Australian
Screen

Teacher’s notes

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This black-and-white narrated clip from a 1953 documentary produced by the Waterside Workers’ Federation (WWF) Film Unit highlights excerpts from a 1945 medical report on the health of waterside workers. It also shows scenes that reveal past and present dangers of working on the waterfront. Footage depicts men straining to lift loads, working in ships’ holds, X-rays revealing tuberculosis, men talking about the ‘bull days’ and re-enactments of work practices from earlier periods. A narration puts the report’s findings in context. Music dramatises key moments.

Educational value points

• An overwhelming range of health problems including high blood pressure, hernias and lung disease was revealed in the findings of Dr Ronald Macqueen’s 1945 report on the health of waterside workers, quoted in the clip. In this largely unregulated industry the wharfies’ work as portrayed here involved lifting heavy loads, working long shifts – often in confined spaces – and enduring dangerous and dirty conditions. In 1953 many older workers had endured these situations.

• During the peak wool and wheat seasons in the 1930s a quick turnaround time for ships was vital to ensure international trade agreements were kept. In the Great Depression wharfies who could get a job worked 24- and sometimes 48-hour shifts. This ‘bull system’ was used to engage men on the basis of physical strength and sometimes of compliance to unreasonable demands as desperate workers walked ‘the hungry wharf miles’ to find any job.

• A variety of persuasive cinematic techniques is used in the clip to highlight the dangers of working on the waterfront. The health-issue headings in a copy of the report are highlighted and graphically supported with re-enacted scenes of work practices that had caused the problems. A powerful narrative interprets the nature of each health problem, repeating ‘This is the price of profit’, emphasising the WWF’s perception of why this workplace situation had evolved.

• The Stevedoring Commission established by the Curtin government in 1942 improved efficiency on the wharves and implemented new working arrangements, including awarding the WWF the right to recruit wharf labour. In exchange, union leader Jim Healy (1898–1961) encouraged wharf labourers to work long hours to keep the shipment of materials for the Second World War and of other goods moving. It was not until 1947 that the wartime working conditions ceased.

• The clip is from Pensions for Veterans, the first film produced by the WWF’s Film Unit as part of the union’s campaign to achieve pensions for its older members. In this clip the union educates members on the historical and political context for its campaign. At the time of the film 1,500 WWF members were over the age of 60. Those appearing in the clip were waterside workers themselves or former waterside workers who supported the aims of the WWF Film Unit.