Australian
Screen

Teacher’s notes

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This clip from a black-and-white narrated and dramatised 1955 documentary by the Waterside Workers’ Federation (WWF) Film Unit, shows the WWF 1954 campaign to unite workers and the public behind their fight against the 1954 amendments to the 1949 Stevedoring Act. Wharfies’ wives pack food parcels for strikers. Political strategy is planned in offices. Music, editing and close-ups create drama in scenes of political meetings at building sites and meetings with rural workers. The radio and newspaper publicity campaign is also portrayed.

Educational value points

• A planned government amendment to the Stevedoring Act would deny the WWF control over the hiring of wharf labour. This was seen to threaten hard-won improvements the WWF had gained, by potentially allowing non-union labour on the waterfront. Twice before, non-union workers brought in by governments had compromised WWF work conditions so this time the WWF appealed for broad national support to fight the plan.

• The extent and breadth of the WWF campaign, which mobilised nationwide strike action for a fortnight, is indicated in the clip. Coordinated from Sydney, the strike involved workers on every waterfront. During these two weeks the WWF rallied workers in other unions to unite behind them by addressing meetings, making workplace visits and using the media. They especially emphasised WWF support for the coalminers’ strike of 1949 and for the Queensland railway workers in 1948.

• Membership unity within the WWF in 1954 is celebrated in this clip at a high point in the union’s strength and influence. Labour shortages during the Second World War along with strong leadership, which had eliminated a rival labour force, had consolidated the national strength of the WWF and its capacity to improve work conditions. Members put aside factional differences, and women supported the cause ‘alongside their menfolk’ during the strike of 2–15 November 1954.

• The campaign depicted here produced a victory seen as a landmark in the history of Australia’s labour movement. The legislation was passed but before it received royal assent the WWF, returning from strike, filled its quota of labourer vacancies on the waterfronts, as the Australian Council of Trade Unions had ensured no non-WWF workers applied for these jobs. This meant the WWF effectively retained control over the waterfront labour supply.

• Cinematic techniques and a narration combine to create a picture of a heroic fight of right against wrong. The language of war including ‘home front’, the food parcels, the strategy room, people uniting in support of a cause, would all be parts of a narrative familiar to an audience recently engaged in a real war. Close-ups show friendly faces of women and men committed to ‘justice’ and a ‘fair go’ against a ‘conspiracy’ by the government and shipowners.

• At the time, the WWF Film Unit was unique as a union-founded and funded film unit. In this clip the Unit depicts and celebrates a key victory in WWF history. Using workers as actors it promotes the idea of strength through worker solidarity. From 1953 until 1958 the WWF Film Unit sought to challenge what it saw as mainstream media’s distorted view of the labour movement, to give workers a voice and to educate workers about union issues.