Australia, New Zealand and some islands of the South seas

by Frank G. Carpenter

This continent is also the home of the eight-hour day. It was established in Australia and New Zealand long before workers in other countries even began to demand it. Australians are so proud of this fact that they have put up a monument to remind posterity how its work day was shortened. I have seen most of the great monuments of the world; I have lived in the shadow of our own huge shaft in honour of George Washington, climbed the Pyramid of Cheops in Egypt, and beheld the splendour of the Taj Mahal in India. But never before have I seen anything like this monument in Melbourne, commemorating a victory for labour in its centuries of struggle with capital. It would never be noticed for its size or beauty, for it is merely a simple shaft of stone. Its significance comes from the three huge figure “8’s” at its top. These represent the slogan of Australian workmen of more than a generation ago—“eight hours’ work, eight hours’ play, and eight hours’ rest.” The “Three Eights” monument, as it is called, gives the key to the story of the hours of labour in Australia to-day, and the spirit which still seems to rule the people.

The agitation for the shorter working day began in Australia nearly seventy years ago, shortly after the gold fever first struck the country. Many of those who had come out to make their fortunes in nuggets found only disappointment, and had to look for other work. Most of these men drifted to Melbourne and Sydney, where they soon organized trade unions like those to which they had belonged in England. The workers in the building trades in New South Wales were the first to get their eight-hour day. In a comparatively short time it was generally adopted in all the states, and now forty-eight hours is the recognized maximum for a week’s work throughout Australia, although in some trades forty-four, forty-two, and even thirty-six hours are considered full time.

Recently there was a move in the Federal Parliament to legislate a forty-four-hour week throughout the Commonwealth, but the members of the Labour Party were not quite strong enough to carry the measure. The forty-four-hour week now generally prevails in Queensland, where the Labour Party is firmly in the saddle and rides all kinds of socialistic hobbies. The rallying cry is: “Cheap bread, cheap beef, and high wages.” In the attempt to realize the first two of these ideals the state runs twenty-two cattle ranches and fifty butcher shops. It catches fish and sells them at retail, operates a meat-packing plant, and has a big produce business selling direct to the consumer without the intervention of the middleman. It even runs a hotel of its own. Wages and hours are regulated by the government, which also owns and operates the railroads, the saw-mills, and the mines. There is a government savings bank with deposits of seventy millions of dollars from a population of seven hundred thousand: The state competes with private insurance companies and has lowered rates by twenty-five per cent.

When the labour unions began their campaign for shorter hours, workers in the goldfields were making such big pay that the general wage level was high, and the men were then satisfied with their earnings. Later the original slogan was enlarged until the “four sacred eights” of Australian labour were: “eight hours of work, eight hours of play, eight hours of rest, and eight bob a day.” But after a while, eight shillings, or two dollars, did not look so fair to the workers as the “living wage,” and so they began to go after that. How well they have succeeded may be gathered from the definition of a living wage as laid down by the New South Wales Court of Industrial Arbitration. It reads:

The living wage is standardized as the wage which still does neither more nor less than enable a worker of the class to which the lowest wage would be awarded to maintain himself, his wife, and two children—the average dependent family—in a house of three rooms and a kitchen, with food, plain and inexpensive, but quite sufficient in quantity and quality to maintain health and efficiency, and with allowance for the following other expenses: Fuel, clothes, boots, furniture, utensils, taxes, life insurance, savings, accident or benefit society, loss of employment, union contributions, books and newspapers, train and tram fares, sewing machine, mangle, school requisites, amusements and holiday, intoxicating liquors, tobacco, sickness and death, domestic help, unusual contingencies, religion or charity.

It is such a standard of living that the Australian labour unions are determined to maintain for the workers. So far they have been able not only to enforce most of their demands, but to have many of them written into the laws. Factories, shops, and stores are subject to all sorts of restrictions, and seem to be run quite as much in the interests of the workers in them as for their owners.

Each union has rigid rules and regulations governing the employment of its members, and generally they are upheld by the state courts for the arbitration of industrial disputes. In New South Wales, for example, the law gives preference to union men in employment. In one instance, an employer wanted a workman. Two men applied, one a unionist. But the employer chose the non-union man, believing him more competent for the job. For this the Arbitration Court fined him ten dollars, and he had to pay costs of as much more. The judge informed him that the court, and not the employer, must decide as to the competency of employees.

In another case some dock workers had made demands which a steamship company would not meet. The men did not strike, but, just when their work was most urgently needed, went on a picnic. To avoid such interruptions the company proposed to pay men to work by the week instead of by the day and offered a fair weekly wage. The unionists refused to accept these terms, whereupon the company employed non-union men, and the case went to the Arbitration Court. The judges ruled that the union members must be reinstated, and the company had to discharge the men it had hired to take their places.

At Sydney the union of dock workers is so strong that no steamship company dares employ a non-union man. But once the wharfingers, as they are called, went a step too far. In order to create a shortage of workers and force up wages they stopped taking in new members. The ship owners had the union brought before the Arbitration Court, which decided that, although the dock men might keep non-union men off the Sydney wharves, they must keep their books open to receive new members.

One more case: An oil company employed six lads under twenty-one to tighten up the hoops on some casks. The coopers’ union took the matter to the Arbitration Court, which upheld the men and declared this simple hammering was cooperage. The company was fined and had to discharge the youths and employ coopers at fifteen dollars a week to do boys’ work.