Without bosses by Sam Oldham

Author:Sam Oldham [Oldham, Sam]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Australia & New Zealand
ISBN: 9780648760306
Google: obffzAEACAAJ
Publisher: Interventions Incorporated
Published: 2020-03-16T03:08:14+00:00

CHAPTER 6

Worker and Union Ownership

Worker cooperatives, where independent enterprises are owned and controlled by their workers, appeared in Australia in the 19th century, reaching the peak of their popularity in the 1860s. At the same time, consumer cooperatives (stores owned by community members or consumers themselves) were more common. These were inspired significantly by the British Rochdale cooperative, a worker-owned store established in 1844 to protect low-income industrial workers from price gouging. The militancy of workers in this period, inspired by early socialist ideas, was an important factor in the initial growth in cooperatives. Cooperatives have remained a feature of economic life in Australia, although they declined after the 1860s. Agricultural cooperatives, based on countercultural ideas, were set up in the late 1960s. They were a related, although different, phenomenon, concerned more with escaping capitalism than reforming it. One sympathetic historian of the back-to-the-land cooperative movement in the 1960s writes:

the social ferment of the 1960s has given prominence to the idea of cultural, as opposed to political, radicalism … for cultural radicals it is the self-directed living of life (rather than any contest for power) that is the primary aim.93

Rather than just dropping out of the system, trade unionists and union cooperatives had often sought to change it.

NYMBOIDA

On a number of occasions, rank-and-file workers not only seized control of their enterprises; they also seized ownership. This constituted the most radical challenge by far to the power of capital and the state during the 1970s. These acts of direct appropriation, while isolated, represented a radical departure from ordinary trade unionism, providing a bridge between capitalist ownership and direct ownership by workers. Direct appropriation evolved out of work-ins and sit-ins. The work-ins especially raised questions about the need for capitalist ownership. Such questions were often in the background during major work-ins. At the 1972 South Clifton work-in, for example, the local Miners’ Federation lodge demanded union ownership of the mine, and some workers even raised ideas of socialism. One miner said of his experience of self-management: ‘It gives you a bit of an idea of how it would be to work under socialism, without bosses.’94

For some unionists, worker-ownership was perceived as a necessary extension of control. Three years after the South Clifton work-in, workers at Nymboida Collieries, a small coal mine based in the isolated NSW town of Grafton, took a radical new step. In February 1975, the company announced the closure of the mine and the dismissal of all workers, citing slowing profitability. It seemed unlikely that the workforce would receive severance pay. A meeting held in the local pub resolved to continue work the following Monday. Immediate support came from the union movement and the broader public. The Newcastle Trades Hall Council declared that the action was an example to other unionists facing sackings, and officials of the Miners’ Federation actively endorsed the action. Following failed negotiations, the union argued that, because the company was absent from meetings, it ‘has abdicated from any authority which it might have claimed at Nymboida and has vacated its ownership by default.

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