Abstract
Between the wars, H. V. McKay's Sunshine Harvester Works was one of the more modern production plants in Australia. In a recent article in the Journal of Industrial Relations, Sandra Cockfield argues that industrial tribunals had little influence at McKay's, leaving management strategy unaltered and workers without influence or protection. The firm was able to de-skill the workforce using a minute division of labour and the mechanisation of production and replace men, first with cheap juvenile labour and later with women and girls. Using the records of the Sunshine Harvester Works and other implement firms, this paper argues that the success of Sunshine management was not so complete. Although decisions of industrial tribunals largely favoured Sunshine's management, modern production methods were not introduced without concessions to employees. In return for intense work routines, Sunshine paid its employees higher wages than were available in other implement firms, and to keep expensive plant in continual production it provided its employees with long-term employment. Despite claims to the arbitration courts that they required unskilled men, the firm frequently recruited those with experience and invested considerable effort and resources in training tradesmen. Women were only introduced in bolt and core-making. Throughout the period the Sunshine management to refused to offer formal recognition to unions. This did not stop employees from developing a collective ethos, and in the late 1930s a shopfloor unionism emerged at Sunshine.
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