Charles Fahey

Unskilled male labour and the beginnings of labour market regulation, Victoria 1901–1914

This paper examines the position of unskilled male labourers in Victoria from 1900 to 1914. It looks at the demand for unskilled work in the Edwardian economy and examines the diversity of workplaces in which the unskilled were found. Unskilled labourers had a precarious hold on employment and the paper examines their continual search for work. Work itself was varied in the physical demands made on men, and few labouring jobs were without acquired skills. Employers recognised this and they differentiated between the wages they paid to labourers. In the years before the war labourers won significant wage rises through wages boards, arbitration and direct action.

Resurrecting the Sunshine Harvester Works: Re-presenting and Reinterpreting the Experience of Industrial Work in Twentieth-Century Australia

The Sunshine Harvester Works, occupying the same site from 1906 until 1987, was unquestionably one of the more significant workplaces in the history of industrial relations in twentieth-century Aus...

'We Have To Train Men From Labourers': the Agricultural Implement Trade 1918-1945

Between the wars, H. V. McKays Sunshine Harvester Works was one of the more modern production plants in Australia. In a recent article in the Journal of Industrial Relations, Sandra Cockfield argues that industrial tribunals had little influence at McKays, leaving management strategy unaltered and workers without influence or protection. The firm was able to de-skill the workforce using a minute division of labour and the mechanisation of production and replace men, first with cheap juvenile labour and later with women and girls. Using the records of the Sunshine Harvester Works and other implement firms, this paper argues that the success of Sunshine management was not so complete. Although decisions of industrial tribunals largely favoured Sunshines management, modern production methods were not introduced without concessions to employees. In return for intense work routines, Sunshine paid its employees higher wages than were available in other implement firms, and to keep expensive plant in continual production it provided its employees with long-term employment. Despite claims to the arbitration courts that they required unskilled men, the firm frequently recruited those with experience and invested considerable effort and resources in training tradesmen. Women were only introduced in bolt and core-making. Throughout the period the Sunshine management to refused to offer formal recognition to unions. This did not stop employees from developing a collective ethos, and in the late 1930s a shopfloor unionism emerged at Sunshine.