The Federated Ironworkers' Association in the Depression

Abstract

The Federated Ironworkers' Association of Australia (F.I.A.) was founded in April 1909. Its members were unskilled and semi-skilled workers in the metal manufacturing industries. At the time, with the partial exception of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers,1 no other metals union was at all interested in organising these men. Most of the F.I.A.'s membership was concentrated in New South Wales, although there was a large branch in Victoria and smaller ones in Queensland and South Australia. In 1911, steelworkers at Lithgow joined the F.I.A., thus increasing the union's New South Wales component and opening the way for it to enter B.H.P.'s Newcastle steelworks in 1915. However, uncontested access to large segments of the workforce in two important industries was no guarantee of success; the F.I.A. was not destined to become a significant industrial force for many years. Between 1909 and 1929, ironworkers suffered continuous under employment and in the years 1914-15, 1917-19 and 1921-23 prolonged unemployment crises. As a consequence, the union's officials were severely handicapped by inadequate finance and a dispirited rank and file. The officials sought a Federal award for their metal manufacturing members, but a crowded court and complicated legal procedures gave them endless trouble. Not until 1925 did the majority of metal manu facturing ironworkers come under the Federal court's jurisdiction. During this sixteen-year wait, the F.I.A. became ensnared in the States' arbitration machinery, which conceded little to the unskilled2 while consistently draining the limited financial resources of the branches. In the steel industry the union's position was worse. B.H.P. became a formidable opponent of the F.I.A.; and Lithgow's patriarchal Charles Hoskins, as he struggled for a share of the Australian market against the competition of his bigger rival, hardened his long-held anti-union attitudes. Company unions were formed in both steelworks after the 1917 strike, and the F.I.A. was greatly weakened. In Newcastle, following B.H.P.'s nine months' lockout in 1922, the Australian Workers' Union began organising in the steelworks, and it was late in the '20s before the F.I.A. managed to overcome the A.W.U.'s challenge and regain some thing akin to the position it had held before 1917. Neither in steel nor metal manufacturing was direct action popular with the lowly paid and under-employed ironworkers, ever conscious that prevailing unemployment and their lack of skill made them easily replaceable. The few strikes undertaken by the union were demoralising