Michael Hess | Against the Odds: Establishing the Miscellaneous Workers Union in Tasmania, 1949–59 | Labour History, 96

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.

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.

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.

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.

Reforming the FMWU Nationally

Nationally the Miscellaneous Workers Union origins can be traced to the 1910 formation of the Watchmen, Caretakers and Cleaners Union in Sydney.⁷ Sponsorship by peak union organisations and incorporation into the machinery of the arbitration system were characteristics of the union's first years. When the Commonwealth Industrial Registrar forced the renamed NSW Miscellaneous Workers Union and the Victorian Watchmen, Caretakers and Cleaners Union to amalgamate as the price of federal registration in 1915 the FMWU became a national organisation. It subsequently expanded by picking up workers not already covered by the big established unions, and by amalgamating with a number of organisations representing employees in small enterprises such as tent making, billiard making, undertaking, bill posting, photograph production and hairdressing.

As can be seen from Table 1 the history of the union to 1949 closely paralleled the economic fortunes of the nation. The boom of the early 1920s saw it expand substantially before a massive contraction during the Great Depression and a strong growth through the period of wartime and post-war recovery. This period also saw the FMWU expand from its bases in New South Wales and Victoria to include growing branches in Queensland and South Australia.

Table 1: FMWU Origins

	National	NSW	Victoria	QLD	SA
1921	5,672	4,200	1,000	572
1927	8,287	4,300	1,660	2,289	38
1935	6,727	3,580	2,038	1,016	92
1945	14,037	7,671	2,920	2,128	1,372
1949	16,610	8,431	3,583	2,901	1,695

Sources: Secretary's reports, FMWU, NSW Branch⁸

The organisation had certainly grown and formal reports of the union in this period were optimistic.⁹ To this point the FMWU had been organised around an inner circle of officials, who could use the arbitration system to maintain the union, but whose organisational practices relied on that system rather than on wider participation and membership strength. In the post-war period a group of younger workers in New South Wales challenged the incumbent officials. Over a period of several years the officials defended their position by increasing the quorum required for meetings, and suspending the membership and asking supervisors to withhold work from their opponents. As Ray Gietzelt, who had emerged as a leader of the internal opposition, stated at a NSW Board of Management meeting the union was run by 'a rotten set of people with a rotten set of rules'.¹⁰

The union's situation was also embedded in the politics of post-war Australia. This saw a vibrant political contest with conservative, Labor and Communist Parties all actively campaigning to influence the future direction of the country. Unions were seen as valuable bases of influence and battles between left-wing, right-wing and moderate union activists became common. The idea that many workers and their unions were 'under the control of the communists' was part of the rhetoric of the day with both the communists and their opponents overstating the real extent of communist influence for their own purposes.¹¹

In Australia, the opponents of the communists on the right wing of the Australian Labor Party (ALP) had been given a renewed focus by the formation of ALP Industrial Groups strongly influenced by the ideology-based organisations Catholic Action and the National Civic Council. The rhetoric of the Groupers, as members of the Industrial Groups were called, was to campaign against communist influence. In 1951 the political orientation of the FMWU on the extreme right of the labour movement was confirmed with an Industrial Group member, Fred Parker, becoming NSW Secretary. Parker took the fight up to opponents in the union in a pamphlet calling on members 'to repel a filthy smear campaign launched by the disruptionists within your ranks', adding that 'many of these are Communists – some are not – but their vile tactics follow usual party lines'.¹² The opposition within the union was formalised with the establishment of the Protest Committee¹³ which published newsletters, the Good Oil, The Block, and The Waterfront Watchman distributed in the paint industry, to cleaners and on the waterfront respectively.¹⁴ They carried similar general themes but also promoted discussion about industry specific issues.

The Block, for instance, had as its motto 'for a 1% quorum, Peace and Progress'. A typical edition in 1952 reported on the refusal of officials to let members of the Protest Committee view the union books and their efforts to delay, and then to remove from the rules the requirement for, the annual general meeting. This latter attempt to amend the rules was refused by the Industrial Registrar. The Block also noted the continuing efforts of the Protest Committee to hold a meeting which would have the numbers necessary to bind the officials to its decisions. In December 1951 these had almost succeeded when 240 members attended the evening part of a meeting which had already recorded an attendance of 'over 100' in the afternoon. Motions of no confidence had been moved in the officials who had then declared the meeting lacking a quorum and left the room along with their supporters numbering 'only about half a dozen members'.¹⁵ The Protest Committee took over the meeting and used it to describe irregularities in the bookkeeping, which it described as 'laughable, but tragic'.¹⁶

The Waterfront Watchman was similarly condemnatory of the way the union was being run and particularly of the refusal to allow the watchmen a sub-branch in which their particular industrial concerns could be addressed. It drew attention to the matter of a membership fee increase of 60 per cent imposed 'without getting consent from the membership' by the officials who had just been re-elected after reporting that the union's finances were in a strong state. The real industrial issue for the watchmen, however, was the lack of work opportunities and their inequitable distribution with some favoured men working overtime while many casuals could not get more than three days work in any week.¹⁷

It was not until December 1953, however, that the Protest Committee succeeded in having the long-awaited special general meeting called. That very morning the officials had registered a rule change raising the quorum to 20 per cent of the financial membership or about 1,200 in New South Wales . Around 300 did attend the meeting that evening but the chair refused to declare it open as it lacked a quorum under the new rule. Ray Gietzelt, who had emerged as the leader of the Protest Committee, nominated a rank and file member, George Ford, to the chair and after a brief scuffle the meeting proceeded to consider a motion of no confidence in the leadership moved by Gietzelt and seconded by Mary Rohan, a cleaner who was to become the union's first woman organiser. The following morning Sydney Morning Herald reported that

at one of the rowdiest meetings at Trades Hall for many years, members of the NSW Branch of the Miscellaneous Workers Union last night voted for the dismissal of nine executive officers.¹⁸

The executive members had left the meeting before the vote was taken and did not acknowledge its validity. Lionel Murphy, a young barrister who had been providing legal advice to the Protest Committee represented George Ford before the Commonwealth Court of Conciliation and Arbitration seeking to declare the union's rules invalid and enforce the decision of the meeting. John Kerr represented the union officials arguing that the rules gave them power to act as they had and that the Protest Committee were communists seeking to disrupt the smooth operation of the organisation and capture it for nefarious purposes. The court found in favour of Ford's application ruling that any union must be controlled by its members in a direct and practical fashion and that any rules which prevented this were invalid. It also ordered the officials to obey the decision of the special general meeting and step aside. In a subsequent election members of the Protest Committee won all NSW Branch positions. The old leadership was then cleaned out of the union federally when delegates from New South Wales , Queensland and Victoria combined at the next Federal Council. Ray Gieltzelt became Federal Secretary and Roy Cameron, the Victorian Branch Secretary, became Federal President.

Establishing the FMWU in Tasmania

Meanwhile, in post-war Tasmania, the political and economic environments for unionism were dominated by minority ALP state governments and an expanding economy. The former ensured government recognition of a role for unions while the latter created one of the few periods in which the state has had a strong labour market. Parliamentary elections in 1946, 1948 and 1950 saw two or three Independents holding the balance of power but enabling minority ALP governments to continue. In such a situation decisive leadership was unlikely but the moderate programs of these fairly conservative governments aroused little controversy. Labour market changes included increasing the school leaving age to 16 and receiving a larger proportion of assisted immigrants than mainland states. Between 1947 and 1954 the state's population grew 20 per cent almost entirely within the working-age years. By 1951 real wages were 20 per cent higher than their pre-war level and it was estimated that the state had 5,000 job vacancies. With a broadened Wages Board Act including a right of entry for union officials indicating a general government sympathy for unions and a labour-short economy, it seems like a benign, if conservative, bargaining environment.

At the time of the leadership change in the federal FMWU, the Tasmanian Branch of the FMWU had been in existence for several years. Its secretary was among the minority of the federal council to support the old leadership. Although the reasons for this are unclear what is plain is that the branch was very small, unorganised and almost inactive. As in other states the Tasmanian Branch of the FMWU began life on the waterfront among the watchmen. With apple exports to Britain booming waterfront employment tended to be seasonal. The newly harvested fruit was brought in small vessels down the Huon River and up the D'Entrecasteaux Channel into the Derwent River to be back-loaded in the Port of Hobart onto international vessels. Perceptions of the watchman's job were ambivalent. In one sense, these were among the best jobs on the waterfront and were often held by men who had done their time in other maritime work and were seen to have earned the right to, or had a need for, the lighter duties involved. With the combination of light duties and good pay being a waterfront watchman would have been a good job were it not for the scarcity of the work and the system of casual employment, which allocated work unevenly. The maritime unions were establishing a closed shop on the Hobart waterfront, with a 'no ticket, no start' policy. Especially for the small tightly-knit group of waterfront watchmen becoming a union member was an essential first step to employment. Membership was a jealously guarded right, which paradoxically gave the unions real power but limited that to a very narrow range. This severely limited the FMWU Branch's outlook and capacity for broader activity. Another significant and somewhat contradictory factor in the workplace ambience was that because of the security aspects of the work, being known as 'handy' in a physical confrontation was regarded as a job qualification.

In Hobart after the war when the Wharf Watchmen's Union of Tasmania was formed it would have been with this varied workforce remembered by other maritime workers as 'a mixture of pensioners and muscle men'. The first year for which any surviving document carries information about the Tasmanian Branch is 1950 when the NSW Branch report for the second half of the year notes the Tasmanian membership as 47.¹⁹ It seems that the branch had commenced operation shortly before this; Federal Conference reports list it as having had an income of £78 8s 6d for the year ending 31 December 1949 and £115 11s 6d for the following year.²⁰ Initially the branch's affairs were looked after by Jack O'Neill, Secretary of the Tasmanian Trades and Labour Council. This was a not uncommon arrangement for the small Tasmanian branches of national organisations. O'Neill also acted as agent for the Seamens Union amongst others. Subsequently the position of FMWU Branch Secretary attracted the part-time services of two men with interesting previous careers. Bill Grace (1950–52) had been a police inspector and C.C. Robertson (1952–53) had been a Church of England minister.²¹ Both were retired and were paid a small percentage of the fees they collected. While both brought authority of different sorts to the position, neither had an industrial background. The branch's activities seem to have been limited to maintaining a membership list and occasionally voting on whether to increase membership to allow employment of additional watchmen, generally to replace those who resigned due to ill health.

As with the large branches in New South Wales and Victoria in the early 1950s, however, there were some members who wanted something better. The first attempt to bring greater life to the branch predated the reinvigoration of the union nationally and saw the appointment of Doug Howitt as Branch Secretary. The story of his involvement in the branch is indicative of the fragility of organisation in this politically conservative, regional environment. By comparison with the other waterfront watchmen, Howitt was young but he brought some useful industrial experience to the position. Before the war he had been employed in Sydney at Halstroms, the manufacturers of 'Silent Knight' refrigerators. The 'knight' being a reference to the company's logo which featured a helmeted medieval torso and the 'silent' a claim to how well the fridges operated. Howitt's experience of the plant did not support the claim to quality. He recalls it as a situation of 'constant speed up. We were just banging them out and the quality was poor'.²² This issue came to a head for him when he was dispatched to Western Australia where the company had 'a whole warehouse full of broken down fridges'.²³ They wanted Howitt to fix them but the fridges were not repairable and he thought of 'all those poor bloody farmers in that heat with second-rate machines'.²⁴ The war intervened and joining up took him away before the issue went any further. After the war he returned to Halstroms but the speed up was worse than ever. As delegate for the militant Sheet Metal Workers Union Doug felt himself increasingly in conflict with the management and in his words 'just got fed up with it and decided to move to Tasmania' where he got a job as a waterfront watchman.²⁵

In 1951 when Bill Grace signed him up as a member of the FMWU, Doug Howitt was 29 years old in a union which saw its role as protecting the jobs of increasingly elderly waterfront watchmen. He recalls that 'at one stage the Branch Executive, who were mostly 60 or 70 years old, wanted to prevent anyone from joining the union who was under 40'.²⁶ Nonetheless he very rapidly found himself being Branch Secretary in large part because 'there was no-one else who could do it'.²⁷ A hint that this might mean more than maintaining the membership books came in June 1952 when the watchmen struck work for almost a week to 'protest against the employment of non-union labour'.²⁸ Spokesman for the ship owners claimed that this threatened Port security and that the owners' 'request for additional police supervision of cargo had been granted'.²⁹ The police, however, said no additional officers had been allocated and those on the waterfront had carried out 'only normal duties'.³⁰ Perhaps having a number of retired officers as members gained the branch some influence.

Howitt found being thrust into the role of secretary in this situation difficult because of the lack of resources and organisational support from the national organisation. It was 'a part-time job with full-time responsibility'³¹ for which he was paid £1 per week – about 15 per cent of the weekly wage of a watchman. He recalls that there was no federal assistance and,

the union did virtually nothing down in Tasmania. It had no office, no representation and no organisation. They objected if you had to spend any money on anything. They didn't like the idea of having a properly organised union at all. I used to carry around the books from place to place.³²

Something of the personal difficulty this involved can be judged from Yvonne Howitt's recollection that committee meetings were held in the single room they rented in Queen Street Sandy Bay. She recalls:

everything had to happen in that one room. So for a meeting they'd set up a table at the end of our bed and hold the meeting. If I was in bed, well I just had to stay there. I couldn't get out until the meeting finished.³³

This personal inconvenience was exacerbated by the fact that Yvonne was expecting their first child.

The branch's weak organisation made it difficult to address the central issue of the unfairness which characterised waterfront employment throughout Australia because of the system of selection for work. Howitt told the union's national historian that the waterfront watchmen in Hobart

paid for their jobs. There was one supervisor who used to run an SP betting business. Watchmen had to have bets with him but they had to back losers. If they didn't back losers they never got another pick-up.³⁴

Beneath this apparent reality of exploitation, however, there was resistance to change from those who felt they were doing well out of the system. So when Doug tried to introduce a roster to regularise work opportunities for casuals 'one ex-policeman threatened to drop me in the drink – and he wasn't kidding either'.³⁵ This determination to defend existing privilege saw the defeat of the first attempt to widen the scope of branch membership beyond the waterfront. In 1952 Howitt recruited a new member who was employed as a cleaner. This was within the union's coverage rules and significant numbers of cleaners were members in other branches. So Howitt did not foresee any difficulty. When the application to join the union was put before a meeting of the Branch Executive, however, it was angrily rejected. Despite the argument that the application was within the rules the executive members could only see the threat of an extra person seeking work as a waterfront watchman. Doug Howitt recalls that, 'they thought anyone from outside the waterfront was a ring-in trying to get their work off them'.³⁶

This was a serious organisational issue because there were other unions, noteably the Australian Workers Union (AWU), which seemed ready to step in if the FMWU failed to extend its membership to the full extent of its coverage rules. When Doug Howitt left the state in 1953, however, it was not discouragement with the conservative nature of the branch that drove him away. Rather it was an endemic problem facing young families in post-war Hobart – lack of housing. Once the Howitts' first child was born, the issue become pressing for Doug and even more so for his wife, Yvonne, who had to return to Sydney with the baby because of lack of suitable accommodation. In May 1954, Doug got a 'port-to-port' transfer to a job as a waterfront watchman in Sydney and was able to follow them. He quickly became active in the affairs of the NSW Branch and shortly afterwards was elected an organiser as part of the new branch leadership. Within a few months he had become Acting Secretary when the incumbent fell foul of what today would be called a zero tolerance policy in respect of corrupt behaviour. He was subsequently elected NSW Branch Secretary and served in that position from 1956 to 1967.³⁷ Doug continued to work with the branch as a research officer 'doing most of the Branch's Industrial work' until 1974 when the ill health which forced him to relinquish the Branch Secretary's position saw him take an invalid pension.³⁸

In his time as Tasmanian Branch Secretary (1953–55) Doug Howitt had been unable to get the branch to move in the direction of expansion. His effort to do so was, he recalls, 'a disaster. It was impossible to get anything moving. The waterfront watchmen just wanted things to stay the way they were'.³⁹ He had more impact as a delegate at the 1954 State Labor Conference where he moved the successful amendment requesting 'all State Labor Governments and the next Federal Labor Government to abolish the death penalty'.⁴⁰ The Launceston No. 1 Branch had proposed an 'in-principle' motion for abolition which was lost. Also lost was an amendment that

all persons found guilty of the capital charge of murder should be transported to an uninhabited island in the South Sea, where a settlement of these persons could be established and thus relieve the community of the cost of feeding and clothing them.⁴¹

Howitt was then able to restore some sense to the debate and give it focus by demonstrating that although abolition was policy in theory there was no mechanism to implement it. His amendment, which was carried as the motion, called on the powerful Federal Executive of the ALP and the Federal and state Parliamentary Parties to act on the principle of abolition at the first opportunity. In adopting this policy Tasmania led the other ALP state branches and Howitt continues to regard it as 'an important political achievement and perhaps one of the best things I did as a union official'.⁴² The first ALP government to act on the policy change was in New South Wales where the Attorney-General, Mick Sheehan, gained the Governor's assent to the necessary Crimes Act amendment on 15 April 1955.

Doug Howitt was followed in the Branch Secretary role briefly (1955–56) by Bobby Stokes another waterfront watchman who also acted in an honorary capacity. Stokes had been Branch President while Howitt was Secretary so he knew how the branch had been operating and seems to have been quite comfortable maintaining the organisation as it was. Elsewhere in the FMWU, however, things had been changing. By this time the NSW Protest Committee had been successful in taking over their branch and the federal organisation had also come under the leadership of Ray Gietzelt and Roy Cameron. Up to this time the federal office had not been organised along what might be called modern administrative lines and it had not been a dominant player in the union with the branches pretty much looking after their own affairs. Under the new federal leadership more central direction and more national resources were available to the branches. From 1956 Federal Council meetings featured an annual General Secretary's report with branch information based on Branch Secretary's reports which were required by the federal office well before the annual national meeting. The General and Branch Secretaries' reports provide a valuable insight into how the organisation saw its activities and priorities and makes the task of the historian very much easier. They also show the new national leadership putting in place structural arrangements which would see it become a driving force industrially and politically both within and outside the union. The rules were rewritten with care by Neville Wran, later Premier of New South Wales , and Lionel Murphy, and a professional approach to federal industrial matters was adopted.

In this new burst of federal activity Gietzelt visited Tasmania in 1956. Bobby Stokes had indicated that he did not want to continue as Branch Secretary and Frank Cosgrove agreed to step into the breech as Secretary (1956–58). Up to this time the branch's scope had been deliberately limited to the waterfront watchmen. Motions to accept new members were often lost or only accepted where resignations had also been received or a member had died. Where there were more applicants than the watchmen wanted to have access to the casual roster, an exhaustive ballot was conducted to decide who would be granted membership and thereby the right to offer themselves for this work.⁴³ This focus placed a dead hand on the branch's growth. Although Cosgrove was also a waterfront watchman, he did not stand in the way of federal office ambitions for the branch. To overcome the resistance of watchmen to recruiting new members a separate General Section was established. This made it clear that any new members were not seeking, or entitled to offer themselves for, waterfront employment. The first formal mention of the General Section was in July 1956 when a branch meeting voted to accept nine new members – all for the new section.⁴⁴ This was by far the largest single admission of new members since the organisation had been formed. Perhaps in view of the increased workload, the secretary's salary was increased to £2 per week.

Given both the industrial needs of workers in areas for which the branch had coverage but in which it did not recruit and the federal ambitions for the branch, having a part-time secretary from the inward looking watchmen's section was unlikely to work. Among Gietzelt's early actions in visiting the branch, was to ask Jack O'Neill, the Secretary of the Tasmanian Trades and Labour Council, who had previously assisted the branch, to help find a suitable person to become a fulltime official. Clearly the industrial need for such an arrangement was strong, with the branch unable, and to some extent unwilling, to provide representation for members beyond the narrow focus on regulating the number of watchmen, or recruit to the extent of its formal coverage. Aside from any other consideration, this posed a potential problem for the organisation federally because of competition from other unions which might have been able to use the FMWU's weakness in Tasmania to extend their own coverage claims first within the state and subsequently nationally. There were also, however, political considerations. By the mid-1950s the FMWU nationally was engaged in a battle for influence within the union movement and the ALP. The lack of an active Tasmanian Branch weakened the union's political position nationally especially since its most logical rival for its unorganised areas of coverage, the AWU, was a leading organisation in the ALP Right faction.

In this period the branch began to receive serious organisational assistance from the FMWU national organisation. Federal organisers, Jack Dwyer and Vic Ariensen concentrated on Hobart and Launceston in a series of visits which laid the foundation for Gietzelt's later report to the Federal Council on the potential of the Tasmanian Branch.⁴⁵ They concentrated on areas for which the union had coverage and in which it had members in other states but had not yet organised in Tasmania. An indication of the branch's potential is the fact that Dwyer enrolled 100 members in one ten day visit.⁴⁶ By 1957, the branch was developing some internal momentum as well. The secretary's salary was increased again to £3 per week and with several new members, mostly cleaners, being admitted to the General Section at each meeting the branch was beginning to grow. The branch Committee's activity was still, however, mostly focused on the waterfront with the details of watchmen's conditions of employment and the relationships with other maritime unions taking up most of the business of its regular meetings.

The move away from this narrow focus took another step forward in October 1957 when A.G. (Bob) Poke became the first non-watchman elected Branch President. He had been an official of the Timber Workers Union and had come into the FMWU under a membership rule which gave the union coverage of public officers of the labour movement. Once in the union, Poke's industrial experience made him a logical choice as Branch President and improved the prospects of moving the branch beyond its narrow focus. By this stage some of the long serving committee members, such as Bobby Stokes and Frank Cosgrove, also seem to have become convinced of the need for change as they regularly supported motions for improving and widening the branch's activities. The first meeting over which Poke presided received a recommendation from Ray Gietzelt that the role of the secretary be reconsidered and particularly that 'the salary of the Branch Secretary be increased owing to increased membership and responsibility'.⁴⁷ Poke recommended an increase to £4 per week which was accepted.

At the following meeting he proposed the formalisation of Sections within the branch for waterfront watchmen, land watchmen, male cleaners, female cleaners, lift attendants, caretakers, paint and varnish workers, laundry workers, and gatekeepers. While this continued the separation of other members from waterfront watchmen, it also effectively isolated their influence to one section among the nine which would comprise the branch. There was some resistance to this as the watchmen had been used to thinking of the FMWU in Tasmania as their union. They had previously filled all the official roles of the state branch of an increasingly influential national union including being delegates to the Tasmanian Trades Hall Council and FMWU Federal Council. If they were in any doubt that their days of dominating the branch were over they must have been less so after the last meeting of 1957 which admitted 250 new members to the various new sections.⁴⁸ These members had been signed up by Vic Ariensen as he found fertile ground for the spread of the union especially among cleaners employed in government departments and employees in small enterprises such as laundries and the dairy factory. While Ariensen continued to be employed as a federal organiser, he was spending so much time in Tasmania that he was made Assistant Secretary of the branch and held this position until November 1958.⁴⁹ During this period, the national office paid his salary and met his costs. This was not a long term answer to the branch's organisational problems as Ariensen had apparently no intention of staying in Tasmania permanently and in any case his lack of local knowledge and networks made it difficult for him to be the focus of all the branch's organising efforts. The official federal office view which Gietzelt included in his annual report the following year made it clear that more was expected of the branch itself. It focused on 'the failure of the Branch to consolidate the valuable organisational work performed by [the Federal] Organisers'.⁵⁰ There is a notable tension here between the need for industrial understanding brought to the branch by the federal officials and the need for local credibility to make the efforts to organise and build influence in Tasmania sustainable.

The FMWU federal organisation decided to provide the necessary finances to fund the position of full-time Tasmanian Branch Secretary. The history of the branch showed that finding the right person for the job would not be easy and the national organisation was not likely to provide funding unless they were sure they had a willing candidate capable of doing the job. What the federal officials needed was someone who would promote the national organisation's industrial agenda as well as take a leading role in establishing the FMWU as an industrial and political force in Tasmania. The former meant that the individual would need to be comfortable with the strong industrial stance and organisational practices being implemented by the union nationally as well as demonstrating the sort of commitment and understanding the FMWU was demanding from its officials on the mainland. In the politically charged climate of the day this almost certainly meant someone from the ALP Left. The latter called for someone deeply embedded in the Tasmanian scene with the capacity to organise and represent the interests of existing members, so that they saw the benefits of organisational growth, and other workers within the FMWU's formal coverage, who had previously shown little enthusiasm for joining the union.

Ray Geitzelt had approached Labour Council Secretary Jack O'Niell to help find someone who would meet these needs. He recalls that he trusted O'Neill's judgement because he saw him as 'a good traditional union leader who was sympathetic to the need for better unions'.⁵¹ O'Niell suggested Gietzelt speak with Tas Bull, who was a young activist on the waterfront and Bull in turn introduced the Federal Secretary to Leo Brown.⁵² Bull's own recollection is that the approach came through Jim Healey, Federal Secretary of the Waterside Workers Federation (WWF), rather than through the, in his view, 'right leaning' Secretary of the Tasmanian Trades and Labor Council (TTLC). He recalls the Brown brothers, Lennie, Bobby and Leo as watersiders and close personal friends, who were strong supporters of the union, but does not mention them as having had a left-wing political position and certainly not as sharing his own communist party affiliation.⁵³

It was a turning point in the branch's fortunes, as Leo Brown went on to play a commanding role in the union, in the Tasmanian Trades Hall Council, and in the Tasmanian Branch of the ALP over the next three decades. After war service in the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF), Leo Brown had trained as a tailor but left the industry realising its limited future in a market going over to ready made garments although he did retain some of the skills fitting out his local football (AFL) team with club blazers he made at home.⁵⁴ He also had a brief stint at the Mercury, where he ran foul of management by objecting to the use of what he saw as dangerous chemicals in the printing process. His brothers, Lennie and Bobby worked on the wharves and got Leo a job as a wharfie in 1953. Waterfront work in Australia generally had been the scene of many industrial disputes since the end of the war, as the WWF sought to use their key role in the export of commodities as a lever to eliminate exploitative working conditions. This use of industrial muscle reflected waterside workers' attitudes, which included a willingness to take direct action even if that meant physical confrontation. Both of the older Brown brothers were well known as boxers and played an active role in the WWF, Bobby later becoming Hobart WWF Branch President. Leo also took an active role in the union from when he began work on the wharves and within a couple of years was a member of the WWF Hobart Branch campaign committee. This committee was an unofficial body whose role it was to provide a physical presence for the union in the workplace, especially around current issues such as the closed shop.

In this role Leo Brown had been involved in the infamous Hursey Case in which two WWF members who had refused to pay a levy to support the ALP's state election campaign sued the union on the ground that bans against them by its members were effectively preventing them from working on the waterfront. The political background to the dispute was that Frank Hursey, a former ALP member, was an Anti-Communist Labor Party candidate at the state elections. He and his son, Dennis, were at the WWF meeting in October 1956, at which the levy was struck. Neither spoke or voted against it but both privately stated that they would not pay it. WWF rules made a levy, voted for by a members' meeting, binding. Failure to pay meant becoming unfinancial and therefore losing the rights of membership, including the right to work with other union members. The Hurseys offered to pay their ordinary membership fees but not the levy. For more than a year the Hurseys were isolated with other workers refusing to work with, or even speak to, them. Eventually the Hurseys lost in the High Court but not before a public campaign waged with intensity on both sides cemented the divisions between Right and Left in Tasmanian unions.

Leo's role on the WWF campaign committee included being arrested for allegedly assaulting the Hurseys. It was a charge he successfully defended and always denied even among those who might have thought such an action justified.⁵⁵ Brown family tradition includes Leo recalling the police inspector who performed the arrest complaining at the time of being 'forced to do someone's dirty work'.⁵⁶ In any case in the events surrounding the Hursey case Leo had clearly shown his loyalties and understanding enough to recommend him to the FMWU. In the political climate of the time in which sectarianism was a fundamental issue, the fact that Leo's family were Roman Catholic was also significant. This was especially the case because the ALP Left's major opponents were found in the largely Roman Catholic right-wing faction, which in Tasmania largely remained in the ALP at this stage, rather than splitting from it as it had in Victoria and Queensland.

In November 1958, Ray Gietzelt reported to the state Executive that the federal office would pay a subsidy of £1,000 to facilitate the employment of a fulltime Branch Secretary for a period of 12 months.⁵⁷ During this time it was expected that membership growth would allow the branch to become increasingly self-supporting. He recommended that Leo Brown be appointed. 'After further discussion of Mr. Brown's capabilities and personal affairs', Bobby Stokes moved and Frank Cosgrove seconded the motion to accept the Gietzelt recommendation.⁵⁸ The motion was carried as were motions making Leo one of the branch's delegates to the Trades Hall Council and to apply for office space and a mail box at the Trades Hall.

With a fulltime secretary and an office the branch was now at least in a position to be a presence both in workplaces where it had the legal right to recruit members and in the Tasmanian labour movement. Brown was provided with a car and began regular visits to areas which had previously only seen a visiting Federal Officer on one occasion. An immediate result was that workers in chemical and dairy product factories joined the branch. Nor was this merely a product of federal intervention and financing. Branch membership fees were increased substantially to meet the cost of the office and a campaign to inform members of the need for them to meet the costs of their own organisation seems to have limited any adverse impact the fee increase might have had. At least members did not resign as a result and Geitzelt was able to tell the Federal Council that 'most members are aware of the reasons and need for Tasmanian members to help maintain their own office'.⁵⁹ Nonetheless the federal Council accepted the necessity of continuing a subsidy to the branch and negotiated arrangements with the Clothing and Allied Trades Union and the Municipal Employees Union for the now fulltime FMWU Branch Secretary to represent their members in Tasmania. These unions paid the FMWU for Leo Brown's services.

The new Branch Secretary also took steps to increase the FMWU's capacity to represent employees within its areas of coverage by registering it in the state industrial jurisdiction. At this time state registration was particularly important because most areas of employment operated under state awards and access to these was legally limited to those organisations which were registered in the jurisdiction. State registration also helped protect the branch's coverage from unscrupulous rival unions which had been able to present the FMWU as a Sydney based left-wing organisation of limited relevance to Tasmanian workers. The major difficulty here was with the AWU which had coverage rules that overlapped those of the FMWU particularly in respect of workers in small scale manufacturing.

The impact of Leo Brown's and the Federal Officers' activities can be seen in the profile of membership in the branch during the 1950s. From the isolated base on the waterfront with its watchmen members the branch had begun a cautious expansion once the Federal Officers began their regular visits. This coincided with the appointment of the first fulltime Branch Secretary and regular workplace visits. The 50 per cent increase in membership in his first year as secretary confirmed Brown as a wise choice for the position. As Table 2 shows, the branch's annual growth during this period also compared favourably with that in other states. In recognition of this and as a way of signalling that the FWMU had arrived in Tasmania, the union's Federal Council was held in Hobart in October 1959. By then Leo Brown was reporting that the branch had the potential to grow to between 900 and 1,000 members.⁶¹ He was also able to report the establishment of a Branch Council in which delegates from the newly expanded areas of membership in varied industries came together to discuss and give direction on the union's state based activities. Two of the interesting facets of that first substantial branch report to a national union meeting were the turnover of members reported and the way in which the branch handled that. In preceding year 76 members had left. This high rate of turnover was to be a characteristic and constant organisational challenge for the union. The fact that 39 of the 76 were transferred to other unions is also indicative of how the FMWU was operating. It saw itself as an integral part of a broader movement and took care to ensure that its members leaving their jobs were placed in unions appropriate to their new areas of work.

Table 2: FMWU Branch Membership

	NSW	VIC	QLD	SA	TAS	WA	Total
1950	8,488	3,867	3,234	1,973	47		17,609
1955	12,257	4,720	6,518	1,977	60	46	25,578
1958	20,417	6,350	5,290	2,519	404	458	35,438
1959	21,022	6,354	6,726	2,763	573	727	38,165

Sources: General Secretary's report & Tasmanian Branch report, 19 September 1960, Federal Council, FMWU⁶⁰

Conclusion

Three issues at the end of the decade indicate the direction in which the branch was going. One was Leo's commitment to Federal Council that the branch would continue to grow with a target of between 900 and 1,000 members. The second was Ray Gietzelt's view that the federal financial subsidy should be able to end,⁶² and the third was the election of the Branch President, Bob Poke, to the Senate. Senator Poke was the first of the branch's officials to become a member of parliament and his election signalled the high profile role the FMWU Branch was seeking to play in the affairs of the Tasmanian Branch of the ALP. While the projected growth took some time to achieve the combination of federal office support and increased local organising capacity had laid the foundation for the FMWU Tasmanian Branch to develop into one of the state's most influential labour movement organisations.

The action in the branch's first decade which was to have most impact on its future was, however, the appointment of Leo Brown as its first full-time official. Leo Brown was to play a central role in the FMWU Branch for 40 years – as Branch Secretary, as President and in 'retirement' as an important behind the scenes presence. His role as a faction leader in the Tasmanian ALP Branch over many years of state ALP governments ensured that the union's voice was heard by political decision makers. This was industrially significant because so many of the branch's potential members were cleaners in the large government departments. Branch influence with ALP decision makers certainly made the job of gaining members and improving working conditions in these major areas of employment easier. It was also significant in terms of the factional battles within the ALP where the branch was strongly aligned with the Left. Eventually in the words of one former Premier, 'Leo Brown and the FMWU became without doubt the dominant influence in the Tasmanian ALP machine'.⁶³ But that is another story.

Michael Hess is Professor and Head of the School of Business, Australian Defence Force Academy. His work in related fields includes Unions Under Economic Development: Private Sector Unionism in Papua New Guinea (1992) and From Fragmentation to Unity: a History of the Western Australian Branch of the Federated Miscellaneous Workers Union (1989). He is currently working on a history of the FMWU in Tasmania.
<M.Hess@adfa.edu.au>

Endnotes

^*� This article has been peer-reviewed for Labour History by two anonymous referees. Unless otherwise stated, all interviews cited in this article were conducted by the author.

^1.� This article is a product of a larger project on the history of the Liquor Hospitality and Miscellaneous Workers Union (LHMU) in Tasmania. Primary sources for this history include holdings of the Federated Miscellaneous Workers Union (FMWU) national records by the Noel Butlin Archive Centre (NBAC), Australian National University, Canberra; documents held in storage by the Tasmanian Branch of the LHMU; and documents held by former officials of both the FMWU and the Federated Liquor and Allied Industries Employees Union (FLAIEU) or their families. As part of the project, the non-archived documents are being sorted and, where possible, those of historical significance are being deposited in the NBAC. In this article union documents are referred to by their NBAC references or as held by the LHMU or the families of former officials.

^2.� R. Gollan, The Coalminers of New South Wales: A History of a Union, 1860–1960, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1963.

^3.� James Hagan, Printers and Politics: a History of the Australian Printing Unions, 1850–1950, ANU Press, Canberra, 1966; Ken Buckley, The Amalgamated Engineers in Australia, 1852–1920, ANU Press, Canberra, 1968; Tom Sheridan, Mindful Militants: the Amalgamated Engineering Union in Australia, 1920–72, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1975.

^4.� John Merritt, The Making of the AWU, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1986.

^5.� Brian Fitzpatrick, and Rohan J. Cahill, The Seamen's Union of Australia: A History, Seamens Union of Australia, Sydney, 1981.

^6.� Gerry Griffin, White Collar Militancy: The Australian Banking and Insurance Unions, Croom Helm, Sydney, 1985. Lance Hill, From Subservience to Strike: Industrial Relations in the Banking Industry, Queensland University Press, St Lucia, 1982.

^7.� Two substantial histories of the FMWU are available. One is a book commissioned by the FMWU: Margo Beasley, The Missos: a History of the Federated Miscellaneous Worker's Union, Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 1996. The other is a PhD thesis: Chris Sheil, The Invisible Giant: A History of the Federated Miscellaneous Workers' Union of Australia 1915–1985, PhD thesis, Department of History, University of Wollongong, 1988. The account of the national organisation provided here summarises material from these studies with the addition of archival material held by the LHMU and the NBAC.

^8.� FMWU, NSW Branch, Secretary's reports, 1921–49, NBAC Z481.

^9.� FMWU, NSW Branch, Secretary's report for the half-year ending 31 December 1949; FMWU, NSW Branch, Secretary's report for the half-year ending 31 December 1950, LHMU document.

^10.� FMWU, NSW Branch, Minutes of the Board of Management, n.d. but 1950, LHMU document.

^11.� Tom Sheridan, Division of Labour: Industrial Relations in the Chifley Years 1945–1945, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1986, p. 12.

^12.� F.C. Parker, Miscellaneous Workers here are the facts behind the smear campaign against your union officials, FMWU, NSW Branch, LHMU document.

^12.� Broadsheet to members [of the] NSW Branch Watchmen's Section from the Group Permanent and Casual Watchmen in the interests of all Waterfront Watchmen, 1948, LHMU document.

^13.� These were typically four-page newsletters and ran to many editions. They were not specifically attributed to the Protest Committee but were 'authorised and printed by A.E. Swan, 276 Victoria Street, Kings Cross', LHMU documents, NBAC Z481.

^14.�The Block, no. 16, February 1952, NBAC Z481.

^15.�Ibid.

^16.�The Waterfront Watchman, no. 38, August 1952, NBAC Z481.

^17.�Sydney Morning Herald, 8 December 1953.

^18.� FMWU, NSW Branch, Secretary's report for the half-year ending 31 December 1950, NBAC Z481.

^19.�Ibid.

^20.� Dates for formal appointment to branch positions in this period are out of step with the reality – often by as much as a year, because the formalities of resignation and election often occurred well after a change actually took place.

^21.� Interview with Doug Howlett, former Secretary of the Tasmanian and NSW Branches of the FMWU, 27 September 2005.

^22.�Ibid.

^23.�Ibid.

^24.�Ibid.

^25.�Ibid., 10 October 2005.

^26.�Ibid.

^27.�The Mercury, 24 June 1952.

^28.�Ibid., 21 June 1952.

^29.�Ibid.

^30.� Interview with Doug Howitt, 10 October 2005.

^31.�Ibid., 27 September 2005.

^32.� Interview with Yvonne Howitt, 5 October 2007.

^33.� Interview with Doug Howitt, quoted in Beasley, The Missos, p. 34.

^34.� Interview with Doug Howitt, 10 October 2005.

^35.�Ibid., 18 November 2005.

^36.� FMWU, NSW Branch, Minutes of the Branch Executive, 2 December 1955, LHMU document.

^37.� Interview with Doug Howitt, 3 October 2007.

^38.�Ibid., 10 October 2005.

^39.� Report of Proceedings of the 1954 Annual Conference of the Australia Labor Party (Tasmanian Section) held at St John's Hall Launceston on Tuesday 9 March and succeeding days, ALP, Hobart, 1954, p. 7, FMWU documents, NBAC.

^40.�Ibid.

^41.� Interview with Doug Howitt, 3 October 2007.

^42.� FMWU, Minutes of meetings held by the Tasmanian Branch, 8 March, 5 May, and 10 May 1956, Brown family documents.

^43.� FMWU, Minutes of the meeting of the Tasmanian Branch, Hobart Trades Hall, 5 June 1956, Brown family document.

^44.� FMWU, General Secretary's report, Federal Council, 28 September 1959, Hobart, NBAC Z673 box no. 47.

^45.� Beasley, The Missos, p. 81.

^46.� FMWU, Minutes of the Tasmanian Branch Executive, held at the union office, 105 Macquarie Street Hobart, 11 October 1957, Brown family document.

^47.� FMWU, Minutes of the meeting of the Tasmanian Branch Executive, Hobart Trades Hall, 18 December 1957, Brown family document.

^48.� FMWU, Minutes of the meeting of the Tasmanian Branch State Executive, Hobart Trades Hall, 6 November 1958, Brown family document.

^49.� FMWU, General Secretary's report, Federal Council, 28 September 1959, Hobart, p. 40, NBAC Z673 box no. 47.

^50.� Interview with Ray Gietzelt (General Secretary FMWU 1955–84) 9 September 2005.

^51.�Ibid.

^52.� Tas Bull, Life on the Waterfront: An Autobiography, HarperCollins, Sydney, 1998, pp. 77 ff.

^53.� Personal information about Leo Brown comes from his family who have been generous in providing information, including access to family records.

^54.� Interview with Greg Brown, 2 February 2006.

^55.�Ibid.

^56.� FMWU, Minutes of the Tasmanian Branch State Executive, 6 November 1958, Brown family document.

^57.�Ibid.

^58.� FMWU, General Secretary's report 1959, p. 40, NBAC Z673 box no. 47.

^59.� FMWU, General Secretary's report, Federal Council, Fremantle, 19 September 1960, NBAC Z673 box no. 47; FMWU, Tasmanian Branch Report, Federal Council, Fremantle, 19 September 1960, NBAC Z673 box no. 50.

^60.� FMWU, Minutes of the meeting of the Tasmanian Branch State Executive, Hobart Trades Hall, 24 December 1959, Brown family document.

^61.� FMWU, General Secretary's report 1959, p. 39, NBAC Z673 box no. 47.

^62.� Interview with Michael Field, 12 July 2006.

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