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'War conducted under certain rules, but nonetheless war': Arbitration, Capital and Labour in the Western Australian Gold Mining Industry, 1901–14
Naomi Segal*
Between 1900 and 1914 state arbitration in the mining industry in Western Australia, was driven more by the mining employers and less so by organised labour. The process and outcome of centralised wage fixing reflected the different logics of the protagonists' collective actions, which arose from the inequality of their resources, both strategic and material, and from the differences in the nature and difficulty of their organisational tasks. Collective relations changed from arbitrated to unmediated conflict as the organisational, market and political power of labour grew. Arbitration, rather than resolving conflict, became the focus of disputes. Wider and more intense conflicts centering on the Awards of the Court were only averted by global considerations of overseas controllers of the mines for whom the declining Western Australian mines were only marginal. At the end of the period studied, Western Australian mining employers, while continuing to demonstrate cohesion and capacity for action superior to labour's, began forming and supporting new forms of industrial and political organisation with which to maintain their advantage over labour.
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| In the first 15 years of the twentieth century relations between Western Australian mining employers and their workforce unfolded within the institutional framework of compulsory state arbitration legislation. Although Western Australia, the first colony/state to introduce compulsory arbitration, did so in 1900, the legislation was not used widely until after its strengthening in 1902. The legislation's main feature was the establishment of a three member court (employer and employee representatives and a presiding Supreme Court judge) with judicial and arbitral powers. There were also provisions for a regional system of Conciliation Boards, voluntary registration of employer and worker associations and registration of industrial agreements. Compulsion stemmed from the judicial and arbitral powers of the court, and the ability of either party to refer, unilaterally, a dispute for arbitration. Significantly for the purpose of this article, there were penalties under the legislation for engaging in strikes and lockouts. The court determined the scope of awards, which were a common rule within the respective district (or an area within a district determined by the court). In 1912, an amended Industrial Arbitration Act granted the court powers to intervene pre-emptively in industrial disputes.1 |
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During the period of this study, organised mining capital and organised mine labour expended much effort litigating in the State Arbitration Court and collectively bargaining on the basis of awards, leading to the hearing of 34 major cases and the signing of 46 industrial agreements. Almost all transcripts of cases heard have survived, and this article draws on them for assessments of the performances of the protagonists and understanding of the work process, wage systems, labour policies and working conditions prevailing in the mines. Research for this account also relied on the files of the employer association, the Chamber of Mines of Western Australia, which contained reports on employers' arbitral strategies as well as many of the negotiations between the Chamber and labour representatives. Records of the mining unions for the period have unfortunately not survived. Together with newspapers, parliamentary debates and government records, these extant sources illuminate the evolution of relations between organised mining employers and unions in Western Australia and the role of arbitration in these relations – both subjects historians, in the main, have not investigated in any detail before, notwithstanding that the mining workforce was the first mass industrial workforce in Western Australia and that it was critical to the state's early labour history. In focusing on the experience of early arbitration in an industry, this study adds to studies which, as Hearn and Knowles lamented, remain small in number.2 |
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The article is structured around two main periods, the first the years before 1906, a period of almost unrelenting employer triumph in both arbitration and collective bargaining, the second the years 1906–14, during which mining employers' arbitration triumphs became less consequential due to newly achieved labour unity and labour's growing organisational, market and political strength. The delay in the emergence of labour's effectiveness is a salutary lesson in the different logics of capital's and labour's collective actions stipulated by Offe and Wiesenthal, in which the organisational task of labour is inherently more difficult than capital's due to the narrower range and greater homogeneity, reducibility and calculability of the interests around which employers organise (unions, by contrast, organised around the entire needs of workers, a far more difficult task). Employers also had the advantages of pre-existent organisation in the form of firms, smaller memberships and simpler tasks (to generate willingness to pay, rather than willingness to act, among their members), and they were not committed to internal democracy, nor dependent on a collective identity and member solidarity. Moreover, employers had greater material resources available for collective action, and their 'byproducts' (the services they delivered to members) were more attractive than those offered to workers by unions.3 |
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The process and outcomes of state arbitration, as well as of collective bargaining in the early Western Australian mining industry, reflected these different logics, in fact magnified them due to the durability of some of the court's decisions. The article also demonstrates the change in mining employers' use of arbitration in response to labour's growing collective strength and their recourse to alternative strategies. Above all, however, the purpose of the article is to trace the effect of arbitration on the wages and structure of the workforce. |
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The Pre-Arbitral Context | |
| Prior to arbitration, pay and working conditions in Western Australian gold mines varied widely, as did conditions in the mines. Some mines had retained the 'all round' wage system, characterised by job rotation and a single, mostly high wage rate of 11s 8d per shift for broad occupational groupings of workers, for example, underground workers or, on the surface, all those working in some capacity with cyanide, ranging from filter-press men to those trucking cyanide tailings. Other mines had abandoned the 'all round' wage system in favour of a finer division of remuneration and labour. The coarse task and skill definitions of the pre-arbitral 'all round' wage system, along with the practice of rotating the most onerous and unhealthy tasks, generated and reproduced a solidaristic and egalitarian work culture, especially underground.4 |
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Machine mining, which arrived in Western Australia around the end of the 1890s, was the impetus for a new division of labour. The restructuring of the workforce caused the reskilling of some workers who now operated machines and the deskilling of others who were demoted to shoveling (shovellers), conveying the broken ore in special conveyances (truckers) and replacing the broken ore with waste ore or tailings (mullockers). Work intensified, not only due to the new technology, but also because employers forced machine miners onto contract. The greater amount of dust generated by the new process, increasing depth of mines, with consequent poorer ventilation and higher temperatures, and the speeding up associated with contracting (which was the term used for what was team piece work) led to work becoming both more onerous and more dangerous.5 |
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Machine mining, when it interfered with the 'all round' wage system, often provoked industrial disputes. Thus a truckers' strike at the Ivanhoe Mine to recover the 'all round' rate was only averted when the mining union, the Amalgamated Workers Union (AWA), promised to take the grievance to the Arbitration Court once the court was constituted. It was the AWA's attempt to meet this commitment that led to the first determination of a mining award by the court (the Kalgoorlie Miners Award of 1902).6 |
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Pre-arbitration, union density in the mines was, at best, 25 per cent. Both in Kalgoorlie and outlying districts, worker mobilisation and union effectiveness were hampered by an acrimonious 1900 split of the AWA, from which emerged the rival Amalgamated Miners Association (AMA). The split was primarily the result of disputes over organisational goals with the AWA espousing labourism and the AMA faction rejecting it, fearing that it would compromise industrial objectives, though personalities and methods of operation were also an issue between the two union factions. The split lasted until 1906 and led to a concentration of AMA members in the Kalgoorlie district and of AWA members in the Murchison district, though both in Kalgoorlie and the Murchison the organisations also set up or maintained rival shops.7 |
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The Chamber of Mines of Western Australia was an employer association which, beginning in 1900, united earlier employer combines of which the Kalgoorlie Chamber of Mines, founded in 1896, was the most important. Once compulsory arbitration legislation was enacted, the strategists of the Chamber immediately perceived the Act as potentially a powerful weapon against labour, conditional on mining employers maintaining discipline and unity in their ranks. They therefore urged overseas controllers of the Western Australian mines, a disparate and disputatious group competing on the capital market, to maintain unity. In Western Australia, mining employers were best organised in the Kalgoorlie district, in which almost all the biggest and richest gold mines were located.8 |
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Employers Ascendant: 1900–06 | |
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The 'Miserable' Award of 1902 | |
| There was no unity, co-ordination or even information exchange between the two rival mining unions, who were fiercely competing for the workers of the Kalgoorlie district, the rich mines of which provided stable employment for large numbers of workers and hence a more stable potential union base than many mines in outlying regions. In their attempts to advance and protect their members' interests in the Kalgoorlie district, the two rival mining unions adopted somewhat different methods. With some success, the AMA chose collective bargaining with individual employers as the method to reverse wage reductions. The AWA, however, presenting itself as the 'do something' organisation,9 opted for industrial litigation, consistent with the high expectations from the legislation it had built up among its members and its promise to Ivanhoe workers to try and have the 'all round' wage restored by the court. In the first instance, the AWA referred the dispute over truckers' wages to conciliation. However, this action, and the unions' lack of co-ordination, delivered the Chamber of Mines the opportunity to force both unions into court, prematurely so from the unions' perspective. |
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The first major miners' case pitted the best organised and best resourced mining employers – Kalgoorlie mine-owners – against inexperienced, ill-prepared and feuding trade unions. Aware of the importance of the case, the Chamber of Mines resolved 'to expend any funds necessary into the collection of evidence'.10 The case was long and the evidence detailed: over six days, the court, headed by F.W. Moorhead, heard 49 witnesses, of which 37 appeared for the unions and 12 for mining employers. The final determination was disastrous for almost all those whose lot the two unions were trying to improve. |
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During the hearings, the representatives of the two rival mining unions 'were practically at each other's throats'.11 The proceedings themselves and their outcome deepened and intensified hostilities between the two organisations and their leaders. The unions' main aim was to make the 'all round' rate of 11s 8d per shift the minimum wage in the Kalgoorlie district and to have it apply to all non-craft workers underground, excepting machine miners, and to all non-craft workers on the surface. In excluding machine miners from what was essentially an attempt to restore the 'all round' wage system, the unions acknowledged the new operational skills machine mining required. The wage scale proposed by employers, by contrast, contained a more fully elaborated wage hierarchy for the different categories of non-craft mine workers underground, while on the surface the category of 'surface workers', remunerated at the proposed minimum mine wage of 10s 0d per shift, embraced all classes of non-craft surface workers except men working in cyanide vats. |
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Consistent with their aim of restoring the 'all round' wage, unions placed before the court a range of general arguments: claims about the inherent difficulty of mine work, the deteriorating conditions of work, work intensification, increased productivity and general erosion of living standards. But in attempting to make 11s 8d the minimum wage, they also argued that the existing wage of 11s 8d per shift paid to hand-miners was sufficient, that is unaffected by these general conditions and arguments (a contradiction employers were quick to exploit).12 |
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In defence of their claims, union witnesses repeatedly cited a work culture, according to which hand-miners, truckers, shovellers and mullockers were 'miners by occupation',13 defined by their understanding of underground conditions and dangers and having the skills to test ground for safety. At the same time, and again, contradictorily, union advocates argued in terms of skills or expertise of particular groups of mine workers which were inseparable from their person and therefore, even when not used at work, deserved to be recognised and paid for at the rate of 11s 8d per shift. Thus unionists argued that the 'hammer and drill man' (the hand miner) reduced to trucking by lack of employment opportunities, should continue to receive, as before, 11s 8d per shift.14 |
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Among workers on the surface, the work culture was somewhat less inclusive than underground. The customary perception of the work was that battery workers, sailor gang men (that is riggers) and slime, pit and sand workers were in a class of their own, meriting the 'all round' surface wage of 11s 8d. The skill requirement of their work distinguished them from general labourers (the pick and shovel men), who deserved lower pay.15 |
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Probing by the court, however, revealed the unevenness in workers' and their advocates' understandings of the concept of skill. This inconsistency again weakened the unions' case. For example, in relation to timbermen, the witnesses' argument was that they were entitled to a higher wage on account of their 'practical knowledge' and 'skill in the use of [carpentry] tools'. When, however, a union witness was asked whether trucking required 'any particular skills', the reply was: 'Oh, yes, you want to be pretty strong'.16 The AMA advocate, W.D. Johnson, on the other hand, appeared to confuse 'skill' with high earnings and 'unskilled' with low pay. In reply to the President of the Arbitration Court's request to define 'skilled [mine] labour', Johnson referred to the highly paid machine miners only. To the President's request for clarification: 'Then all the others would come under the heading of unskilled labour?' Johnson replied: 'Yes, of course'.17 This reply was critical in allowing the court to justify classifying as unskilled large groups of mine workers and to award them the minimum wage of 10s 0d per shift only. |
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By contrast with labour, employers presented a united front, a consistent definition of skill (based on prolonged, formal or on the job training and job autonomy) and a meticulously prepared case. Exploiting, in addition, the advantage of an industry responsible for a booming economy, the employers' agent launched a major ideological and logical offensive on the unions' arguments. For example, he challenged the unions' in principle opposition to contracting and their concept of wage justice, arguing for the need for complete contractual freedom and an individualistic model of labour relations.18 In a carefully prepared statement, the Chamber's secretary, appearing as a witness, also sought to undermine such moral advantage as accrued to labour by virtue of working in dangerous and onerous conditions and charged that worker drunkenness in Kalgoorlie sustained one alcohol-vending establishment for every 128 adult males.19 |
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The Award eliminated the 'all round' wage in the Kalgoorlie district, increased hours of work, and set the minimum wage in the mines, the wage of the 'unskilled', including 'surface' workers (a term left undefined), at 10s 0d rather than the 11s 8d the unions had demanded. This meant a wage reduction for many workers. |
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The minimum mine wage of 10s 0d per shift or £3 per week was insufficient to sustain a family on the Goldfields, but nevertheless it survived for over a decade without change, to be amended only minimally in 1913. Inevitably, in the domestic economy of the married mine worker on the minimum wage, female labour, both paid and unpaid, filled the income gap, more visibly so once women began appearing as witnesses in mining cases, which did not occur until 1909.20 |
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The occupational hierarchy the court devised in this first mining case not only persisted but became the template for all mining awards until at least 1914, vindicating employers' investment in preparing the case. Apart from rejecting the employer devised category of assistant machine man at pay lower than machine men's, the court, in this template, adopted the classification of workers that employers had proposed. In this first decisive case, mine employers had thus deployed the amended Arbitration Act, which they had initially opposed, to far better advantage than labour, reaping long lasting rewards for their superiority in strategic, organisational and material resources. |
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Employers' gains included, in addition to the savings on labour costs and the restructuring of the workforce, the ability to use their success to propagandise and recruit members to the relatively new employer organisation. And since the coverage of the case had revealed the antagonism to employers of the Kalgoorlie Miner (KM), the Chamber could now justify expending funds on 'counteract[ing] the influence of that paper'.21 |
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According to J.B. Holman, then General Secretary of the AWA, 'every point was lost'22 in this first Miners' case, except the machine men's claim, and the case of the unskilled men had not been properly presented. In a pattern that would repeat itself, the unions sought to roll back the disaster of the 'Miserable Award'23 by returning to the court for an interpretation hearing in which they hoped to re-open deliberations on the minimum wage and the definition of 'surface labourers'. The Solicitor of the Chamber of Mines, himself unclear about the precise scope of the term 'surface labourers', consulted personally both the Arbitration Court's President and its employer representative. This action later allowed the employers' agent to confidently claim in court that the interpretation 'intended by the court' was that 'surface labourer' should refer 'to all surface employees other than tradesmen, engine drivers and firemen'.24 Such access, based on class and professional affinities with court officials, was another advantage organised employers enjoyed over organised labour. It yielded tangible results: the interpretation hearings failed to modify the minimum mine wage and, in the debate about the 'skill' of mine workers, the Judge, R.B. Burnside, who had succeeded the deceased F.W. Moorhead as President of the Court, appeared to share mine managers' disparagement of physical strength and of work with a narrow task range.25 |
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Chamber Reform | |
| Murchison mining employers were eager to emulate Kalgoorlie employers' success in their own district. However, the unexpected occurred: though the Northern Miners Awards of 1903 abolished the 'all round' wage and standardised occupational classifications, working hours and wage rates, the awards also codified regional or district allowances and in the process increased the overall wage bill, most dramatically in the remote district of Peak Hill.26 |
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Similarly, the first determinations of engine-drivers' wages, the North Coolgardie Engine-drivers' cases of 1903, disappointed employers. Under Burnside, the court accepted the union's rather than employers' classification and wage demands. Employers' case was compromised by revelations about arrangements for bonus pay, which Burnside pronounced 'a mere subterfuge to hide the fact of the extra money going on the pay sheet'.27 |
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The Murchison cases had been run and funded by the companies of the district, consistent with the rules of the Chamber of Mines as they applied at the time. Shock at the Murchison Miners and the Engine-drivers Awards caused the Chamber's Executive in Kalgoorlie to drastically overhaul employer organisation in outside districts as well as in Kalgoorlie, and to centralise and professionalise its arbitration work. It acquired more staff, funded salaried local (district) secretaries as well as a professional advocate or agent to represent it in the Arbitration Court, and employed an experienced journalist to run a 'public education' campaign representing Chamber views on industrial issues (the campaign included paying for editorials in newspapers). In this and other ways, the Chamber intended to 'alter the political spirit of the state'.28 Most importantly, it revamped its subscription system – the main source of its funding – developing a sliding scale reflecting companies' declared gold production. This reform increased contributions substantially, with the rich companies subsidising the contributions of more marginal mines, with the advantage that it did not result in a loss of Chamber representativeness or coverage.29 |
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The Chamber also launched a series of ferocious and strategic public attacks on the court and the Arbitration Act through the pages of its monthly journal. One of the three attacks was written by Moxon, the employers' representative on the court, though his contribution did not carry his by-line. The Chamber's central grievance was that compulsory arbitration had resulted in a 'varying and uncertain cost of production'.30 |
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The increasing investment in the management of the mining industry's industrial affairs that all these activities represented provided the Chamber Executive with the justification for a degree of internal discipline. And members who, in breach of this discipline, undertook independent action in disputes with workers incurred the penalty of having to also independently fund industrial and other litigation. |
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Further Employer Triumphs | |
| A long series of Chamber victories in court followed this major reorganisation. Chamber triumphs included the Norseman Miners Award of 1903 in which a court headed by Justice Parker reduced wages dramatically. As the expiry of the 1902 Kalgoorlie Miners Award approached, the AMA, rather than return to court, unsurprisingly turned to collective bargaining. Led by W.D. Johnson, the AMA excluded the AWA from these negotiations as did the Chamber of Mines, although the AWA had approached the AMA to 'secure concerted action',31 and the Chamber of Mines with a list of demands. |
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The Chamber's superior power to determine the meaning and status of occupational categories was even more pronounced in these unmediated negotiations. For example, in bargaining with the AMA, the Chamber redefined the designation of 'rigger'. Previously the term applied to all members of a sailor gang (those securing heavy equipment) who, prior to arbitration, had been receiving a rigger's wage of 11s 8d and higher per shift. Now, employer representatives decided that it should apply only to the head of the gang, appointed by management. The rest of the gang, though their duties had not changed, were demoted to general labourers on the minimum mine wage of 10s 0d per shift. 'The Chamber can define the work of a rigger, and it is the simplest thing in the world for the mine manager to do it, yet the workers cannot do it',32 raged AMA negotiator W.D. Johnson, failing, apparently, to appreciate the connection between union strength and the process and outcomes of collective bargaining. Ironically, the AMA returned to the protection of the court for an interpretation hearing to retrieve a more favourable interpretation of the term 'rigger'. The hearing before Burnside restored the original meaning of 'rigging' to apply to the whole of the gang, but without the original wage, because the unions had already signed the industrial agreement. Under these circumstances, the court was unable 'in any way to interfere with or fetter the discretion' the agreement had vested in managers.33 |
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The AMA's unilateral signing of the Industrial Agreement renewed the conditions of those paid least on the mines; these were people who had always considered the original Award inadequate. As many of the surface workers among these poorly paid workers were members of the AWA, and the AWA had not been consulted over the terms of the agreement affecting its members, ill feeling between the two unions escalated. Relations were not helped when the AWA futilely attempted to prevent the agreement negotiated between the AMA and the Chamber from being registered. |
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The unions continued on their separate paths until 1906. Apart from some minor successes by the AWA when negotiating with northern employers in 1903, the majority of subsequent cases delivered wage reductions, for example at Peak Hill, Nannine, Broad-Arrow-Kanowna, and Leonora-Laverton. Both unions repeatedly failed in attempts to improve the wages of 'surface labour'. A success in having the court prioritise in its considerations costs of living over industry's capacity to pay ('If the industry will not support a man, what is the use of that industry?'34 Burnside declared) proved only temporary in a system in which the court was not bound by rules of precedence. |
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Engine-drivers, though well organised, were not immune from the effects of employers' expert use of arbitration which aimed, in 1904, to reduce their status and pay. Four Northern engine-drivers' awards favoured employers. In court, employers controlled the debate, shifting it from discussion of the skill, responsibility, and stress of operating machinery that could maim and kill workers to an examination of the hegemonic needs of the mining industry and the technicalities of the machinery employed. In a technical debate with professional mining engineers, engine drivers' advocates inevitably came up short.35 |
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To the Chamber, the outcomes of these and other cases justified its investment in the 'policy of concerted action'36 it had introduced. In a confidential circular to members, it pointed out the monthly savings its arbitration work had obtained for them. In its 1905 annual report, the Executive also observed the unifying effects of arbitration: 'arbitration cases brought outlying members closer to the [Chamber] staff and other members'.37 It continued to use the promise of access to its industrial expertise to recruit mining companies to its ranks. By the end of 1904, even before its project of reducing pre-arbitral wages and standardising conditions and wages across the Goldfields was completed, the Chamber's expectation that arbitration would prove a powerful weapon against labour had been fully vindicated.38 |
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Even 'engineers' (the term by which the mines' fitters, turners, blacksmiths and patternmakers were known), fared 'disastrously' in their first attempt, in 1905, to improve their working conditions by means of arbitration. This was so even though they were among the most highly skilled, best paid and, as members of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers (ASE), the best organised workers in the mines. The court's decision in the Engineers' case of 1905 was entirely in employers' favour: it refused overtime pay and reduced engineers' minimum wages. A ruse, however, allowed the union to prevail. After the court made its determination, the union applied to the Arbitration Court for an interpretation of the terms 'fitter and turner'. Since an examination by the court of the meaning of the terms 'fitter and turner' had the potential to expand the definition of this classification to a larger number of workers and thereby increase the mining employers' wages bill, the Chamber declared itself almost immediately ready to renegotiate the terms of the award with the union.39 |
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However, such successful union manoeuvres were the exception to the general rule that before 1906, organised mine labour in Western Australia failed to benefit from the arbitration legislation it had fought hard to have introduced. By contrast, arbitration assisted mine employers to restructure a mass industrial work force, to reduce and standardise wages and conditions and to intervene in the mines' pre-arbitral work culture, all this with minimal industrial disruption. |
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Eroding Employers' Advantages: 1906–14 | |
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A Crisis of Legitimacy for Arbitration | |
| An unqualified victory for employers in the Firemen's Award of Menzies and the Northern Districts, and a victory, not quite as convincing, in the Norseman engine-drivers' case of 1905, on top of employer earlier successes, finally precipitated a crisis in the legitimacy of arbitration among mine workers and their leaders. The Westralian Worker urged mass union deregistration and withdrawal from the tribunal. The court was criticised for its legalism: 'questions of grave moment [were] being settled on law points and technical quibbles',40 ensuring that workers fared worst. It was also claimed that arbitration fractured labour unity by splitting the workforce 'into small isolated bodies',41 excluding workers too few to form a union from use of the legislation and, perhaps most importantly, disorganising composite unions such as the AWA. Arbitration was costly, especially when union expenses included compensation to witnesses who after appearing for the union suffered victimisation. The revelation that E.L. Lobstein, the workers' representative on the tribunal, had been a volunteer in Colonel Price's notorious 'Fire-low gang'42 during the Maritime Strike further undermined the legitimacy of the arbitration process. (Lobstein later offered his services to the Chamber of Mines as its agent in the Arbitration Court.) Most important, however, in diminishing worker confidence in the legal arbitration of industrial disputes, for which workers had foregone 'their most powerful weapon'43– the strike – was the realisation that, mostly, employers could evade awards or parts of an award by letting work on contract. |
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Industrial unrest, which had been simmering, now erupted, with workers, for example at Gwalia, Mt Morgans and Kookynie rejecting awards, and at Lawlers going on strike. At Kalgoorlie, filter-press workers restricted their output, while at Norseman a dispute erupted over hours of work. |
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The companies concerned, on Chamber advice, disposed of the unorganised filter- press workers by offering the work on piece rates. In relation to other strikes, the Chamber attempted but failed to convince the Industrial Registrar to prosecute even when one of the companies offered to finance the case. (It is unclear whether the legislation allowed the mining companies concerned to lay charges themselves.)When it came once again to renewing the Kalgoorlie Industrial Agreement, the Chamber contemplated going to court to obtain wage reductions and, if unions refused to abide by the award which reduced their wages, to lock them out across the district and, if necessary, shut down the mines. |
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However, such employer activism required the unanimous consent of the overseas boards of the concerned companies that were members of the Chamber. This consent the Chamber failed to obtain. Why it failed to do so on this and later occasions is not clear from sources available in Western Australia, though it may have been linked to the mines' increasingly marginal position in the expanding investment portfolios of the overseas boards, and the perception that the Western Australian mines were in permanent decline. What is clear is that at least some overseas boards were reluctant to incur the disruption, financial loss and uncertainties associated with a major industrial confrontation in Western Australia. Consequently, the Kalgoorlie Industrial Agreement was repeatedly renewed on essentially the old terms between 1907 and 1912.44 Privately, the Chamber warned overseas boards that ultimately they would have to face up to a temporary loss, and to closing down the mines, as wage reductions were impossible to achieve in other ways.45 |
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Outside Kalgoorlie, periodic trouble over awards unfavourable to workers continued to occur, most immediately on the Peak Hill Goldfields Mine and the Gwalia Consolidated, where the court reduced wages in 1906. Whereas at Peak Hill a tough manager prevailed, at the Gwalia Consolidated the company capitulated once workers refused the awarded rates, instead choosing to resign en masse.46 |
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The Reasons for Reduced Employer Power | |
| The scenario of company capitulation was repeated in labour-scarce isolated regions, but increasingly also elsewhere, as labour organisation improved with the formation of the Westralian Goldfields Federated Miners Union (WGFMU), an amalgamation of the AWA and AMA except in the Murchison. By 1907, the WGFMU covered about 45 per cent of the mine workforce in the Kalgoorlie district, whereas in outlying districts, the percentage was sometimes much higher. However, even as the number of strikes grew, such conflicts remained confined to individual mines or, at most, to a small number of mines (as, for example, in the 1909 Marvel Loch dispute; see below). Conflict might have become more general had the Chamber Executive prevailed over reluctant overseas boards and obtained their backing for the all out conflict that would arise from an attempt to reduce Kalgoorlie wages. |
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When, in 1908, industrial strife finally did bring the Kalgoorlie mines to a standstill, it was not through the action of unions of mine workers or the Chamber, but of the largely Southern European wood line workforce supplying fuel to the mines (the wood line was a series of rail tracks along which wood for the mines was cut and transported). The first wood line strike of 1908, which extended across the goldfields, was resolved rapidly by private arbitration (the wood line workers refused all attempts to have the dispute heard by the Arbitration Court). At the request of mining employers, the Government used harsh measures to suppress a second wood line strike immediately following the first. The arrest of the wood line workers and, according to the Chamber, the 'severe lesson'47 of the Broken Hill struggle of 1908–09, may have reduced the enthusiasm for militancy among Kalgoorlie workers. However, in outlying areas, towards the end of the first decade of the 20th century, labour shortages had changed the power balance between capital and labour in the mines to such an extent that when Chamber members now asked the Chamber's Executive to undertake industrial litigation, the Chamber Executive demanded cast-iron written guarantees, including from the overseas boards, that any awards obtained would be enforced even if doing so required shutting down the mine.48 |
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Labour Shortages: 1908–12 | |
| Industrial unrest brought into relief the financial vulnerability of many Chamber members in outlying districts and the mining industry's incomplete organisation. For example, in the new field of Bullfinch, mining companies ceded workers' demands before the Chamber could organise them, let alone convince them to hold the line. The situation was compounded by a severe labour shortage in the years 1908–12, including of unskilled workers and including the Kalgoorlie area. Such shortages had not existed since the earliest days of the mining industry, certainly not in Kalgoorlie, normally a catchment area for labour surpluses from other gold mining centres.49 |
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The reasons for the general labour shortage in the mining industry included a net immigration decline in Western Australia between 1906 and 1909, the labour demands of agricultural expansion and associated infrastructure development, the exit after years of work of experienced miners from the industry for other ventures, pessimism about the future of the mining industry and increased awareness of the occupational dangers of gold mining. Rising wages in the Western Australian coastal towns and the recovery of the economies of Eastern Australia further facilitated departures from the declining, unhealthy and dangerous mines.50 |
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The inability to replace labour and high union density – for example, in Meekatharra in 1909–10, it was at least 75 per cent – changed companies' labour relations, and the relations between the Chamber and its members. In the past, the mines had combated worker resistance with a string of measures including victimisation, blacklisting and shifting workers to contracting. Less able to employ such tactics now, the Chamber lost control over disputes in several locations, incurring the anger of some of its members.51 |
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Under these circumstances, the utility of arbitration to the Chamber diminished further. Consequently, the Executive of the organisation resorted to alternative techniques to obtain its objectives. For example, it conducted a covert letter writing campaign in the pages of the Kalgoorlie Miner (at a total cost of 20 guineas paid to the letter writer) so as to influence a union ballot concerning a wage offer the Chamber had made to the union. It also pressured the Arbitration Court for disclosure of the rules the court used to fix wages and a commitment to their consistent application. If these rules were transparent, they could serve not only as the base for collective bargaining but would also prevent opportunism in approaches to the court. |
47
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In 1908, following several further savage Chamber attacks, the court obliged. It also formally fixed occupational skill margins of machine men over hand miners, and of engine-drivers over hand miners (which became known as the 'Sandstone principle', after the Award in which the margin was first clearly identified). Yet again, in determining these margins, the court decision reflected mining employers' views on the relative value of labour. Also, as in the first mining case of 1902, the new standards meant reduction of wages in some districts, leading the engine-drivers there to decide to avoid the court altogether, and to commit instead to the greater flexibility of collective bargaining.52 |
48
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Just prior to the 1911 state election, the Chamber, forever ambivalent about arbitration, considered the conservatives' (the Liberals) proposal to replace compulsory arbitration with wages boards should they win the state election. While favouring this system's non-collective form of representation, the Chamber was disinclined to lose the uniformity in wage rates and working conditions and no doubt also the predictability and co-ordination of wages that mine employers had been able to forge under arbitration.53 |
49
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Labor's Electoral Victories | |
| Goldfield labour gained confidence at the beginning of the second decade of the twentieth century also because of Labor's political successes at both federal and state levels. The dimension of the state Labor victory (a majority of 18 in the Assembly) in the 1911 state election shocked the Chamber of Mines. With Labor in charge of the Legislative Assembly, the Chamber now had to rely on the conservative-dominated Upper House to 'modify or reject any drastic labour bills',54 as the Chamber's Secretary reported to the Chamber's overseas boards. |
50
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In a political climate in which labour seemed on the ascendancy, some wished the Chamber to play a party-political role. The Chamber had long had a 'secret fund for political purposes',55 but had so far itself eschewed direct involvement with anti-Labor candidates or party-political organisations. Following Labor's 1910 federal win, however, and the formation of the Liberal Association of Western Australia, it appears that the Chamber may have acted as the conduit for donations by overseas boards to the new party. Through its Secretary, Thomas Maughan, the Chamber was also at the centre of efforts to form a peak state employer organisation. Once the Western Australian Employers Federation came into being, the mining industry, along with other employers, had available to them anti-labour action on a new scale. |
51
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The Problems of Contracting and the 'least paid' on the Mines | |
| By the end of the first decade of the twentieth century, both the WGFMU and the AWA were divided over the problem of contracting and its regressive effect on wages. They also had not resolved the situation of the 'least paid' workers in Kalgoorlie, the numerous truckers, mullockers and shovellers underground and those described as 'unskilled' on the surface whose wage of 10s 0d was considered by the court the official minimum mine wage. In the Southern Cross district, the problem of workers on the minimum wage was compounded by regional rates which, anomalously, had always been lower than Kalgoorlie's, the supposed benchmark for the whole of the Goldfields. In early 1909, disillusioned with the inaction of the Southern Cross Branch of the WGFMU, workers in several of the districts' mines established a union branch of their own, and began obtaining improved rates in the mines of the Marvel Loch area. When the Chamber intervened to restore the old rates, workers in Marvel Loch went on strike. Unsupported by the WGFMU's executive, the strike collapsed within two weeks, and the case was referred to arbitration. In court, the evidence of the Southern Cross workers revealed besides low pay, insecurity of employment, casualisation, poor working conditions in under-capitalised mines, substandard living conditions, and a crippling level of household debt. Again the Chamber succeeded in averting a rise in the wage floor, but the small number of skilled mine workers received a small increase. As the new Award failed to resolve the problem of the most poorly paid workers on the goldfields, it was not long before trouble recurred.56 |
52
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The surface workers among them gained a voice when they finally formed the Surface Workers Union. In a compulsory conference in 1913, their representative (H. Millington) was blunt in his criticism of other unions: 'The surface workers have been neglected right throughout the piece ... , they had no one to speak for them in the past'.57 |
53
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In a period of growing union strength, this neglect requires explanation. It was clear that a change to the minimum wage in Kalgoorlie signified 'a readjustment of the whole position; it dislocates everything', as the Secretary of the Chamber of Mines observed.58 In a coordinated wage system, such readjustments involved the risks either of sacrifices being required from other groups of workers or an across the Goldfields rise with serious implications for marginal mines. Some of the risks of the new nexuses were clearly illustrated to unions when, in 1909, Norseman engine-drivers went to court to demand a rise consistent with the new relativities, and precipitated an employer attack on the wages of Norseman miners which drove the whole of the coordinated structure down and reduced the concerned companies' overall wages bill. Deeply angry with engine-drivers, the WFGMU alleged that they 'had ... not [cared] who sank, so long as they floated'.59 The problem of the 'least paid' workers both underground and at the surface was not addressed until after the 1902 arbitration legislation was amended which made new processes for reaching and concluding agreements possible. |
54
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Trouble also continued to simmer over employer practices relating to contracting. Workers' evidence in the Arbitration Court revealed, for example, the practices of the Sons of Gwalia Mine which attracted bottom tenders for contracts and then, by means of various deductions including for normal wear and tear of machinery, sometimes charged for at inflated prices, systematically reduced the contractors' earnings. Through these and other practices, the company reaped faster paced and more productive contract work for the 'sweated' price of award wages or less. |
55
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Although contracting became increasingly prevalent (on the Sons of Gwalia, for example, by 1908, almost all workers were on contract), award rates remained a preoccupation of both unions and employers. The reasons included the inability of the companies to pay by results for some work, for example engine-driving, the informal ties between award rates and contract rates (contractors expected to make at least award rates), and cross-industry implications from mine workers' award wages. For example, woodcutters informally hitched their wages to the minimum mine wage. The minimum mine wage awarded could, therefore, increase the cost of fuel to the mines. |
56
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Award rates became even more important to mine owners once the 1912 Arbitration Act, introduced by the Scaddan state Labor Government, guaranteed contractors award rates, regardless of output. Chamber records suggest that the provision was passed without their knowledge or concurrence in a rare occurrence of labour outwitting the experienced lobbyists of the Chamber. This provision which was a long standing demand by labour, was also as much as the WGFMU could achieve while its membership remained divided on the issue of contracting. More united in opposition to contracting was the Murchison AWA, still in existence in 1912 and still more combative in its relations with employers. Contracting and the division within labour on this issue provided the Chamber with the opportunity to proceed against the troublesome AWA. The occasion was the perennially troubled Youanmi Mine (60 miles south of Sandstone), managed by Bewick Moreing & Co (BMC). Following a merger, the mine was subject to stringent control of cash reserves and to pressure to yield dividends. Further investments in it had been made conditional on it making 'stipulated profits'. |
57
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The Youanmi dispute may have been deliberately provoked by the management of the company, who contracted a group of 12 miners, all union members, notwithstanding that the union branch had passed a resolution against contracting. Whereas contracting based on verbal agreements existed without being challenged by the union, probably because it remained secret, in hiring the group of 12, the mine manager proceeded openly and in writing as if to defy the union. A strike ensued that was to last 68 days. The Youanmi branch of the union played into the hands of employers by hounding the 12 contractors from the district and forbidding tradespeople to provide them with supplies and services. Organised and funded by the Chamber of Mines, some of the contractors sued. The Chamber's aim was to 'tax the finances of the union to a very large extent' and provide 'a deterrent to further acts of a similar character'.60 At the conclusion of the case, the phenomenal amount of £2,161 19s 6d was recoverable from union officials and their associates, of which the union eventually paid the Chamber £1,200. To the plaintiffs, the Chamber made 'compassionate allowances' out of its own funds amounting to between £80 and £100 each. |
58
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Sitting Together | |
| In 1912, tensions escalated in Kalgoorlie over long outstanding wage claims, of which those of the lowest paid were the most pressing. As in 1900, unions perceived the solution to their problems to be new legislation, that is, new processes and procedures for regulating collective relations. The state's 1912 Arbitration Act was a compromise achieved primarily because of employers' fear that unions would shift to the federal arena. The legislation was modelled largely on the Federal Arbitration Act. Its provisions for compulsory conciliation were the circuit breaker the Kalgoorlie WGFMU felt was necessary to settle their immediate dispute with employers. |
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Sitting together in 1913 for a total of six days, mining employer representatives and representatives of key Kalgoorlie unions resolved the problem of a rise to the minimum wage on Kalgoorlie mines and sundry other wage claims by juggling the demands of various groups of workers and trading off some against others. Burnside's mediation skills were critical to the final outcome: 'We appear to do very much better when Your Honor is present',61 a Chamber representative readily acknowledged. |
60
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The deliberations over the complex deal the meeting struck were to remain confidential. Their main outcomes included that the Chamber agreed to raise surface workers' wages from 10s 0d per shift to 10s 9d per shift, conditional on the surface workers' representatives not submitting this offer to a ballot of their members, but settling immediately. Truckers, mullockers and shovellers were to receive a token 2d rise, and engine drivers gained the recognition that the standard high winding engine driving rate was 15s 0d, something they had long wanted. A condition applying to the settlement generally was that the Kalgoorlie increases would be quarantined from demands for flow-ons from other districts and from wage demands arising within Kalgoorlie during the currency of the three-year agreement. |
61
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The secret discussions revealed employers' long standing difficulties with a discontented unskilled underground workforce, who had foiled employer attempts to increase productivity, including by falsifying daily tallies. (Workers were far easier to supervise on the surface.) Discontent was also evident in the high rate of general absenteeism among mine workers, and of departures from the mines. The representatives of underground workers pointed to the poor deal the unskilled were getting and the poor conditions in the mines which, as was now becoming widely known, offered 'almost the certainty of an untimely end'. However, when Burnside suggested that it would be better to close the mines than to continue to pay the cost the unions claimed they exacted in human life and health, the WGFMU representative retreated: 'We cannot suggest the drastic remedy of stopping the whole business entirely'.62 (It would be more than a decade before the issue of the respiratory health of miners began to be addressed.) |
62
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At the conclusion of the long deliberations, Burnside offered himself up as a scapegoat on whom both sides could blame the results publicly or, as the Chamber's Richard Hamilton put it, 'the representatives can go back to the unions and blame [Burnside] for not getting more. [The Chamber] on [their] side, will blame [Burnside] for having given so much'.63 |
63
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The Chamber's secretary considered the conference 'most satisfactory from the Chamber's point of view'.64 The concession to surface workers in Kalgoorlie had been small; the concession to underground workers smaller yet and most other wages remained the same. In addition, there was the unions' agreement to arrest a new spiral of wage demands. To the Chamber the last concession was especially significant. And while the secretary of the Chamber recognised the growing strength of unionism in Western Australia ('unionism in this State is making great strides'65), his assessment was that the 'unity' of employers could adequately counter it.66 |
64
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Union action subsequent to the conference was reminiscent of earlier attempts to improve on poor results obtained by collective bargaining or compulsory arbitration. As in the past, they failed, with the Chamber blocking all attempts to renegotiate and the Court of Arbitration supporting this position in relation to a new wage demand. Apart from a small number of cases, arising in districts organised by the AWA, a new wave of wage demands took some time to develop by which time the outbreak of war arrested it. The very different collective relations that developed in the mines between 1914 and 1918 are beyond the scope of this article. |
65
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Conclusion | |
| After more than a decade of arbitration, collective relations in the mines had changed considerably. During the study period, labour had grown in strength, both politically and industrially, though divisions among union members and among unions continued. But in spite of its growing strength, with few exceptions, employers outwitted and out-bargained organised labour, both in and outside the Arbitration Court. The exceptions occurred when labour resorted to direct action at the point of production – confrontations which were both delayed and triggered by arbitration. However, employers were only at a disadvantage in such confrontations because disunity among them prevented managers in the periphery from responding in kind. |
66
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State arbitration played an important role in organised employers' strategic efforts, assisting their own organisation but also their projects of restructuring and disciplining a mass industrial work force and, initially, also of reducing wages. For most of 1901–14, the legislation also left mine employers free to evade most of its constraints when they wished to do so, by engaging labour on piece rates. Once labour's organisation and market power improved and the consistent triumphs of employers diminished the legitimacy of the existing arbitral institutions, it was inevitable that the shape of these institutions would be renegotiated and reformulated. In the interim, however, employers succeeded in maintaining the status quo in the benchmark district of Kalgoorlie. In the long term, they also fashioned or supported new institutions of their own with which to counter labour's growing power. The ease with which they did so confirms again the analysis by Offe and Wiesenthal of the different logics of capital's and labour's collective action. |
67
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Strikes in the mines, though they never became general, were frequent during the study period, and some were of long duration. Most of these events have not previously been examined by historians. Events on the wood lines, supplying wood to the mines, went counter to developments in the mines and deserve further examination. Also meriting further research is the extent to which mining employers, through the Chamber of Mines, worked to shape public attitudes, and operated with an understanding of their class interests well beyond the area of their most immediate and pressing interests. How well labour's interests were served by the long struggle with arbitration in the years examined is a moot question. |
68
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Naomi Segal received her PhD in 2006 from the University of Western Australia where she now is an Associate Lecturer in the Business School. Her research interests continue to be early industrial relations in Western Australia, union history and employer associations and she has published articles in: Journal of Australasian Mining History, International Review of Social History and Prometheus.
<naomi.segal@uwa.edu.au>
Endnotes
* The author is grateful to the anonymous referees for their helpful comments. The quote in the title is from E. Moxon, 'The Conciliation and Arbitration Act', Chamber of Mines (COM), Monthly Journal, 1903, p. 188.
1. Richard Mitchell, 'State Systems of Conciliation and Arbitration: The Legal Origins of the Australasian Model', in S. Macintyre and R. Mitchell (eds), Foundations of Arbitration: The Origin and Effects of State Compulsory Arbitration 1890–1914, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1989, pp. 74–103; Richard Mitchell and Esther Stern, 'The Compulsory Arbitration Model of Industrial Dispute Settlement: An Outline of Legal Developments', in S. Macintyre and R. Mitchell (eds), Foundations of Arbitration: The Origin and Effects of State Compulsory Arbitration 1890–1914, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1989, pp. 104–131. M. Brown, Western Australian Industrial Relations Law, 2nd ed., University of Western Australia Press, Nedlands, 1991, pp. 5–7.
2. The importance of Goldfields labour in Western Australian labour and political history has been investigated by, for example: Herbert J. Gibbney, Working Class Organization in West Australia 1880–1902, Hons thesis, University of Western Australia, 1949; David Mossenson, Gold and Politics: the Influence of the Eastern Goldfields on the Political Development of Western Australia, 1890–1914, MA thesis, University of Western Australia, 1952; and Ian Vanden Driesen, 'The Evolution of the Trade Union Movement in Western Australia', in C.T. Stannage (ed.), A New History of Western Australia, University of Western Australia Press, Nedlands, 1981, pp. 352–380. Examples of studies which examine the effect of arbitration in an industry are Bradon Ellem and John Shields, 'Making the "Gibraltar of Unionism": Union Organising and Peak Union Agency in Broken Hill, 1886–1930', Labour History, no. 83, 2002, pp. 65–88; Greg Patmore, 'Arbitration and Bureaucracy: The New South Wales Railway Commissioners, 1892–1914', Journal of Industrial Relations, vol. 30, no. 4, December 1988, pp. 566–582; Peter Sheldon, for example his 'Arbitration and Union Growth: Building and Construction Unions in NSW, 1901–1912', Journal of Industrial Relations, vol. 35, 1993, pp. 379–397; and the three studies in Stuart Macintyre and Richard Mitchell (eds), Foundation of Arbitration, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1989: Mark Bray and Malcolm Rimmer, 'Compulsory Arbitration Versus Managerial Control: Industrial Relations in Sydney Road Transport, 1888–1908', pp. 225–246; Alice Coolican, 'Master Builders and the Beginnings of Arbitration in New South Wales', pp. 247–268; Gail Reekie, 'The Shop Assistants Case of 1907 and Labour Relations in Sydney's Retail Industry', pp. 269–290). For Hearn's and Knowles' comment on the paucity of industry studies see Mark Hearn and Harry Knowles, One Big Union: A History of the Australian Workers Union 1885–1994, Cambridge University Press, 1996, p. 17.
3. Claus Offe and Helmut Wiesenthal, 'Two Logics of Collective Action: Theoretical Notes on Social Class and Organizational Form', Political Power and Social Theory, vol. 1, 1980, pp. 67–115.
4. For examples of evidence documenting these practices and attitudes see George Seymour's evidence (Chamber of Mines (COM), Monthly Report 1902, p. 207; this is a reprint of the whole of the evidence of the Kalgoorlie Miners' case of 1902), V.J. Morrow's evidence in Bulong Branch, no. 2, (...) Amalgamated Workers Union v Queen Margaret Gold Mining Co. Ltd and Queen Margaret Central Gold Mining Company Ltd ... 1903 (Arbitration Court, Acc 1095, item 68, State Records Office of WA, hereafter SROWA) and ch. 4, Naomi Segal, Capital, Gold Mining and Labour: Collective Action in the Western Australian Gold Mining Industry, 1896–1914, PhD thesis, University of Western Australia, 2006.
5. For a more detailed account of these changes see Naomi Segal, 'Dangers and Health Hazards: Early Decades of Western Australian Gold Mining', Journal of Australasian Mining History, vol. 4, September, 2006, pp. 68–92.
6. COM, Monthly Report, 1902, p. 245 (transcript of the 1902 Kalgoorlie Miners case).
7. A. Gill, '"Justice for All": Jabez Edward Dodd and the Early Miners Union of the Eastern Goldfields of Western Australia, 1900–1906', Papers in Labour History, no. 15 (Kalgoorlie Trades Hall Centenary Issue), 2000, pp. 16–21, but see also Western Australian Parliamentary Debates, (hereafter WAPD) 1912, XLIV, p. 2426; XLIII, p. 2269.
8. COM, Executive Council, 20 December 1900, Acc 6137A/409, J.S. Battye Library of West Australian History (Battye Library), State Library of Western Australia, Perth, hereafter BL.
9.Westralian Worker, 4 April 1902.
10. COM, Executive Council, 23 July 1902, Acc 6137A/414, BL.
11.Westralian Worker, 31 October 1902.
12. Item 12–17, 19–27 Acc 1095, SROWA.
13. See, for example, George Seymour's evidence, COM, Monthly Report, 1902, pp. 206–207.
14. COM, Monthly Report, 1902, p. 305.
15.Westralian Worker, 19 September 1902.
16. COM, Monthly Report, 1902, p. 196 (Buckley's evidence; transcript of Kalgoorlie Miners' case hearing 1902).
17.Ibid., p. 195.
18. Item 12–17, 19–27, AC, Acc 1095, SROWA.
19. Item 12–17, 19–27, AC, Acc 1095, SROWA; COM, Monthly Report 1902, p. 281.
20. See, for example, Westralian Worker, 4 November 1904. Consistent evidence for the insufficiency of the 10s rate was presented in later mining cases. In 1927, a conclusive observation by Justice Dwyer in another mining case was that the pre–1913 minimum wage on the mines (by which time it had been raised by 9d to 10s 9d) was corresponding to the 'bare cost of living on the Harvester wage basis' (Western Australian Industrial Gazette, 1 December 1927, p. 136).
21. COM, Executive Council, 24 September 1902, COM, Acc 6137A/414, BL.
22.Westralian Worker, 3 April 1903.
23.Ibid.
24. COM, Monthly Report, 1902, p. 344 (reprinted hearing).
25. COM, Executive Council, 17 September 1902, COM, Acc 6137A/414, BL; item 33, 34, Acc 1095, President to Johnson, SROWA.
26. Item 96, Acc 1095, SROWA
27. Item 71, Acc 1095, SROWA, Burnside to Maughan.
28. Report of the proceedings at meeting between Mr Richard Hamilton President of the Chamber of Mines of WA and the Council of WA Mine Owners, on Tuesday, 12 January 1904 at 7, Moorgate Street, London, Executive Council, Local Committees Minutes etc, COM, Acc 6137A/411, BL.
29. Report of the Special Committee appointed by the Executive Council to inquire into and report on the organisation of the work of the Chamber ... Dated 19 March 1903 (Acc 6137A/411, BL).
30. COM, Monthly Report, 1903, p. 85. Moxon also mounted attacks on the fundamentals of arbitration in the internal deliberations among members of the Court, proposing, for example in the Bulong case (see below) that the system should be changed to reflect the variables of production costs, the market value of labour, and individual productivity (Notes regarding evidence in Bulong case, dated 25 April 1903, amended 2 August 1904, item 68 Acc 1095, SROWA).
31. COM, Monthly Report 1904, p. 590.
32.Ibid., p. 577.
33. W.D. Johnson's evidence, item 163, 166, Acc 1095, SROWA. For a full transcript of the case see also COM, Monthly Report 1904, pp. 574–583; WAAR, 1904 III, p. 188.
34.WAAR, 1904 III, p. 126.
35. Item 190, Acc 1095, SROWA.
36. COM, Executive Council, 21 December 1904, Acc 6137A/416 BL.
37. Annual Meeting 15 February 1905, COM, Acc 6137A/416, BL.
38. As, for example, in relation to the Golden Ridge company (Executive Council, 8 November 1904, COM, Acc 6137A/416, BL).
39.Ibid.
40.Westralian Worker, 18 September 1903.
41.Westralian Worker, 16 January 1903.
42.Westralian Worker, 21 April, 26 May 1905.
43.Westralian Worker, 10 October 1902.
44. For the investments of some of the company boards concerned see P. Richardson, 'Collins House Financiers W.L. Baillieu, Lionel Robinson and Francis Govett' in R.T. Appleyard and C.B. Schedvin (eds), Australian Financiers: Biographical Essays, Macmillan, Melbourne, 1988, pp. 227–228.
45. COM, Executive Council, 31 October 1905, Acc 6137A/416, BL.
46. COM, Monthly Journal 1907, p. 531.
47. Maughan to Bramall, 7 August 1909, Acc 6137A/306, BL.
48. Special meeting, Organisation Committee 28 September 1909, COM, Acc 6137A/438, BL.
49. COM, Executive Council, 20 December 1910, Acc 6137A/419, BL
50. S. Glynn, Government Policy and Agricultural Development, University of Western Australia Press, Nedlands (WA), 1975, Table 17, p. 98; COM, Monthly Journal, 31 May 1913, p. 86; p. 45.
51. COM, Executive Council, 27 September 1910, Acc 6137A/419, BL.
52. COM, Executive Council, 9 February 1909, COM, Acc 6137A/418, BL. For the struggle of engine-drivers with the new rules see Item 286, Acc 1095, SROWA.
53. Maughan to Bramall, 28 August 1911; Bramall to Maughan, 29 September 1911, Acc 6137A/306, BL.
54. Maughan to Bramall, 9 October 1911, Acc 6137A/306, BL.
55. COM, Executive Council, 30 January 1907, COM, Acc 6137A/417, BL. The Chamber probably mostly 'merged' such expenditure in the item of 'General Expenses' as in the case of the Roads Board Election expenses of 1908 (Finance and Building Committee 12 March 1908, COM, Acc 6137A/438, BL).
56. Item 328, Acc 1095, SROWA.
57. Item 565, Acc 1095, p. 80. SROWA.
58.Ibid., p. 11.
59. Westralian Goldfields Federated Miners Union, Report of Proceedings of the 4th Conference, Menzies, 1910, p. 12. But see also the comment by a delegate that 'he blamed the Chamber of Mines for bringing the miner before the Court just to defeat a just application by the engine-drivers' (ibid., p. 18) and the resolution of the conflict between the two unions, after a detailed explanation from the ACEDA at the Miners' conference of 1910 (ibid., p. 39).
60. Anderton to Maughan, 8 September 1915, Acc 6137A/315 BL.
61. Item 565, Acc 1095, SROWA, p. 120.
62.Ibid., p. 50.
63.Ibid., p. 115.
64. Bolton to Bramall, 22 November 1913, Acc 6137A/290, BL.
65. Bolton to Bramall, 9 March 1914, Acc 6137A/290, BL.
66.Ibid.
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