Anti-Labour Legislation Conference: University of Sydney, 7 December 1996

Abstract

In 1892 William Lane published his novel, The Workingman's Paradise, dealing with life in Sydney and Queensland in the late nineteenth century. 104 years later this 'workingman's paradise' again fell under scrutiny at the conference on Anti-Labour Legislation organised by the Sydney Branch of the Australian Society for the Study of Labour History and the University of Sydney Labour History Group. NSW Attorney-General, Jeff Shaw, delivered the opening address of the conference and outlined the competing economic philosophies that he saw driving the history of Australian labour relations. The first he described as the Protective View. It recognised the unequal power between labour and capital in Australia. Its followers campaigned for workers to have 'freedom to associate' or form unions and for government instrumentalities to set minimum standards to protect workers pay and conditions. Opposing this view, said Shaw, came the disciples of the (free) Market View who believed that the laws should only enter the industrial arena to facilitate individual contacts between employers and their workers. In a survey of Australia, mainly from the 1889s to 1996, Shaw examined what happened when one or other of these views predominated. Michael Quinlan (University of NSW) looked at the one-sided nature of Australia's Master and Servant legislation from 1828 to the 1970s. He pointed out the irony in the title of William Lane's novel in his address which showed that early labour laws were full of penalties to use against workers who didn't work satisfactorily or who absconded from an employer. Rural workers seemed to have worse conditions, usually because the magistrates enforcing the laws on 'recalcitrant7 workers were also local squatters. Ray Markey (University of Wollongong) examined the history of compulsory arbitration in Australia from 1890 to 1914. He argued that the various forms of arbitration adopted in the various colonies/states and by the newly formed Federal Government reflected the views of liberal politicians rather than employers trying to hang on to their gains made in the 1890s (as suggested by Brian Fitzpatrick). He also looked at the difficulty in assessing the impact of arbitration on trade union growth because of the lack of clear sources before 1912, but concluded that recent research suggests that arbitration retarded the growth of trade unions in this period. Andrew Moore (University of Western Sydney)'s address concentrated on legislation between the wars. This was a period in which the ruling class felt under threat of revolution, so it introduced a number of laws to entrench its position, eg. the 1926 Crimes Act and the 'Dog Collar' Acts of 1928 and 1930. These were largely the product of John Latham, Attorney-General in the Bruce-Page Government and ex-World War One Naval Intelligence officer. Prosecutions were conducted against those accused of promoting ill-will between the classes of his Majesty's subjects, such as the publisher of the Workers Weekly as well as against unions like the Waterside Workers' Federation when wharfies refused to load pig-iron for Japan in 1938.