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W.M. Robbins and Ian Harriss | A Theatre of Words and Wages: Reading the Script of the Harvester Hearing | Labour History, 93 | The History Cooperative
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November, 2007
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A Theatre of Words and Wages: Reading the Script of the Harvester Hearing

W.M. Robbins and Ian Harriss*

The transcript of the proceedings of the Harvester case heard in October 1907 presents a stark contrast with the Decision ultimately handed down by Justice Higgins, President of the Commonwealth Court of Conciliation and Arbitration. A reading of the transcript reveals the discourse presented during the case in the form of argument, evidence and witness testimony did not greatly support the notion of a 'living' minimum wage for unskilled males. This was not, for example, a union objective in the case. Using the transcript this article outlines the details put by both the employer and union advocates and identifies the highly interactive role of Higgins in this landmark case. In doing this the article explains why the judgment made by Higgins was so different to the substance of the arguments presented to him. It is concluded that it was Higgins' complex notion of nation-building which steered him away from the advocates' arguments and towards his own objectives.

 1
There is perhaps no more famous decision of the federal Australian system of industrial relations than that made in the Harvester case of 1907.1 It was deservedly made famous by a number of distinct implications or impacts. The Harvester case established a national minimum wage for an unskilled worker – the basic wage with the modest rate of seven shillings per day; by implication it set in place the requirement to differentiate margins for skilled earnings;2 it elevated the calculation of human need as a guiding principle of wage fixation and established what was, arguably, the first 'living' wage in the world; it enshrined the centrality of family in wage fixing; and by omission, it helped further entrench a gender division in worker earnings. In short the details covered by the decision in the Harvester case had a powerful and long term impact on the operation of the federal tribunal and on Australian wages in general. And it needs to be made clear that the fame of Harvester was not generated by the wage of seven shillings per day. This was by no means a generous or even an unusual daily rate.3 The significance of the Harvester decision therefore has rested on the implications and precedence of its powerful principles and humanitarian conceptions. . . .
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