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Against the Odds: Establishing the Miscellaneous Workers Union in Tasmania, 1949–59
Michael Hess*
When the Federated Miscellaneous Workers Union (FMWU) and the Federated Liquor and Allied Industries Employees Union (FLAIEU) amalgamated in 1993 to form the Liquor Hospitality and Miscellaneous Workers Union (LHMU) they produced one of the largest and most influential employee organisations in Australia. This position of influence was no accident but the product of the specific histories of the two organisations at both national and state levels. While detailed research on the national histories of both organisations has been done, little attention has been paid in this to the Tasmanian branches. This article looks at the establishment of the Tasmanian Branch of the FMWU. It focuses particularly on the interplay of local political, social and economic factors which made general unionism viable in the 1950s in a regional location such as Tasmania.
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| While Australian unions have varied greatly in size, industry location, strategy and ideology historical research produces a stereotypical picture.1 The union members involved are male, skilled trades employees working for large employers in urban areas or industrial sites with concentrations of job opportunities. The union organisations are, with a few exceptions, dependent for their bargaining strength on state recognition of their place in the industrial relations machinery. The classical accounts of union organisation in coal mining,2 manufacturing,3 shearing4 and transport5 provide detailed accounts of the ways in which these large, trades-based, male-dominated unions used the levers of power available to them because of their size, unity and strategic position in economic and political life. To this picture must be added the late twentieth century development of unions in non-traditional areas such as the services sector as well as associations of professionals which often act like unions while vigorously denying any similarity.6 Even such radical departures from the stereotype share the determinants of success characteristic of traditional unions – strong labour market position, highly-skilled status, unity through large workplaces or narrow job identity, and state-sanctioned status within the machinery of labour market regulation. |
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On almost all of these counts the Federated Miscellaneous Workers Union (FMWU) has been untypical in Australian unionism. In Tasmania it has been even more bereft of the conditions likely to contribute to successful organisation. From its earliest days large numbers of its members have been women, most of its members learned their work skills on the job and were isolated in small groups employed by small or medium sized enterprises, while the actual work areas the union covered ranged across industries and types as varied as manufacturing, hospitality, cleaning and child care. In terms of the factors of common identity, strategic location and size the FMWU should not have been successful. In Tasmania where it faced the additional disadvantage of operating in a generally weak regional labour market this is even more the case. Both the national union and the state branch, however, achieved the capacity to advance their members' interests through exercising influence in industrial and political arenas. |
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The early history of the Tasmanian Branch illustrates how these challenges were faced in an economic and political environment characterised by limited opportunities and conservative ideas. It also illustrates the need for and tensions involved in direct federal assistance to a small state branch. While the federal officials could bring a sophisticated industrial understanding to the branch, they lacked the local credibility to make the efforts to organise and build influence in Tasmania sustainable. This article begins by describing changes at a national level, which gave the FMWU a framework of ideas about effective union organisation. It then looks at the difficulties experienced in extending this to Tasmania where the union had, initially, neither the resources to organise in workplaces nor the political influence to have an impact on the regulatory environment. |
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