The 1929 Timber Workers strike was a labour dispute in Australia caused by Judge Lukin of the Arbitration Court handing down an industrial award decision on 23 December 1928 to reduce the wages and increase the hours for 20,000 timber workers from a 44-hour week to a 48-hour week. It was the first strike in Australia after the onset of the Great Depression.
An initial response by workers at mass meetings on 3 January in Melbourne, Sydney and Adelaide was to refuse to work the four hours extra stipulated by the Lukin award. This then precipitated the employers applying to the court that a strike existed. The penalties of the Arbitration Amendment Act, enacted in 1928, were then invoked.
The dispute widened with carters and crane drivers striking in solidarity. A special conference of the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) on 7 February 1929 agreed to extend the strike to a general movement; to boycott the Federal Industrial Court; and for the conduct of the strike to be managed by the ACTU Disputes Committee.
On 25 February, Justice Lukin ordered a secret ballot of the timber workers in Victoria and New South Wales. This was the first attempt to enforce a secret ballot in an industrial dispute. On 1 March Lukin imposed a fine of 1000 on the Timber Workers Union, followed by a fine of 50 on Jack Holloway, Secretary of Melbourne Trades Hall Council. A protest meeting outside the Sydney Trades Hall on 25 March was attended by 25,000 trade unionists. At this meeting 3000 strikers publicly burnt their ballot papers. The crowd then marched to Hyde Park where an effigy of Justice Lukin was burnt.
The secret ballot was largely boycotted by the workers. When the votes that were cast were counted they were 5000 to 700 against acceptance of the award in New South Wales and Victoria.
The strike was marked by a high degree of union solidarity, with pickets placed to deter scabs. Women played a particularly active role in the dispute holding weekly meetings, attending picket lines and collecting money. Several women were prosecuted and sent to gaol for collecting money for the strikers. There was considerable community and union support mobilised for the strikers, which enabled them to survive on strike for so long.
After five months the strike came to an end on 24 June on the basis of a 48 hour week, but with an independent inquiry to be appointed into the financial condition of the industry.
At the end of July seven union leaders, including Jock Garden, the Secretary of the Labor Council of New South Wales, the Secretary of the Timber Workers Union, and the Chairman of the ACTU disputes Committee were charged with "unlawful conspiracy by violence and threats of violence" to prevent timber workers from working. A jury subsequently acquitted all those charged.
Famous quotes containing the words timber, workers and/or strike:
“The very timber and boards and shingles of which our houses are made grew but yesterday in a wilderness where the Indian still hunts and the moose runs wild.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“In former times and in less complex societies, children could find their way into the adult world by watching workers and perhaps giving them a hand; by lingering at the general store long enough to chat with, and overhear conversations of, adults...; by sharing and participating in the tasks of family and community that were necessary to survival. They were in, and of, the adult world while yet sensing themselves apart as children.”
—Dorothy H. Cohen (20th century)
“The illimitable, silent, never-resting thing called Time, rolling, rushing on, swift, silent, like an all-embracing ocean- tide, on which we and all the universe swim like exhalations, like apparitions which are, and then are not: this is forever very literally a miracle; a thing to strike us dumb, for we have no word to speak about it.”
—Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881)