In 1942, the Australian ruling class was reaping the rewards of total war. While young men were sent to the front, the “Manpower Directorate” was established at home. This was industrial conscription: any woman aged 18 to 45 without children could be legally compelled to work wherever the government saw fit. Once they were assigned, it was a crime to leave.
While Women’s Weekly ran glossy propaganda encouraging women to sacrifice for the war effort, the reality on the factory floor was grim. Textile bosses were banking lucrative government contracts for uniforms and blankets, making massive profits off the backs of tens of thousands of women.
Rather than leading the charge against economic conscription and hyper-exploitation of women, the officials of the Australian Textile Workers’ Union (ATWU) took on the role of an enforcement arm of the state.
Committed to defending the Curtin Labor government and supporting the war effort at any cost, the union leadership did nothing to resist the Manpower laws. They told workers it was necessary to hold back from striking—“social peace” in the factories was necessary for the war abroad. The so-called leaders of the Australian labour movement demanded that workers subordinate their class interests to the “national interest”—the bosses’ interests.
In March 1942, the newly created Women’s Employment Board raised the minimum female rate in some industries from 54 percent of the male wage to between 60 and 100 percent under pressure from male and female unionists in metalworks and munitions plants. But this decision covered only 85,000 women in a total female workforce of more than 800,000 across Australia.
After the Women’s Employment Board’s decision, most awards set female wages at around 90 percent of the male industry rate, but in textiles women’s wages were held at the bare minimum set by a historical court ruling on wages. The 1905 Harvester Judgement had pegged female rates at a pathetic 54 percent of the male basic wage, even for single women. The court’s deliberations had categorised working-class women as “dependants” of a father or husband: a woman’s pay packet should be lower since it was “supplementary” to the main household income. By the early 1940s, many women working in the textile industry were teenagers supporting family members, single women living alone or mothers making ends meet while their husbands were at war.
In February 1943, a revolt began at F.W. Hughes and Whiddon’s mills in Sydney. When the Arbitration Court dragged its feet on a new wage claim, 120 women walked out. Within weeks, the movement exploded. A Sydney Morning Herald piece from 25 February, quoted in Janey Stone’s contribution to the book Rebel Women, described strikers spreading the action from plant to plant: “At one factory the striking girls scaled wire grilles to reach the girls working inside”.
By late February, 8,000 women across New South Wales defied their union’s federal secretary and walked off the job. This wasn't just a strike against the bosses; it was a “wildcat” rebellion against their own class-collaborationist union executive. An unofficial strike committee was formed, led by the workers themselves, bypassing the bureaucratic gatekeepers.
Despite the extent of this action and the hostile press coverage it provoked at the time, the story of the 1943 textiles strike remains largely untold. This is likely due to the wildcat nature of the strike. Official Australian labour history tends to be dominated by the politics of the Communist Party and the Labor Party, the very forces who betrayed the women workers in this dispute.
ATWU official R.H. Erskine and the federal council didn’t just disagree with the strike—they actively sought to crush it. They called on the government to prosecute their own members as “absentees” under National Security Regulations. The Sydney Morning Herald noted with glee that the union had “virtually invited” the government to use the law against the strikers.
The peak of the struggle took place at Leichhardt Stadium on 1 March, 1943. Prime Minister John Curtin sent personal representatives to beg the women to return to work. Even members of the Communist Party—then fully committed to the “Popular Front” and the war effort—were booed and met with catcalls when they tried to convince the women to fold.
The vote at Leichhardt was a landslide: 1,660 to 860 in favour of continuing the all-out strike.
The state retaliated with the full weight of the law. Nine leaders of the strike committee were hauled into court and fined for absenteeism. The union leadership publicly washed their hands of them, announcing they would not defend any worker facing charges.
Eventually, under the combined weight of state prosecution, financial strain and the hostility of their own union, the women voted to return to work on 7 March. But they didn’t go back with their tails between their legs. The motion to return passed with a stinging addendum: “We return to work with no confidence in the union executive”.
Working-class women today confront the same alliance of bosses, collaborationist union officials and pro-capitalist Labor governments. Victorian teachers, who are the lowest paid in the country after more than 10 years under a state Labor government, will strike in March but already face hesitation from officials about extending their industrial campaign. Rank-and-file organisation and radical political opposition to the “official” leaders of the labour movement are the only way forward.
