Australian general strike of 1917
The Australian general strike of 1917 began in New South Wales and extended to other states in Australia . It lasted six weeks from August 2 to September 8, 1917, and more than 100,000 workers joined it.
backgrounds
Since the end of 1916, enthusiasm for war in Australia had sunk considerably. There was widespread support for the anti-war movement "No". The aftermath of the war in 1917 resulted in a drastic fall in real wages and rising inflation . The workers' income was no longer adequate. In addition, numerous workers were forced to work overtime, which was justified with the burden of war.
As a result of the war, the state-owned rail and tram company became a loss-making company because it had to carry out free or heavily discounted transports for war goods. The company had made moderate profits before the war.
The trigger for this strike was the introduction of a new cost and performance control, a Taylorism system, for railway and tram workers in New South Wales. This system was used for time and effectiveness control, in which every employee had to document his work processes on cards. The employees were concerned about the consequences that would result from evaluating the cards. The possibility of recognizing slow and ineffective jobs and workers was also feared.
Expiration of the strike
The strike began on August 2, 1917, when about 1,300 workers in Randwick and about 3,000 in Eveleigh went out of work. As early as mid-August, around 10,000 railway workers were on strike, and the number swelled to more than 30,000. There were numerous demonstrations towards the end of August, with more than 150,000 people on the streets in Sydney alone. The strike peaked in late August when three strike leaders were arrested. Other workers such as dock workers, seafarers, miners, transport workers and others in Victoria and Queensland then showed their solidarity . In September, more than 100,000 workers across the country were on strike.
The general strike failed essentially because of a lack of leadership. The strikers had little contact with their strike leaders. The Defense Committee , which was responsible for directing the strike, was no longer able to conduct the strike effectively and tended to end it. The left trade unionists were practically no longer able to act due to the reprisals of the right-wing governments with arrests and other obstacles. The remaining union leaders called for the strike to be narrowed rather than extended, and declared it over in September. After the strike, numerous strikers were fired or transferred to other jobs with lower wages.
Consequences and lessons for the successful strike in 1919 were drawn from these experiences of strikes in 1917 under unfavorable conditions.
Famous participants in the strike
Ben Chifley , who became Prime Minister of Australia for the Australian Labor Party in 1945 , was a train driver at the time of the strike and was reinstated as a stoker on a lower wage after the strike. In the Australian coal workers' strike of 1949, however, Chifley had the strike broken by deploying the military in the coal mines and was the first prime minister to use the military against striking workers in Australia.
Joseph Cahill became Prime Minister of New South Wales in 1952 , worked in the Eveleigh workshops and was an active trade unionist. Cahill's map was marked "Agitator" and he had great problems finding work after the strike.
Individual evidence
- ↑ David T. Rowlands: Remembering the 1917 general strike at greenleft.org.au ( June 24, 2008 memento in the Internet Archive ), accessed March 23, 2010
- ↑ Robert Bollard: The Active Chorus: The Mass Strike of 1917 in Eastern Australia. P. 29. Dissertation at the School of Social Sciences Faculty of Arts Education and Human Development, Victoria University in September 2007 (PDF; 915 kB), accessed on March 23, 2010
- ↑ Lucy Taksa: Defense not defiance: Social protest and the NSW General Strike of 1917 . Pp. 16-33, Labor History 1991
- ↑ a b General Strike of 1917 ( August 30, 2007 memento in the Internet Archive ), State Records Authority of New South Wales at records.nsw.gov.au, accessed March 23, 2010
- ↑ http://www.sa.org.au/mag-archive-from-old-website/134-edition-116/1150-radical-australias-hidden-history-the-general-strike-of-1917 ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (Link not available), accessed on March 23, 2010
- ↑ http://www.sa.org.au/mag-archive-from-old-website/134-edition-116/1150-radical-australias-hidden-history-the-general-strike-of-1917 ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (Link not available)
