Phoebe Kelloway continues our series of articles on rebel women in Australian working class history with the story of a militant Depression-era textile strike.
Wildcat strikes were the last thing textile mill bosses expected when they cut wages in August 1932. It was the middle of the Great Depression, and the labour movement was on the defensive.
Union density was high in textiles, but the industry had never experienced unrest. Mill owners slashed wages because they figured they could: industry awards permitted wage reductions to match falling prices. Nobody expected these workers – mostly women, the majority under 25 years old – to be at the forefront of struggle.
Yet 700 employees of Abbotsford’s Yarra Falls Mill refused to accept the 15 percent wage cut, walking out on 10 August without consulting their union officials.
At Coburg’s Lincoln Mill, three young women tried to sabotage the mill motors to force a stop-work meeting. When they were sacked on the spot, their co-workers struck and won their reinstatement. A 3,500-strong city-wide strike, involving all the major mills, began on the 24th.
Launceston mill workers were also angered that their pay had been cut by 10 percent. More than 1,000 of Launceston’s 1,200 textile workers struck from 22 August. The union’s general secretary, George Edgar Russell, travelled from Sydney to support them, pledging to stay until they won.
Young women led the strike from the start. Some derided them as “irresponsible girls,” while others cheered them on. One letter writer to the Launceston Examiner declared: “Hats off to the textile workers! These flappers have shown the industrial movement the way home.”
They threw themselves into strike action enthusiastically. When 3,000 strikers met at Melbourne’s Trades Hall, The Age reported: “For the first time in its history the building was found to be totally inadequate to accommodate the large crowd.”
Undeterred, they sang “community songs” before heading to another venue, “marching along Russell Street singing”, as The Argus reported. Young women were observed “dancing and singing” in the Launceston Trades Hall. Its corridors rang out with “the enthusiastic shout of ‘Solidarity forever!’” throughout the strike, according to The Examiner.
The picket line at Launceston’s Waverley Mill was tested when “two youths attempted to pass … on their bicycles”. One was scared off easily, The Examiner reported. The other tried to push through, but was “immediately set upon by a large number of female pickets” and knocked to the ground.
As The Mercury noted, “one of the girls was hitting at him with a rope”. A policeman “swinging his handcuffs” tried to escort him through the line. Although picketers were hit and one was taken to hospital, they won the day. Perhaps the strikers’ resolve was strengthened because, according to a local source, the young would-be scab was the manager’s son!
The textile workers’ determination was not enough to outweigh their inexperience and the divisions among their officials. The Launceston strikers, urged on by Russell and with the support of the trade union movement across Tasmania, held out for 16 days.
Their Melbourne counterparts were in a weaker position. Only a minority of Victorian branch officials supported the strike, so it didn’t spread as it needed to. When the bosses threatened to withdraw their initial offer, the Melbourne strike ended after 10 days.
Although textile workers didn’t win, they made real gains through industrial action that they couldn’t have achieved through arbitration. In both states, the wage cut was halved, to 7.5 percent in Victoria and 5 percent in Tasmania. Given the Depression, it was an impressive result.

Phoebe Kelloway

‘Hats off to the textile workers!’

"Vision Australia – keep manual labour!”, chanted protesters at the hundred-strong Blind Workers’ Union demonstration in Melbourne on Sunday, 15 September. Blind and vision-impaired workers and their supporters formed a chain of white canes that stretched the entire length of Vision Australia’s Kensington headquarters. They were protesting the charity’s plans to shut down VA Enterprises (VAE).
At stake are the livelihoods of 73 workers, one of whom is Margaret Shanahan, president of the Blind Workers’ Union. She described the devastating impact that the closure will have: “For most people, if they close VAE it’ll be their last pay day; they won’t get more work. Just like everyone else, we’ve got families to support, mortgages or rent and bills.”
According to the union’s vice president, Martin Stewart, these employees are “without question, the most disadvantaged workforce in Australia”.
Shanahan explains, “Fifty-eight of us are blind or vision impaired, and 95 percent of the workers have additional disabilities, cognitive and physical. Our skills are in manual labour, so there are no outside employment opportunities for those workers to use those manual skills.
“In open enterprises now, health and safety laws make it difficult for employers to take on people with disabilities, especially vision loss … It’s got to stay”, she argues. “It’s not only the people who work there now who’ll lose their jobs but people now [unemployed] at home or babies being born today. It’s got to be here for now and the future.”
Anger at the direction of Vision Australia was reflected in the chant, “Put people before profits!” The crowd reacted vocally when a speaker highlighted the $400,000 salary of Vision Australia’s CEO, Ron Hooton. Most workers at VAE earn around $20,000 a year.
VAE, which has two factories in Melbourne and Brisbane (plus three workers in Sydney), was long considered a core service of Vision Australia. But in 2009 the Vision Australia board redefined it as a business, and says it will no longer accept running the “business” at a loss.
Speaking to Red Flag, David Ditchfield contrasted the board’s current approach with the ethos when he worked in the factory, then in St Kilda Road, in the early 1950s: “The institute was desperate for money but there was never any talk of closing it down. The policy was for blind people in view of the fact that they had limited funds.” He adds, “There wasn’t large funding from the state like there is now. We had to have auxiliaries in the community raising funds for our cause.”
The Melbourne factory for the blind has operated for more than 130 years, and has always run at a loss. Martin Stewart addressed the demonstration with pride about what has been produced over those 130 years: weaving baskets in the early days, later woodworking, making many products including office furniture and outdoor furniture.
The factory stands as “a showcase of what blind people do … with great purpose and with great ability, not disability!”, he said.
There is no good reason for it to shut, especially given the charity’s substantial revenue. As ACTU president Ged Kearney pointed out, Vision Australia receives over $30 million each year in donations, holds assets worth over $178 million and last financial year reported revenue of more than $84 million.
Opponents of the closure feel that Vision Australia is betraying blind workers. In woodworker Frank O’Brien’s opinion, “They claim to be the nation’s leading provider for the blind and vision impaired but they’re [prioritising] cutting costs and making a profit.”
Martin Stewart’s voice rings out through the loudspeakers: “We are here today – we shouldn’t be here today! We are standing with our canes, not as a guiding implement today but – disgracefully – as a protection against our own organisation!”
The demonstration’s appeal – “Have some vision, change your decision” – is backed up by the workers’ determination. The Blind Workers’ Union has been around for decades, and as Stewart tells Red Flag, it has fought – and won – before.
In the ’80s they had “picket lines and people arrested to get rights in superannuation” and the right to have their wages indexed with the cost of living. “It wasn’t accorded [to vision impaired workers], but it is now because we won that, it was successful action.”
Gina Cassidy, a VAE worker, asserts: “We are blind people, we deserve a life. We don’t deserve to be in the scrapheap … We have got every right to have our jobs and we will keep this up until we get somewhere!”
Stewart refers to the showbags they’re currently working on for the Melbourne Show. “Vision Australia says this’ll be the last time you pack those bags. We say no! We say next year, the year after, the year after, we’ll be working on those showbags, won’t we guys?” “Yeah!”, the crowd cheers.

Blind Workers’ Union fights factory closures

“Most trusted profession … least respected by our gov’t – highest trained, lowest paid ambos in Aus!!” and “Fix it Denis!!!” say some of the handwritten signs on Victorian ambulance doors, displaying paramedics’ frustration at protracted enterprise bargaining negotiations.
Victorian Ambulance paramedics are paid $25,000 less than their interstate peers. Premier Denis Napthine is refusing them a decent pay rise, even as he and his fellow parliamentarians award themselves massive pay increases.
The Ambulance Employees’ Association is asking for a 30 percent increase over three years to achieve pay parity. The Liberal government insists that any pay rise above 2.5 percent must be traded for productivity gains – yet it is refusing to recognise paramedics’ training.
Werribee ambulance paramedic Danny Hill spoke to Red Flag about the demand for pay parity, the challenges of the job and why the Napthine government needs to change its attitude.
What are the ambos fighting for?
All that we’re after is to get pay parity with other states. They have moved far ahead of us in other states because there they’ve taken into account new skills … Paramedics take on new equipment and new forms of treatment all the time, those are considered improvements. In Victoria we have the best cardiac arrest survivals and the best obstetrics treatments. Often it’s in our own time we learn these things. But the [Victorian] government doesn’t deem them productivity [improvements].
They also want us to surrender conditions like accident make-up pay and sick leave and annual leave. They want to push it to the limit. It’s really penny-pinching. How far can they take it? They’re asking us to give up part of our pay in order to get it back in another way. Those conditions aren’t perks; you need them to survive. Treating sick patients you get sick yourself, so you need the sick leave and you need that annual leave.
What are conditions like on the job?
If you feel valued in your job, you can do it, but if you don’t have decent pay and conditions, it’s a very challenging job, you wouldn’t do it. At some point we have to do something to retain our paramedics.
You can get injured from lifting a patient from the floor. We try to avoid hurting our backs, but some patients are in awkward positions when we get to them, for example someone who’s fallen in a garden.
Shoulder, hip and knee injuries are all common [among paramedics]. Back injuries are the most prevalent. People get psychological injuries; that’s also quite common, [caused by] abuse on the job, PTSD, organisational stress.
A survey by the paramedics’ union shows that 1500 – over half the ambulance service – are preparing to quit over the next five years. What is the impact of staff leaving on those who remain?
You lose a lot of experience from that; you see experience from paramedics around you. We’re so short of resources that when someone goes off sick, you can lose a whole crew. That happens regularly … You can have 10 to 20 crews down in a night. They might not replace all of them, so there might be 10 crews down. Crews that remain are twice as busy; you have to travel twice as far, and this all has an impact on patients.
When I started seven years ago, it used to only be like that on a Friday or Saturday night. Now it’s all of them.
Denis Napthine has suggested that your industrial action may threaten the safety of patients. What do you say to that?
We would never do anything to put patients’ lives at risk. Hearing that makes the troops bitter. Our campaign is focused on getting as much support from the public as possible. If I could talk to the premier, I would just explain the new technologies we’ve taken on. We’ve got some of the most advanced treatments for obstetrics emergencies. The saving for Victorian patients is such a fantastic thing, [but] at the moment they’re dismissing it and saying it doesn’t count.
I think the government needs to have a change in attitude towards emergency services. We need to be valued more. We’re not a business that’s there to make money. The pay and conditions have to be fair. We need respect from the employer.

‘Hats off to the textile workers!’

Blind Workers’ Union fights factory closures

Paramedics deserve more

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