Australian Labour Movement - Second World War and After

Second World War and After

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 industrial agitation after the war in the 1948 Queensland Railway strike and the 1949 Australian coal strike (the first time the military were used in peacetime to break a strike), and disputes on the waterfront and in the meat industry. This attempt to seize control of the union movement failed and was the start of the decline in communist leadership and influence in the labour movement. At the same time, agitation by Catholic organisations such as the National Civic Council (or Groupers) started setting up of Industrial Groups within unions to counter the influence of communists.

The 1950s and 1960s period was generally one of industrial peace, dictated by preference agreements and closed shops. This period saw union membership keep pace with the growth of the workforce.

The post war years saw the Australian labour movement support Indigenous Australians in their fight for human rights, cultural rights and native title, through supporting the 1946 Pilbara strike, The Gurindji Strike at Wave Hill in the Northern Territory, equal pay for aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders, and support for the Noonkanbah people in their land rights dispute with the Western Australian Government over mining companies disturbing sacred sites.

During the 1960s a number of militant unions became locked in contests with governments and employers. Governments relied on penal powers to keep union activists in line. The general strike over Clarrie O'Shea's imprisonment broke the government law and ushered in a period of rising union demands. These demands existed in a context of a general social radicalisation under Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser.

The militant wave was broken by the Australian Labor Party's Wages and Prices Accord in 1984 under Labor Prime Minister Bob Hawke. After 1984 industrial militance declined, and a newly amalgamated trade union movement presided over falls in real wages. In the 1985 Mudginberri dispute and the 1986 Dollar Sweets dispute employer organisations such as the National Farmers Federation successfully backed legal sanctions to defeat union industrial action. The 1989 Australian pilots' strike saw the Federal Labor Government using RAAF planes and pilots to break industrial action by the Australian Federation of Air Pilots, taken outside the Wages and Prices accord.

In the late 1980s Australia experienced a push for microeconomic reform encompassing deregulation of a number of previously regulated markets, including the labour market. This was first pursued by the Keating Government in 1991, through the Enterprise Bargaining Agreements introduced into Australia under the Prices and Incomes Accord in 1991 (Mark VII). They later became the centrepiece of the Australian industrial relations system when the Accord was next revised in 1993 (Mark VIII). This ended nearly a century of centralised wage-fixing based industrial relations.

With the 1996 election of the Federal Government under Prime Minister John Howard increasing pressure was brought to bear on industrial relations reforms to reduce the industrial power of Australian trade unions. This has included the introduction of Australian Workplace Agreements — individual contractual agreements on pay and conditions between an employee and employer — and the reduction of minimum conditions contained in Industrial awards. One of the first targets of the conservative Government was to undermine the power of the Maritime Union of Australia, through breaking its closed shop on waterfront labour. The 1998 Australian waterfront dispute resulted with stevedoring firm, Patrick Corporation under CEO Chris Corrigan, attempting to sack its entire waterfront workforce of 1400 people through company restructuring. The Australian Council of Trade Unions condemned the sacking as a gross act of collusion between Patrick, the Government, and the National Farmers Federation, and with the threat of legal action against the Government and Patrick Corporation, a settlement was negotiated to allow some reform with the MUA retaining its effective closed shop.

The last quarter of the 20th century has seen the proportion of employees in the workforce belonging to a union falling from 51 per cent in 1976 to about 23 per cent in 2005.