Item 04: Memoirs of a Colonial Boy by Robert Joseph Stewart, ca. 1971 - Page 417
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[Page 417]
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office on correspondence and organisation of new sections of the work, and the other half motoring along the South Coast roads amid some of the World's best, and unspoilt, coastal scenery, on tours of inspection; staying overnight in comfortable tourist hotels, mostly at Kiama, Nowra and Ulladulla. The Assistant Engineer and I were each provided with a motor car, which was serviced and maintained at Government expense.
The Wollongong-Port Kembla area had not yet been greatly developed industrially, but really big enterprises were under way and it was a time of very full employment and the turnover of labour in our gangs was really excessive. The State Labour Bureau in Sydney was unable to supply many men, and finally agreed that all unskilled labourers should be recruited locally. These came under the Australian Workers Union, the biggest one of all, and the basis rate of pay was 2/3d an hour for a fortyfour-hour week worked five days. But there were small increments for special tasks, such as bitumen spreading and quarry work and bad conditions such as working in wet or very dusty places.
There was, I thought, insufficient margin for skill as our bridge-carpenters, highly skilled men who had to be able to read plans and had to provide their own expensive hand-tools, were paid only 3/-d an hour under their award. The roller drivers who had considerable responsibility and had to do all running maintenance on their machines and keep them working got about the same wages.
Though the A.W.U. was a very big powerful and militant union and frequently challenged an employer's interpretation of the rather complicated award, its representatives were usually reasonable fellows. Unfortunately, a communist cell of about a score of hotheads, including a ganger, were a constant source of trouble, and precipitated stop-work meetings on the slightest pretext, irrespective of what the majority of the men thought. It was amazing how so few men could domineer so many decent satisfied fellow-workers. At one stage the local A.W.U. representative, one of our tool sharpeners, came to me to complain that those "commos" were bullying some of the men into paying