How a 100-year-old union got its start
On this day in 1915 the Amalgamated Miners Association became a federal union — the Australasian Coal and Shale Employees’ Federation. NEALE TOWART looks back at the earliest years of what is now the Mining and Energy division of the CFMEU.
THE Mineworkers won their first struggle for a 44-hour week in 1915–16 — at the very same time when workers’ rights in Broken Hill were under attack.
The European War had seen employment in the mines drop, because Germany was the major buyer of zinc and lead. Just a few years earlier, in 1909, the people of Broken Hill had seen employers ignoring the arbitration courts, locking workers out of the BHP sites for six months in one of the fiercest disputes in Australian history.
Eventually the workers returned, but the issues they were fighting for were not forgotten: wages, and particularly the health of underground miners working with dust, was in the forefront of the unionists’ minds when a new agreement was being fought for in 1915.
The unions had learnt a lot from the lessons of 1909 and a new generation stepped forward to make sure the struggle was a winning one. As well as the dust issue, the 1915–1916 dispute focussed on the underground miners’ refusal to work on Saturday afternoon, thus reducing their hours from 48 to 44.
Mass unemployment makes negotiations tough
The loss of European markets saw 9000 jobs lost in Broken Hill at the beginning of the war. Relief work on a railway line to Broken Hill, and on a water supply scheme, helped keep people in town for the hoped-for re-opening of the mine.
According to Edgar Ross workers stormed the Town Hall. An unemployed movement was very militant and active, fighting against things such as evictions when former mineworkers couldn’t pay the rent.
Women fought for and won the right to accompany husbands sent to work on the Condobolin end of the railway line.
The mine owners saw the expiration of the industrial agreement in mid-1915 as a chance to force the workers to accept lower conditions. At first this seemed to work, with the Barrier Amalgamated Miners Association members agreeing with the bosses.
The Port Pirie men this time raised their voices against the agreement and shamed the Barrier men into requesting a conference with the mine managers.
The Arbitration Court, under Justice Higgins, was involved in the negotiations over several months, but things reached a peak in September when the AMA voted (just) to stop working on Saturday afternoon.
Soon after, this vote was overturned at a mass meeting. The underground workers met separately and continued the strike.
A man called Percy Brookfield, an underground miner since around 1911, came to the forefront of the fight.
He had personally seen the toll lung disease had taken on his own family members. He had helped men too who had been overcome with fumes or injured in rock falls following explosions. All these issues all coalesced in 1915.
The Eight Hour march
The Eight Hour march in October 1915 saw issues come to a head. Many miners held placards stating simply “If you want a 44-hour week TAKE it”.
The issue was also at play in other mines and with other unions. AWU members at Gympie had achieved it and town employers in other centres such as Cloncurry and Mount Morgan won a 44-hour week.
Higgins asked the men to return to work pending a decision. But the rank and file were staying out, whatever the union and state officials said.
A strike committee was formed from all the AMA in January 1916, following the men’s refusal to work and the companies’ subsequent refusal to let them return to their work on Monday.
Union leader Mark Considine said the workers in different shifts and jobs had their differences, but the sacking of the underground men made these differences a thing of the past: “the union had decided…to take control of the struggle…It was now a question of the mining companies versus the people of the Barrier.”
Story continues below.
10 milestones in a 100-year journey
1. 1921 — Miners Federation members in Broken Hill won the world’s first 35-hour week and first industrial diseases compensation scheme, after an 18 month strike.
2. 1941 — Coal mineworkers became the first blue collar workers to win a pension and retirement at age 60.
3. 1949 — The first long service leave scheme for blue-collar workers was also won by Australian coal miners after the National Coal Strike.
4. 1950s — After a dust safety campaign led by the Miners Federation, Australia became the first country in the world to rid its coal industry of the deadly Black Lung dust disease that killed thousands and inflicted great suffering on many more.
5. 1975 — The Miners Federation took over the Nymboida Colliery after its owners walked away owing huge amounts in lost entitlements to workers. The union operated the colliery successfully for the next five years and was granted a replacement lease when the mine closed. Nymboida remains the most successful take-over of an enterprise by workers anywhere in the world.
6. 1980 — When the Fraser Government moved to impose a crippling tax on the housing subsidies of Central Queensland coal miners, it sparked a nationally supported Tax Revolt, involving some 4,000 miners and their families. After a bitter 10-week strike, the miners won and the Fraser Government suffered its most substantial defeat in its seven years in power.
7. 1989 — The Miners Federation became the first Union involved in a large-scale commercial operation when the United Colliery opened in the Hunter Valley. The mine has provided more than two decades of employment and donated millions of dollars to mining communities.
8. 1999 — When Oakdale miners faced the loss of almost $7 million in entitlements after their employer declared bankruptcy, coal miners around the country went on strike and forced the Howard Government to introduce legislation that required the entitlements to be paid in full.
9. 2002 — After years of determined struggle, the Union won Australia’s biggest ever unfair dismissal settlement with a $25 million payout to 190 miners at two Rio Tinto coalmines in the Hunter Valley.
10. 2012 — Thousands of BHP coal miners in Queensland’s Bowen Basin stood firmly against the powerful multinational’s attempt to radically alter rosters, extend shifts lengths and undermine safety. The year-long industrial dispute cost BHP around $2 billion and failed to break the back of the union.
Munitions factory turns on strikers
The companies ran the “patriotic duty” line, claiming the workers were supporting the Germans and denying precious lead to munitions factories.
Fervent pro-war Prime Minster Billy Hughes was also in the forefront of this rhetoric: he would soon initiate the conscription referendum, and he savagely attacked workers in many areas from the war’s earliest days.
He called workers “German sympathisers”. Considine ruefully said: “we are told that the Empire is worrying because we won’t work Saturday afternoons”.
A munitions factory was established in Broken Hill at exactly this time. This made many believe that the strike was a reason for the failure at Gallipoli.
The strikers and picketers actually went out of their way to allow workers to enter factory — but management ensured that it remained idle.
As George Dale said in his Industrial History of Broken Hill: “the factory never produced one single shell prior to the strike, and having served its masters’ purpose of creating an opinion hostile to the strikers…it was abandoned”.
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Victory for solidarity
The solidarity of the workers in Broken Hill and Port Pirie were the key factors in the workers’ eventual victory.
The workers were faced with the usually strikebreaking syndrome — starvation — but the companies were seeing profits decline as renewed demand for the ore couldn’t be met.
The Broken Hill workers secured financial support from unionists across Australia and New Zealand. An agreement was reached in February 1916, with work initially to recommence four days per week.
The underground workers were not happy: they wanted to win their 44-hour week demand.
Eventually, the Arbitration Courts officially gave them a 44-hour, five-and-a-half day week in April.
Overtime rates were also increased and a minimum wage for contract miners was set (most miners were contractors).
Dale described the victory as demonstrating “the power of solidarity on the part of a militant section of the union that knows just what it wants and how to get it”.
Percy Brookfield: an MP for miners
The battle for improved health and safety in the mines was not over though, and Brookfield and others continued this fight during the Big Strike of 1919–20 when, as the state MP Brookfield made sure action was taken.
Brookfield was elected to Parliament somewhat reluctantly in 1917, where he continued to serve the workers of Broken Hill. The anti-conscription campaigns benefitted hugely from his great heart and passion.
Tragically in 1921 Brookfield was shot and killed by an apparently crazed gunman as he was protecting others at Riverton railway station.
Whether his death was political assassination is not clear — Paul Robert Adams is fairly certain this was not the case.
But whatever the truth of the matter, Brookfield remains a great figure in the history of Australian workers as a steadfast and passionate supporter of those who he worked with and represented in parliament.
His legacy includes the 35-hour week, won in the Big Strike, safer mines, and civil liberties. Brookfield’s role as a leading member of the iconic Barrier section of the Workers Industrial Union of Australia loom large as we celebrate the founding of a federal union.
Sources
• Paul Robert Adams. The Best Hated Man in Australia. The Life and Death of Percy Brookfield 1875–1921 (Glebe, NSW Puncher and Wattmann, 2010)
• Gilbert Giles Roper. Labor’s Titan: the Story of Percy Brookfield 1878–1921 (Warrnambool, Vic: Warrnambool Institute Press, 1983)
• George Dale. The Industrial History of Broken Hill (Melbourne: Fraser and Jenkinson, 1918; facsimile ed. Library Board of SA, 1965)
• Edgar Ross. A History of the Miners’ Federation of Australia (The Australian Coal and Shale Employees’ Federation . 1970)
• Ian Turner. Industrial Labour and Politics: the dynamics of the labour movement in eastern Australia 1900–1921 (Neutral Bay, NSW: Hale and Iremonger, 1969)
If you are in Sydney, get along to the display of banners, posters, and other memorabilia from 100 years of the Miners Federation in the Sydney Trades Hall atrium from 8–22 July. See here for more details.
