Worker Unrest: The 1917 General Strike and 1919 Seamen's Strike

Also known as The Great Strike, the 1917 Australian General Strike was one of the most significant industrial campaigns in Australian history, which ultimately resulted in the deregistration of 22 trade unions. It was instigated by the introduction of a new time card system at the Eveleigh Railway Workshops and Randwick Tramsheds in Sydney. This system threatened workers with “work intensification, increased surveillance and employment insecurity” (Taksa 2017). Opposition was fierce and on 2 August 1917, almost 6,000 workers at Eveleigh and Randwick walked off the job.

The strike grew to involve close to 100,000 workers across coalfields, factories and waterfronts. Striking workers and their families took part in regular protests and demonstrations, including one in Sydney’s Domain that attracted over 100,000 people and in Melbourne where Adela Pankhurst led 20,000 protesters to Parliament House.

Striking miners refused to work in the coalfields and on the waterfronts, wharfies and seamen refused to load and deliver coal shipments. The government countered by passing the Coal Mining Regulation Amendment Act to allow strikebreakers to work in the mines.

The strike was crippling and violent. The government recruited strikebreakers that included businessmen, students and farmers, who they described as ‘volunteers’ and ‘loyalists’. Many were housed in large camps, including at the Sydney Cricket Ground. On the waterfronts, close to half the workforce was able to be replaced by ‘scabs’ / ‘loyalists’ (Bollard 2009). 

With strikebreakers plentiful and economic conditions worsening, the Strike Defence Committee announced an end to the strike on 9 September 1917, but many workers still refused to return to work and continued their opposition to the time card system. Miners and waterfront workers held out and were still striking in November.  Melbourne wharfies were the last to capitulate, returning to work in December 1917. 

The impact of the strike was profound. Many workers lost their jobs and those that were re-hired were done so on reduced rates or in lower positions. With so many unions deregistered as a result of the strike, the trade union movement faced a challenging future.

In addition to bearing the worsening conditions in the wake of the 1917 General Strike, the WWF had a new issue to contend with, the establishment of a new union known as the Permanent and Casual Wharf Labourers’ Union (PCWLU). This new union formed branches in Sydney in 1917 and was largely comprised of workers who had broken the strike action and considered themselves ‘loyalists’. Branches were subsequently established in Melbourne, Newcastle, Brisbane, Adelaide and Hobart and the union was officially registered in 1926. There was ongoing conflict between the WWF and PCWLU until 1950, when the WWF, under General Secretary Jim Healy oversaw the absorption of the PCWLU as a branch of the WWF.    

The 1917 Australian General Strike was just the beginning of a turbulent few years in industrial relations. 1919 was a record-breaking year for strikes in Australia, with 460 industrial disputes involving almost 158,000 workers (Rintoul 2020). The most significant strike that year was the Seamen’s Strike that commenced on 9 May and did not end until 26 August.

The strike was sparked by a new award which the FSUA rejected. The union campaigned for a revision that would include increased wages, reduced hours, better accommodation on ships and death insurance (Main 2019). When their requests were denied, members in Queensland walked off the job, followed by Victoria and New South Wales, before spreading to all states. 

Pickets on the waterfronts were highly successful and largely prevented the use of ‘scab labour’. As a result, the strike was very effective and had a dramatic impact on the availability of coal and food in many cities. Additionally, goods were held up at ports and this delay had a heavy impact on manufacturing. The government was forced to introduce power restrictions, which in turn impacted transport services, with some train and tram services cancelled. Thousands of workers from related industries were laid off while the government delayed negotiations with the union, instead encouraging the Arbitration Court to settle the matter while also hoping to deter unions from rejecting the court’s decisions and looking to the government to negotiate. 

The government stepped up their resolve by jailing some unionists, with the FSUA leader Tom Walsh their main target. When Walsh refused to attend Arbitration Court, he was fined £200 and jailed for three months. The union still refused to engage with the Court, insisting that it favoured employers, and with the strike dragging on and the effects on the economy being felt increasingly broadly, the government finally gave in and negotiated with the FSUA, ultimately agreeing to most of their demands.  

The strike came just two years after the Australian General Strike, but the union’s success was in stark contrast to the failures of 1917. 

References 

Bollard, R 2009, ‘Fremantle in Slow Motion: Winning Back the Melbourne Waterfront, 1919’, Labour History, No. 97, <https://www.jstor.org/stable/27740315> 

Healy, J n.d., A Brief History of the Australian Waterfront and the Waterside Workers’ Unions, Waterside Workers’ Federation Sydney Branch Deposit (Z468).

Main, A 2019, 'History: The 1919 Seamen's Strike', The Socialist,  

Rintoul, I 2020, 'Strikes in a Time of Pandemic: The 1919 Seafarers' Strike', Solidarity,  

The Dictionary of Sydney 2017, The Great Strike of 1917, <https://dictionaryofsydney.org/blog/the_great_strike_of_1917> 

Taksa, L 2017, Remembering and Learning from the NSW General Strike of 1917, Australian Society for the Study of Labour History, <https://www.labourhistory.org.au/hummer/hummer-vol-12-no-2-2017/remembering/>