Australian Wharfies 1943-1967: Casual Attitudes, Militant Leadership and Workplace Change

In the 1950s and 1960s the waterfront was seen as the nation's major economic bottleneck. Its turbulent industrial relations were subject to greater publicity and polemics than the even more disputatious coal industry. This paper focuses on the nature and characteristics of the casual employees who moved the cargo in the days before container ships. It stresses the singularity of both the composition of the workforce and its attitudes to work, and examines the cause of policy disagree ments between rank-and-file wharfies and the militant union leaders whom they invariably elected. It is found that while contemporaries often attributed industrial unrest to Communist officials' machinations, in fact the rank-and-file members had a clear mind of their own. They tended to take a narrower, shorter run view than their leaders, who often sought in vain to restrain members' reflexive mili tancy. Wharfies were highly sertsitive to perceived threats to their level of earnings, were conservative about all changes to work practice and remained deeply at tached to the casual nature of their constantly varying work. Although favoured by their leaders, permanent employment was long distrusted by the rank and file. When technical change made decasualization inevitable, established group atti tudes meant that employers were unable to instil much company loyalty.