Exhibition: Trade Union Action

The rise of industrial action, organisation and militancy

Since the end of the 1951 waterfront lockout, industrial relations had been pretty subdued – until 1967, when the Arbitration Court, which set wage rates in the private sector, handed down a nil wage order. This marked the beginning of the end of the arbitration system and set the platform for the rise of industrial action, on-the-job organisation and militancy in the 1970s. Job delegate committees developed and became active on all the major industrial sites and other groups of workers also began to protest low wages and conditions.

 

Photographs