The Harvester Judgement, Women and the Union movement explores the history of H.V McKay who founded the Harvester Works and the implications for workers.

TRANSCRIPTION OF AUDIO

Chantal: Renegades of Sunshine - The Harvester Judgement 

Gen: Who was H. V. McKay? 

Chantal: A renegade - to some… but primarily an industrialist and capitalist.

Hugh Victor McKay ( H.V McKay) founded and built Sunshine Harvesters Works. H. V McKay moved his expanding factory from Ballarat to then Braybrook Junction. 

Gen:  as Sunshine was called then, in 1906. 

Chantal: It was said he did this to work freely outside jurisdiction and build an empire. 

Gen: The factory dominated the area and the suburb was named after his company “The Sunshine Harvester”.

Chantal: The Sunshine Harvester Works manufactured farming equipment that was revolutionary for its time. 

Gen: “ In 1920, It was the largest industrial enterprise in the Southern Hemisphere having a major impact on the social and economic development of Australia.” as abbreviated and quoted by Liza Dale-Hallet.  

Chantal: By 1926, the Sunshine Harvester Works covered 75 acres 

Gen: 30.4 hectares 

Chantal: of land in Sunshine. 

Gen: this many football fields.  

Chantal: As H.V McKay’s wealth increased, tension amongst workers also increased. It was said he owed workers in Ballarat unpaid salaries. 

Gen: In 1904, the Sunshine Harvester temporarily ceased work as the wages board introduced mandatory provisions for workers.  

Chantal: This mean’t that one apprentice had to be trained by two journeymen.

Gen: A journeyman was a trained moulder of Farming equipment and other sorts.  

Chantal: In 1906, the historical case between the Commonwealth vs McKay began. This case queried the Excise Tarriff Act. The Court determined that a fair and reasonable wage was to be determined according to the needs of a male worker… not according to the worker's value to the employer.

Gen: This was known as The Harvester Judgement which was successful in the High Court of Australia on the 8th of November, 1907. This fundamental judgment secured the minimum working wage for Australian male workers and was the foundation of the Fair Work Act 2009. It had huge social and political impact both in Australia and overseas. 

Chantal: However, the Harvester Judgment didn’t deter H V McKay. 

Gen: In 1911, The location of the H V McKay gardens was a site of conflict in the great 13 week strike. A mass meeting at Trades Hall was organised by harvester strikers.

Trade unions were concerned about the:

Chantal: 

• Limit on the amount of time spent in the toilet during work hours (the limit was 1 hour per fortnight

• Pin pricks

• Time card system

• compulsory contributions to the accident fund ( an accident fund being todays equealevant of employers contribution to Work Safe)

• Wages board had been slow in deciding on the increase in wages

• They wanted all employees to be in the union

Gen: what’s a Pin Prick?

Chantal: pin pricks happened when a machine wasn’t working properly. The inspectors were there to assist but were few and far between 

Gen: ah ha ok.  

Chantal: On one of the weeks of the strike, The Sunshine Tennis Club, which no longer exists, held a meeting for non-unionised workers. 

Gen: The Strike Committee caught wind of this and organised union members to go to the meeting  - 300 strikers and  50-60 supporters marched to the tennis courts. IMAGE OF TENNIS COURTS or sound of conflict? It was unclear what the union members said to the non-unionised members but it was a sign of defiance.

Chantal: The 13 week strike ended with small increases to wages. It was not in vain as the Footscray Independent reported …

Gen: and then after twelve months a radical change in the outlook of labour and a growing conviction that where work is hard and wearing, the rewards should be and must be greater than they have been in the past. 

Chantal: Back to the Harvester Judgement 

Interestingly, the women workers were not considered in the Harvester Judgment until 1912 when it was challenged in the Fruit Pickers Case.  The Rural Workers’ Union and the The Australian United Labourers’ Union bought a case against numerous fruit growers associations. The Fruit pickers case for equal pay for women was taken to court. The Rural workers Union and the South Australian United Labours Union bought a case that they lost. 

Gen: It was deemed that women didn’t do the same arduous work as men so therefore should not be paid equally.  

Chantal: Equal pay for equal work is still relevant today as it was over 115 years ago.

Gen: I have to confess.. 

Chantal: Power of numbers… 

Chantal: When it came to the Sunshine Harvester works, male unionist were against women working in the factory. “ Not rays of Sunshine” read the Argus in February of 1927 as male workers at a trades hall meeting threatened to strike.   However staunch women trade unionists like Miss M. Francis and Jean Daley advocated on behalf of the women workers.  

Gen: In March, 1927 a Royal Commission was sought to settle the dispute of women in iron trades.

Chantal: we’ve prepared a little reenactment based on fictional characters. 

Jean, Betty and Miss Shirley Green discuss life in the ammunitions factory in Sunshine during WWI.  

This was a time, due to the shortage of men, women entered factories ensuring production continued.  

Chantal: Smoko

Sound of machinery

Jean: Betty meet Miss Green, Shirley meet Betty, Betty works just over at Pottery Insulator  factory. Miss Green is our Union Rep. The Munition workers union.  Do you have a union rep yet?

Betty: (hesitant) no….(eek feeling) 

Jean: You’ve got to join.  Last month, Miss Green (Shirley indicates to call her by her maiden name) Shirley, Shirley because she’s also our shop steward stood up against this new forelady who was working the morning shift, timing toilet breaks can you believe it, anyway there was this young girl 13years old, her father is an invalid. She was working everyday, riding in on her little -push bike from Mooney Ponds, no matter the weather.  And when the Forelady told the young girl- ‘you better be back quick’, Miss Green, sorry Shirley, blew her top.

Betty: you did. 

Shirley: I did. John McKay from the Munition Workers Union backed me up too.

Jean: you were saying ‘she shouldn’t even be working, at 13.  (to Shirley) you did a good thing.  

Shirley: well, she should be in school. 

Betty: were you reported to the manager?

Shirley: Yes. I had to front up to the manager, state my case, and the girl was told to go to school.

Jean: and it backfired, the forelady got moved on.  And that’s why we need unions.  ok, The pay is almost worse than no work, but at least we’re heard. Have rights, of sorts.  

Betty: and what of the girl?

Jean: actually I don’t know if she ended up going to school, probably working in another factory.  

Chantal: this script was inspired by……..documents, interviews and reports that captured the life of female labourers working here in Sunshine during the 1930’s.  

Gen: Was the communist party strong around this time?

Chantal:  Yes, dissent continued at H M McKay with The Communist Party growing in Australia during the 1930’s. In 1932 The Argus reported a “Sunshine Militant” talking about the lack of hire of non-local workers and proclaimed “ Lift high the banner of liberty not only for your own sake but for the sake of our children growing up now, who will be forced into undreamed conditions if we fall duty to them, os our slogan must be “ The International for ever and forward without ceasing to Socialist Soviet Australia.”

Gen: If only politicians in power were this impassioned today? 

Gen: By 1945, Sunshine had its own Communist Party with a Women’s Committee. At a meeting it was suggested that there should be free milk for children and free whooping cough immunisations. There was an urgency for children care facilities for all the children of working women. And  places for children to play safety on the streets of their neighbourhood.

Chantal: Let us not forget the Time and Motion man. Published in the Young Women! Munitions Diary in 1985, Audrey McMaster quoted “The Time and Motion man was seen as a threat to workers’ conditions”. This made work harder particularly for women. This inspired a poem of discontent by Mrs. Haskell who worked in the Ammunition Factory 1930’s - 1960’s. 

Gen: So who were the renegades? 

Chantal: In this case it wasn’t one person but groups of people who were organised and unionised. The outcome of the Harvester Judgement had social and political change; that influenced workers rights and established the minimum wage. This lead to the role of women in industry and it all began here in Sunshine. 

END

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