Making and Remaking the Boilermaker at the Newcastle Steelworks, 1915-85

Abstract

Boilermaking is a craft of many nuances that is underpinned by two centuries of industrial capitalist history and culture. The occupational label 'boilermaker' is linked inexorably with the technological dynamics of industrial capitalism and, in particular, with the steam engine's chief power source the high pressure boiler. Indeed, boilermakers still make and maintain boilers and other pressure vessels. The list is extensive and includes power station steam generation plants, space shuttle fuel tanks and the air receiver found in all automotive service stations. Boilermaking has also come to include tasks subsumed under the general rubric 'metal fabrication and welding'. Visualise the Newcastle steelworks and with your 'minds eye' peel away the roof and wall cladding; remove the bricks, concrete, wood, glass and paint; banish the electrical and mechanical components; strip the picture back to bare steel. What remains the lion's share, at least bears the boilermaker's handprint. Boilermakers made and maintained the plant that produced the materials with which they mainly worked. Boilermakers made and remade the physical and social structures in which they and others worked. For all its economic and social importance, there is a dearth of detailed research on the life and times of the Broken Hill Propriety Company Limited (BHP) Newcastle Iron and Steel Works and of the many thousand who worked there between the works' commissioning in 1915 and its closure in 1999. This article revisits my original fieldwork and some of the findings that have been forgotten and/or ignored about the making and remaking of organisational culture.1 Connections are made between the boilermaker, his history and culture, his task, and the steelworks. (Given that it was a male milieu, the language is also necessarily masculine.) Drawing on historical method, cultural studies and social theory, the article explores the world of the steelworks boilermaker as a species of industrial man, including the ideas, values, symbols and practices which shaped his expectations, outlook and actions as a skilled industrial worker. On the basis of the evidence available, I maintain that boilermakers were a product of industrial capitalism and that their history is also a central feature of the history of industrial capitalism. As an occupational community they epitomised the contradictions of capitalism. On the one hand, they pursued the sectional end and exclusive practices typical of well-entrenched male tradesworkers. At the same time, however, the steelworks that they built and maintained was also the site of their exploitation as wage labourers and, at times, they did demonstrate a strong consciousness of their class position, and acted accordingly. As boilermaking tasks were crucial to steelmaking operations, management sought to resolve the long standing shortage of boilermaking skills by utilising apprentice labour. This reliance