Business Reaction to Waterfront Unrest in the Great Depression

Abstract

In September 1928, the members of the Waterside Workers Federation went on strike, paralysing South Australia's main harbour, Port Adelaide. Their places were taken by men who volunteered to load and unload the ships. When the strike collapsed the Stevedoring Company responsible for hiring workers for the waterfront continued to employ the men whose volunteer labour had broken the strike, in preference to members of the Waterside Workers Federation. Preferential treatment of “volunteers” continued and, as the Depression worsened and unemployment increased, this meant that Union members were less and less likely to get work on the waterfront. Such economic pressure, when combined with an instinctive hatred of the strikebreakers, produced continual clashes between the Unionists and the “volunteers”.