Pensions for Veterans

From Pensions for Veterans by WWF film unit

Walk, walk, walk. Keep on walking old men. Leave your job and where will you walk to? Where will you go? What waits you in the city you've served so long and so well? Infested tenant rooms to rot out your last days? Charity on a sick bed? Aimless wandering not knowing where your next decent meal comes from? What awaits you old man but misery? Veterans work on while they have the strength in preference to a life of poverty.

This was life before superannuation. Life captured on camera in the fifties film - Pensions for Veterans - produced by the Waterside Workers' Federation Film Unit in 1953.

It was a time when men came to work on the wharves each day crippled with age, illness and injury, men in their sixties and seventies lumping 200 pound sacks of coal, frozen lamb carcass and asbestos. It was the same on the ships. Maritime workers could not afford otherwise. There was no superannuation. No pension to retire on. You worked until you dropped. Or you starved.

At the time 1500 Waterside Workers' Federation members were over the age of 60 - veterans of the waterfront who had laboured 30, 40 and even 50 years. Lung disease was widespread from the dusty clouds in ships' holds, along with hernias from heavy loads, broken bones from falls and premature old age.

Yet that year five companies, including P&O and Patrick, made 40 million pounds in profits.

It was in 1953 that the union first mobilised its members in the struggle for superannuation.

Federation leaders Big Jim Healy, Tom Nelson, Dutchy Young and others led a delegation of veterans to Canberra to meet with the minister for labour. They demanded a fund to finance a pension for veterans - 8 pounds a week after 20 years in the industry and having reached the age of 65 - a fund financed by a levy on employers.

The veterans returned from the capital to carry on the fight until their demands were met. Rank and file workers went into action from White Bay to Woolloomooloo - 6,000 wharfies. They met to endorse the campaign. It is all documented on film:

The right to an industrial pension is the right of every working man. The young men of today are the veterans of tomorrow. These veterans do not ask for grudging charity, nor do they want the grinding toil of the wharves. They only ask for their just rights, a peaceful place in the sun. Surely it is the nation's responsibility that these men spend their remaining years with decency and dignity. They have served the community long and well. The nation owes them a debt. It is up to you to see that that debt is paid.

Miners and maritime workers were the first in Australia to win superannuation outside the public service. And it did not come easy. It was 1967, 15 after the Sydney Branch commissioned the Pensions for Veterans film and first rallied waterside workers around the country to fight for workers' superannuation, before it was finally won.

Until the mid sixties the union wanted the shipowners to pay the lot. They bussed to Canberra and they stopped the wharves. But the bosses would not budge.

"We wanted a superannuation fund, that's when we started the big campaign," veteran Adelaide wharfie Rex Munn recalls. "It was a full scale bloody war. Five Christmases in a row they forced us into a fight. They knew it was at a time when it hurt us like buggery. We couldn't buy presents for our kids. They were tough times. We all had families and were building homes."

In the sixties technological change brought a renewed campaign. Jobs were dwindling, membership was in decline. Whole ports were being lost to mechanisation in Queensland and South Australia as sugar was bagged and loaded by conveyer belts.

The union argued super was a matter of social justice. The social service pension was inadequate and the industry was responsible for workers forced out by ill health or mechanisation. Workers should be able to retire with dignity, especially as shipping line profits were massive. Waterside workers in the US, UK, Italy, New Zealand, Japan and Canada all had pensions. And the WWF had successfully negotiated schemes with two shipping companies, Star of Norway and the Australian National Line.

Teams of workers went to rural areas in a bid to win the support of communities. They took with them a special supplement of the Maritime Worker - 45,000 copies to be distributed to the public.

"When a worker spends a lifetime within an industry, that industry must bear some responsibility for the years following his useful working life," WWF General Secretary Charlie Fitzgibbon wrote.

Fremantle branch welfare officer J Dix, wrote of the poverty of retirement. It was his job to visit the aged and ailing offering whatever help the union could afford - he took cakes, biscuits, fruit, sweets, shaving cream, razor blades, cigarettes, tobacco, matches, papers and a few bob for a shout to the beds of veteran wharfies. He found them in the Home of Peace Institute for the terminally ill, the Braille Home for the Aged Blind, the paraplegic ward of the Royal Perth Hospital, Sir Charles Gardner chest hospital, Claremont Hospital for the mentally ill and the Sunset aged men's home in Nedlands, overlooking the Swan River.

"Just two or three pounds a week extra would be a godsend," he said. "Enough to buy that extra bit of tobacco and some of the minor luxuries of life."

The union argued it was reasonable to get bosses to pay.

"Freights on imports are clearly extortionate," Fitzgibbon said. "If waterside workers discharged and loaded cargo for nothing, freights could only be reduced by a fraction per ton and Australian export producers would still be under threat of shipping combines pricing them out of the world markets."

In February 1965 stop work meetings in all major ports demanded immediate and continual industrial action in support of the Federation's claims for industrial pensions.

Brisbane branch members resolved "responsibility for any disruption to industry now rests squarely on the shoulders of the shipowners, who know pensions for waterside workers will be won, and our demand is now!"

At the same time the union launched an attack on the ship owners for "exorbitant freight rates charged by overseas shipping cartels that drain the life blood of the Australian economy." The campaign also included demands for an Australian national overseas fleet.

A Sydney team of activists toured the central west, northwest and northern parts of NSW. They bombarded radio stations, newspapers, factories and primary producers. In the city they visited more than 50 factories.

A mass deputation set out for Canberra in March.

But Liberal PM Billy McMahon retaliated by calling a government inquiry. When the matter went to the Commission the employers refused any proposal for a non-contributory pensions scheme.

Stopwork meetings around the country voted for 24 hour strikes every two weeks. The courts hit the union with 5000 pound fines and the government introduced draconian amendments to the Stevedoring Industry Act so they could deregister the union and impose 100 pound fines or six months prison on individual workers.

McMahon also began a propaganda campaign to 'crack down on criminals on the wharves.' ASIO was brought in. ACTU support dropped and the union withdrew.

But not for long. In 1967 the WWF adopted new tactics. Containerisation was taking hold. Jobs were being shed. But work was also becoming more skilled. The employers wanted permanency.

It was the same everywhere. On the US west coast, former Australian seafarer Harry Bridges led the campaign for members of his ILWU to get pensions and permanency, but accepted jobs would go. The WWF made Harry and the ILWU their model.

At the 1967 national conference Harry Bridges was guest of honour. The union adopted a new policy of pensions and permanency, with employers and workers both contributing.

In April the national stevedoring industry conference made up of the union, ACTU, employers and government representatives agreed to a voluntary pension for workers in all major ports. It amounted to $240 for each full year of membership in the scheme on contributions of 65 cents to $1.70 week. Employers would meet the contributions on a ratio of 60/40, paying 100 per cent for years of service back to 1942.

The agreement also included compulsory retirement at 65, early retirement at 60, redundancy provisions, better long service leave and permanent jobs.

At the time it was controversial. Many delegates campaigned against permanency. Being employed by a company would mean less money. Workers would belong to a company rather than the union, they argued. But few were to regret the move. Idle time became the trend of the coming decades and most workers came to value the job security they had won.

The pension plan trust deed, establishing a retirement fund for waterside workers, was signed in Sydney in October 1967.

SERF Restructuring

In 2004 National Secretary Paddy Crumlin, Deputy Jim Tannock and SERF directors negotiated a $100 plus super surplus redistribution among members and restructured SERF so the majority of members moved from defined benefits to accumulation benefits.

SERF is now a $1.5 billion super fund, with 15,350 members. The March 2006 Rainmaker survey has put SERF at the top again in its comparison of the best performing industry super funds. SERF came first out of 123 funds for performance of the default option over the year ending March 1 and first again out of 114 funds over three years.

"We've done remarkably well," said SERF CEO Garth Hunt. "It's something we're proud of and the members are tremendously proud of. They have a sense of ownership in the fund."

"The change came after nearly four years of tough talks with the stevedoring companies and followed the withdrawal of the retirement and redundancy agreement for workers and stevedoring employers in the late nineties," said Paddy Crumlin. "But the results speak for themselves. The new scheme provides for higher employer contributions based on total earnings, not just for a handful, but for everyone, including casuals as well. The upshot is enhanced benefits for all stevedoring workers.

"With changes in investment earnings since then, if we didn't move we'd be still arguing with the employers over who gets what," he said. "Now it's easy to work out. We've got it!"

Now any surplus from fund earnings effectively goes directly to members.

"Under a defined benefit the surplus had to be negotiated each time," said Jim Tannock. "And the employers got a chunk. Now any fund investment earnings go straight to the members' accounts. They can see the growth each week."

"Super was one of the union's greatest achievements. Second to none," said SERF Chairperson John Coombs. "Except for the silvertails, I doubt you'd find any worker who has the potential to retire with the sort of money a wharfie goes out on."

Thanks to the old WWF film unit the struggle for wharfie's super is recorded for all to see.

Copies of Pensions for Veterans are available on VHS compilation of 10 WWF films for $15. It will also be available on DVD from July.