Causes
The miners' federation was heavily influenced at the time by the Communist Party of Australia (CPA), and the strike is widely seen as the CPA applying Cold War Soviet Union Cominform policy in challenging Labor reformism, and promoting a class conflict to promote communist leadership of the working class struggle, at the expense of the Labor Party. The strike was seen as a continuation of the industrial confrontation in the 1948 Queensland Railway strike.
The miners' demands had been lodged over the preceding two years and had included a 35-hour week, a 30-shilling increase in wages, and the inclusion of long service leave as a normal condition of employment. They were reasonably modest demands given the dangerous working environment and poor working conditions. There is some evidence that Ben Chifley was secretly prepared to concede all demands but the CPA, for its own political reasons, directed that an offer from Chifley be rejected.
Read more about this topic: 1949 Australian Coal Strike