of skilled organisers turned this around, and achieved remarkably high union membership density rates by 1914.

The threats of wild cat industrial action on a national level convinced the Federal Parliament to adopt a system of compulsory registration of unions, and compulsory arbitration in disputes. This system came into place in 1906 and dictated the terrain of industrial relations conflicts and unionism until the 1990s.

In part this was caused by two new ideas of unionism: trade unionism and industrial unionism. Trade unionists sought to organise all people engaged in the same trade on job sites. Rather than simply organising the ditch diggers into one craft union and the dirt movers into another craft union, trade unionists sought to organise all people who moved earth into one union.

Industrial unionism went one step further, claiming that all workers on one worksite, diggers, plasterers, engine drivers, cleaners, caterers, engineers, accountants and clerks should belong to one union, as part of a "construction industry." Industrial unionists sought to organise all workers into One big union which could then conduct a strike across the entire society and peacefully usher in socialism.

At the time there was no real conflict or division between the trade and industrial union mentality. Many supporters of the ALP in the Trades and Labour Councils were radical, militant and supported socialism. Both ideas of unionism shared the idea of organising the unskilled to win against the bosses.

The chief proponent of industrial unionism in Australia was the Industrial Workers of the World, which actively sought out conflicts with management. The IWW also acted on a political plane, opposing boyhood conscription and the first world war.

The Australian labour union movement united against opposition to conscription and the first world war.

At the end of the first world war in Australia there were a number of major industrial and political actions which threatened the stability of society. In Queensland counter-revolutionary and racist riots broke out in the red flag riots . In New South Wales the IWW was declared an illegal organisation due to alleged forgery and arson.

The Communist Party of Australia was formed in this moment by a group of Trades Hall radicals, the members of the illegal IWW, and members of earlier socialist organisations in Australia.

Strikes in this period were common place, and remained threatening to the Commonwealth government until 1926 and the passage of the Dog-collar act.

Depression and attacks on unions

After the Dog-collar act was passed, the Australian union movement sought to protect itself by forming the Australian Council of Trade Unions. By this point the idea of trade unionism had won out over industrial unionism. This was in part encouraged by the Industrial courts who freely gave registration to small, shop and trade specific unions. While the Communist Party of Australia would always argue for industrial unions, the idea of industrial unions mouldered until the 1960s, and only received support from the ACTU and ALP in the 1980s.

The dog-collar act was used to break up strong unions, in forestry and in dock-working. These unions were perceived to be revolutionary, or at least militant. At the same time the fragmented trade unions sought to maintain member conditions in an environment of massive unemployment. For instance, rates of male unemployment in the industrial city of Newcastle never dropped below 20% throughout the 1920s. When the depression hit, formal unemployment rates rose above 30%

The trade union response to unemployment was not inspiring. Before the Depression some strong trade unions would provide welfare for unemployed members, and seek jobs for them. The depression rendered this system useless where it existed at all. (Union welfare primarily existed in seasonal work with militant unions, like dock-working. It was precisely these unions that were attacked by the dog-collar act).

In response to the depression the remains of the IWW set up a union for the unemployed. This idea was quickly taken up by both the CPA and the ALP who both established associations (not organised as unions of workers) for the unemployed. The militance of unemployed workers who identified with the CPA or ALP, and the spirit of universal unionism which remained from the IWW, changed these movements of the unemployed into effective unions. The unemployed unions attacked local councils, and occasionally landlords, in order to win conditions. Infamously, a series of CPA inspired riots occurred against evictions in Newtown, Bankstown , Newcastle and Wollongong . The unemployed movements did not win significant employment, payment or condition victories for the unemployed workers. No future union of the unemployed would ever match the achievements of the unemployed unions of the 1930s.

Second World War

The second world war created a significant feeling of sympathy for the Soviet Union amongst Australian workers, and the CPA attempted to take advantage of this by formenting strikes in coal mines in 1947. This attempt to seize control of the union movement failed.

Last updated: 08-16-2005 04:01:51