Communist Trade Union Leadership and Strike Incidence—with Specific Reference to the Waterside Workers' Federation,1950-66

* An abridged and revised version of a paper given to the South Australian Industrial Relations Society on February 24, 1969. I wish to acknowledge the helpful comments made at this meeting and the helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article made by members of the economics discipline of the School of Social Sciences at Flinders University. I would also like to thank Mr M. Wallington of the W.W.F. for his co-operation. Needless to say, I remain entirely responsible for the content of this paper. 1. This definition is more restrictive than the definition used by the Government in 1950: viz. "'Communist' means a person who supports or advocates the objectives, policies, teachings, principles or practices of communism as expounded by Marx and Lenin." Commonwealth Parliamentary Debates (C.P.D.) on 28.9.50, p. 122.

Sondra Silverman , "Political Strikes in Australia" in J. E. Isaac and G. W. Ford, Australian Labour Relations: Readings (Sun Books, Melbourne, 1966), p. 56.

Mr W. McMahon, C.P.D., 23.9.65, p. 1249. It should be pointed out that in the period under review the L.C.P. coalition has occupied the offices of government for the entire time. However, when the A.L.P. held office their attitude appears to have been similar to that of the L.C.P. For example, compare McMahon's speech with a speech made by a Labor Government Minister, Mr A. A. Calwell, when he spoke on the coal strike in 1949 (C.P.D., pp. 1692-93).

Mr McMahon was clearly implying that these three communist officials were able to exert considerable control over W.W.F. activities. However, this is not at all clear as members of a communist party have never occupied more than 25 per cent of the positions on the Federal Council of the W.W.F.

The yardstick I have used in judging what would be expected of communist trade unionists is necessarily subjective. In making my judgment, I have compared the attitudes and actions of the W.W.F. leaders and members with those of the aims of communist trade unionists in Western countries as spelt out by Lawrence Sharkey in his book The Trade Unions (Richmond Chronicle, Melbourne, 1942).

These are objections to the view (developed by a priori reasoning) that communist leadership has been the major cause of strikes. These objections do not deny that communist leadership may have caused strikes. However, I would suggest that any plausible hypothesis that attributed strike activity to the presence of communist leadership would need to be formulated in such a way that these four "objections" were completely consistent with that hypothesis

Report of the officers to the Thirteenth Biennial Convention of the International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union, Seattle, Washington, April 6, 1959.

An example of this type of argument (by inference) is contained in Richard Parkes, "The Australian Waterfront", Quadrant, 1957, pp. 5-12.

See C. Kerr and A. Siegel , "The Interindustry Propensity to Strike—An International Comparison " in A. Kornhauser , R. Dubin and A. M. Ross (eds.), Industrial Conflict ( McGraw-Hill, New York, 1954).

In an interview with Mr M. Wallington, a full-time Federal official of the W.W.F., on 13.1.69, he stated that almost all members of the union happily exercise their voting rights. The few members who do not vote and cannot provide a reasonable excuse are fined $1.00.

For example, National Vigilance Committee of Waterside Workers, "Communism on the Waterfront: the story of political gangsterism on Australia's waterfront", Melbourne, 1961, en passant.

I am indebted to R. J. May's article for making this point. See his "Determinants of the Industrial Relations Pattern in the Australian Stevedoring Industry", Journal of Industrial Relations, Vol. 3, No. 2, October, 1961, p. 157.

Op. cit., p. 1250.

Because records of the party affiliations of each executive member in each port for each year since 1950 have not been kept, it is not possible to depict the exact situation. However, after discussions with W.W.F. officials I was satisfied that this assumption was probably a true reflection of what occurred in the period.

The statistics in Table 2 indicate that during the period 1950-1966 the port of Melbourne had only the seventh highest strike incidence.

In each port there is considerable variation in the strike record from one year to the next. This reflects a host of factors, many of which are particular to the local conditions in the port concerned. Thus, in taking the average for the seventeen years, it is almost inevitable that the averages differ among the ports Some will have had more "extreme" years than others. What the student t test tries to do is to say whether the performances would have been significantly different had all the ports had an equal number of "extreme" years.

The large fluctuations in strike activity between ports in any given year would tend to suggest that local factors may have been an important influence in determining the strike pattern between ports.

It will be argued below that the assumption of ceteris paribus is untenable. However, the changes that have occurred in the 1960s, as depicted by the significant rank correlation results in Table 1, do not tend to suggest that all causes of strikes other than communist leadership were significantly less in Sydney.

C.P.D., 2.9.1954, p. 889.

C.P.D., pp. 2150-51.

In 1966 the W.W.F. entered into an agreement with the Government that they would not strike during that year while the Woodward Conference was proceeding. And as can be seen from Table 1 of my paper "Strike Incidence in the Australian Stevedoring Industry-The Government's Search for a Solution", Journal of Industrial Relations, Vol. 11, No. 2, July, 1969, this resulted in a significantly lower strike incidence than in previous years. By leaving out the election year this left only a four-year period in which to make the comparison.

J.W. Kuhn , "A Note on Communists and Strikes in Australia", Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 70, March, 1955, p. 103.

Joel A. Fadem , "The Case of the Australian Waterfront: Organizational Design", Journal of Industrial Relations, Vol. 9, No. 1, March, 1967 , p. 34.

For an exposition of this hypothesis see R.W. Revans , "Industrial Morale and Size of Unit", Political Science Quarterly, No. 3, 1956, pp. 303-11.

However, the specific form of the Government hypothesis that was discussed in Section III was rejected.

It is surprising to note that so little notice has been taken of the A.S.I.B.'s Annual Report (1949-50). The Board was a body which was comprised of officials appointed by the Government. In providing a "Background to the Stevedoring Industry" it said: "There is no evidence to suggest that subversive elements were the instigators of these disputes ..." (pp. 14-15).

J.E.T. Eldridge , Industrial Disputes (Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1968), p. 23.