Union Defeat
The strike was defeated when the Marine Officers returned to work on the employers terms in November 1890, with Illawarra coal miners being the last workers to return to work in January 1891. A shortage of money to sustain the strike and a plentiful supply of scabs eventually defeated the strikers. Wage cuts were introduced for everyone in the maritime industry, with wage cuts of up to 30 per cent. The defeat of the Maritime Strike in 1890 and the 1891 Australian shearers' strike, laid the framework for the Australian labour movement entry into parliamentary politics. The New South Wales Labour Defence Committee summed up the unions mood in the statement "the time has come when trade unionists must use the parliamentary machine that in the past has used them".
Read more about this topic: 1890 Australian Maritime Dispute
Famous quotes containing the words union and/or defeat:
“The rage for road building is beneficent for America, where vast distance is so main a consideration in our domestic politics and trade, inasmuch as the great political promise of the invention is to hold the Union staunch, whose days already seem numbered by the mere inconvenience of transporting representatives, judges and officers across such tedious distances of land and water.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“In the attempt to defeat death man has been inevitably obliged to defeat life, for the two are inextricably related. Life moves on to death, and to deny one is to deny the other.”
—Henry Miller (1891–1980)