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May-Jun 2008
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Maritime Workers Make History
Maritime workers have played a lead role in war and peace times - in battles including the Spanish Civil War, East Timor, both world wars and the Cold War. History books like Rupert Lookwood's War on the Waterfront give full accounts of other battles like the Pig iron bans on exports to Japan in the lead up to WWII and action against the colonial armies attempt to abort the birth of Indonesia and Vietnam in the forties and fifties. Maritime workers have also fought for social justice at home and abroad for Aboriginal causes, against apartheid in South Africa or French nuclear bans in the Pacific.
Related Articles
- Bombs, bans & East Timor
- Harry Bridges, the Australian wobblie who made history in the US
- Big blues: the industrial disputes that shaped the union
These disputes are all recorded in the published histories of the union and are available from national office tel 02 9267 9134
- 1878: The Boomerang, Victoria & Coonbara, Chinese guestworkers, riots & the roots of the white Australia policy
- 1890: The Bitter Fight, mounted troopers, maritime workers & non union labour
- 1925: cancellation of the Seamen's Award & strike
- 1928: Slaughter & the slain - the death of Alan Whittaker & the waterfront strike that nearly broke the union
- 1935: Government attack on labour, the Dethridge Award and the Dog Collar Act
- 1943: Blue Murder, Wittenoom, the wharves & death by asbestos
- 1949: the Coal Strike, communism, protests & prison
- 1953: Super blue & the campaign for pensions
- 1953: Operations Alien, ASIO & soldiers on the wharves
- 1954: The Tait inquiry
- 1956: Hursey groupers - the longest running dispute in Australin trade union history
- 1961: Containerisation, mechanisation and membership decline
- 1962: Don't buy Ampol campaign, strike to win Australian crew jobs on tankers
- 1970: national waterfront stoppage & overtime bans
- 1989-91: No Blue: waterfront & shipping reform under Labor
- 1998: War on the Waterfront: a resource centre for those studying the Government/Lang Corp conspiracy, mass sackings & Patrick dispute
- The Spanish Civil War, maritime workers enlist in the Red Brigade
- Pig iron Bob, pig iron bans
- Cold War, the Petrov Affair, Document J & the Hursey dispute
- The Radnor, Boonaroo & Jeparit: the Vietnam War, the peace movement & a moratorium on arms shipments
- Stockmen, strikes and schools - union support for Aboriginal Australians
- Black bans on white Africa - maritime workers against apartheid
- Green bans: Maritime workers strike against uranium exports and for a nuclear free Pacific.
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