Trade Unions

Trade unions have been part of Australia's political, economic and social life since colonial times. Craft unions were formed as early as the 1830s. The Sydney Trades and Labor Council was established in 1871.

Immigrants from shipbuilding yards on the Clyde, the Tyne and Liverpool brought with them to the colony a strong union tradition. That tradition set the tone for industrial relations on Cockatoo Island, other dockyards around the harbour and the country.

Cockatoo Island's Workforce

Cockatoo Island was transferred to the Commonwealth Government in 1913 to become the naval dockyard of the Royal Australian Navy. During the First World War, some 4000 men were employed on the island and belonged to more than 21 unions for trades such as boilermakers, blacksmiths, ship painters and dockers, gas fitters and plumbers, electricians, shipwrights, storemen and packers, timber workers and the biggest group of all, ironworkers.

Many workers lived in suburbs close to the island - Balmain, Woolwich, Gladesville and Milsons Point. These working class suburbs were part of the fabric of industrial Sydney west of the bridge. Balmain was the birthplace of the Ship Painters and Dockers Union, formed in 1900 from the ashes of the Balmain Labourers Union. The Waterside Workers Federation was formed in Balmain in 1902 and the suburb was a bastion of the Federated Ironworkers Association.

Improving Conditions

Conditions on Cockatoo Island were difficult and dangerous. Men worked with some of the largest engineering equipment in the country - lathes, band saws, cutting gear, live electricity, molten metal and the possibility of explosions. Asbestos dust was an unknown hazard that permeated the workshops and the ships being built or repaired in the docks and on the slipways.

It was through awards that unions secured protection for workers in dangerous occupations. From 1904 to 2006, the Australian Industrial Relations Commission created awards that set the minimum standards of employment for workers in various industries.

Awards ensured basic entitlements such as rates of pay, minimum and maximum working hours, annual leave, redundancy provisions and penalty rates for overtime, weekend or night work.

The union movement agitated for health and safety improvements. Painters and dockers, for example, suffered lead and arsenic poisoning from paints and noxious fumes. It was years before employers supplied them with oilskins and gumboots to work in the water beneath a ship's keel.

In all trades, generally, protective clothing was minimal. In 1957, the Metal Trades Award stipulated the use of protective equipment for welders: leather aprons and sleeves, leggings, anti flash goggles, gauntlet gloves, rubber footwear and welder's shield.

The Boilermakers' Society of Australia commissioned the film unit of the Waterside Workers Union to produce a film on safety for its members on Cockatoo Island. Called Think Twice, it highlighted three main sources of injury - heat, rays and fumes - and illustrated safe and unsafe ways to operate in the workplace.

On Cockatoo Island, getting clean after work was a perennial industrial issue. Showers were not provided, men covered in dust and grease caught the ferry and walked the streets to their homes. Noise was a constant source of irritation and for many workers deafness was the consequence.

Between 1974 and 1989, at least 16 Cockatoo Island laggers died of asbestos-related diseases. More have died since. The use of asbestos in Australian workplaces was banned in 2004 as a result of union campaigns.

The Working Week

Cockatoo Island was a focus of union campaigns for the 44, 40 and 38 hour week. The decision of the Arbitration Court in 1947 to reduce the ordinary weekly working hours from 44 hours to 40 was economy-wide in its application. This was the culmination of a campaign by workers dating back to the 1850s.

In 1981, the metal industry gained the 38 hour week.

Work and Politics

The history of trade union activity on Cockatoo Island is inextricably linked to politics. Within unions, factions vied for influence and power. Between unions, demarcation disputes protected a union's bailiwick. Unions were also players on the broader political scene.

These influences were pronounced on Cockatoo Island where large numbers of workers, represented by many unions, worked on nationally significant projects. The island's industrial muscle became a determinant of trade unionism's fortunes Australia-wide.

Strikes and Struggles

In the period following the First World War, strikes were common. The NSW General Strike of 1917 involved some 14 per cent of the state's workforce.

Waterside workers were hit particularly hard by strikes in the post war years. The Depression and consequent high unemployment only exacerbated conditions in a precarious industry. Militancy was one of the few weapons at hand.

At Cockatoo Island, struggles over hours, wages, demarcation and safety were closely watched. As a Commonwealth dockyard, improvements at Cockatoo set a precedent for all Commonwealth-run workshops across the country.

Politics and Personalities

In the 1940s, Cockatoo Island was the centre of intense factional and political struggles between Communists and their opponents. Membership of the Communist Party of Australia exceeded 20,000 in the mid 1940s and communists were dominant in the leadership of unions such as the Federated Ironworkers Association, Sheet Metal Working Industrial Union and the Seamens Union of Australia.

The Australian Labor Party established factions within unions to oppose the influence of the communists. They were known as Industrial Groupers.

Significant players on both sides worked on Cockatoo Island. Laurie Short, a former Communist and Trotskyist, was a member of the Balmain branch of the Federated Ironworkers Association (FIA) and opposed to the communist leadership of his union. In 1949, he became Secretary of the FIA and one of the country's prominent union leaders.

In 1945, Short was job delegate at Cockatoo Island which employed the largest number of shipyard ironworkers in Australia. A fellow FIA union official, Ken McKeon, also worked on the island and was a communist. In 1946, Short became secretary of the combined works committee, a peak body of all unions on the island, making him virtually a full time union official.

Short was preceded in this position by Issy Wyner, a member of the Ship Painters and Dockers Union. Wyner worked on Cockatoo Island from 1939 until 1946 when he was banished by management for writing an article critical of working conditions. Wyner was a former Trotskyist who joined the ALP from which, some years later, he was expelled.

Read All About It!

Workers on the island were kept informed by a host of newspapers, political pamphlets and newsletters Codock News, Tribune, Communist Review, The Socialist, The Ironworker, Century and Labor News. They could have been left in no doubt that their union's activities to protect their rights and entitlements, and to improve their working conditions, were part of much larger struggle. The shadow of the Cold War was ever present.

Apprentices

Cockatoo Island was one of the first dockyards to set up special apprentice schools to train fitters and turners, electricians, boilermakers and joiners. They worked under the instruction of a foreman and were segregated for two years from other tradesmen before continuing training in the main workshops and on ships. At night the apprentices studied their trade at a Technical Institute.

Apprentice numbers peaked in the early 1980's when there were some 500 apprentices. Cockatoo Island was a training ground for all of New South Wales and a major source of skilled workers across the country.

The End of an Era

From the Second World War until the mid 1960s, the economy boomed and shipbuilding on the island thrived. Unions were strong. However, from the 1960s, the shipbuilding industry was under pressure as the manufacturing sector in Australia declined.

Over the next 20 years, the union movement in the nation responded to the pace of microeconomic reform through award restructuring, enterprise bargaining and the amalgamation of some 300 unions into 20 super unions.

In 1987, the Government announced the closure of Cockatoo Island's dockyard. The decision was probably inevitable given the downturn in naval shipbuilding on the island and the end of the submarine refit program. In 1989, the island's workforce went on strike and occupied the site for 14 weeks. The dockyard closed in 1991.