'Doing Something for the Workers...'?: The Establishment of Port Moresby's Central District Waterside Workers' Union

Abstract

Relatively little has been written about the creation of workers' organisations in the Australian colonial Territory of Papua and New Guinea (TPNG). The material which is available stresses the difficulties which beset these organisations and the problems which their poor performance created for the operation of TPNG's, and subsequently of Papua New Guinea's (PNG), industrial relations system. Particular attention has been drawn to the exotic nature of unionism, the lack of industrial consciousness amongst workers, the lack of competent industrial leadership and the adverse effect of political ambition on that leadership.1 None of these concerns is peculiar to PNG unionism. Indeed the related ideas of unions being tools of the bureaucracy and of 'outsiders' dominating their leadership to the detriment of their 'proper' role are quite familiar in academic commentary on unionism in 'developed' countries.2 Given the particular circumstances of political and economic dependency it may be expected that both of these theses would receive support in studies of unionism in third world nations. In fact, many eminent scholars have stressed the limitations of third world unions, describing them as 'administrative arms of the state' enjoying a 'relatively limited status' as autonomous institutions whose principal function may be understood in the context of 'development'.3 The broadest attempt to conceptualise the process by which third world unions were formed may be seen in Friedland's contention that they were subject to a process of'institutional transfer'. The organisational form, but not neces sarily the content, of unionism, familiar in the m?tropoles was imposed upon their colonial dependencies in the interests of more 'efficient' or 'modern' methods of labour administration. Associated with the concept of 'institutional transfer' is the claim that 'unions in developing countries have almost invariably been created by people other than workers'4.