F E A T U R E S

Interview: Life After Keating
Labor's foreign affairs spokesman Kevin Rudd looks at the world and wonders what might have been ...

Industrial: That Friday Feeling
Anthony Stavropoulos has been working six days a week for the last eight years and now he wants his weekends back. “Remember that Friday feeling?” he asks. “You just don’t get that anymore.”

Bad Boss: Begging to Work
They may put themselves about as the Saints of the Fourth Estate, but bosses at the Big Issue Magazine have been nominated by their own vendors for this month’s Tony award.

Organising: Project Pilbara
Sydney University’s Bradon Ellem reports on how unions are bouncing back in Rio territory

Unions: Off the Rails
The Federal Government is attempting to turn NSW Railways into a political football with a proposal that threatens the safety of freight and passenger trains in NSW and life in our rail Towns, writes Phil Doyle.

International: Brazil Turns Left
Union stalwarts throughout the American hemisphere are cheering the election of Lula – the peanut seller and shoeshine boy, turned union leader - who has been elected as the first working-class President of Brazil.

Environment: Brown Wash
Stuart Rosewarn argues the Johannesburg Sunmmit was a gripping showcase of Australia’s lack of a strategic vision.

History Special: Learning from the Past
Ray Markey looks at union membership growth in the 1880s & 1900s to argue that today’s unions must engage to grow.

Corporate: Will the Bullying Backfire?
Job insecurity, unemployment, a growing gap between rich and poor, massive global poverty and environmental danger are the big issues for the protests at the World Trade Organisation meeting in Sydney.

Technology: Danger Lurks For The Passive
If unions fail to exploit opportunities on the web to gain members, other organisations are likely to fill the void and provide services to workers on the internet.

History: In Labour’s Image
Neale Towart looks at a long-overdue initiative to around NSW through the eyes of the workers.

Politics: Without Power Or Glory
South Coast contributor Rowan Cahill gives his take on the Cunningham by-election result.

History Special: A 'Cosy Relationship'
Barbara Webster looks at Rockhampton between 1916 – 1957 to debunk the ‘dependence’ theory of trade union growth.

Culture: Blood Stains the Wattle
Former Queensland Treasurer Keith De Lacey has turned up in print with a rollicking tale of life during the famous Mt Isa strike of the 60s.

Satire: Iraq Pre-empts Pre-emptive Strike
Saddam Hussein has launched a pre-emptive strike on the United States to prevent it from pre-emptively striking Iraq first.

Poetry: The Executive Pay Cut
Executives accepting pay freezes, or even pay cuts? This outrageous proposal has been put on the table by some capitalists themselves, and taken up by our bard.

Review: Time Out
When a family man invents a new life after losing his steady job, Tara de Boehmler watches his charade escalate until there is no turning back.

C O L U M N S

Month In Review
War and Pieces of Work
The Bali Tragedy dominated the news this month, leaving many questioning the motive and wondering if this is fallout from Australia’s unquestioning support of George Dubya’s ‘War On Terror’.

The Soapbox
Beware of Greeks Bearing Historical Allusions
Roland Stephens argues that the current popular line that the USA is a modern day version of the Roman Empire is flawed.

The Locker Room
Over The Fence Is Out
Phil Doyle warms up for another season of hard hitting and fast bowling in the park, making the rules up as he goes along.

Indigenous
The Sea of Hands
Australians for Native Title and Reconciliation are five years old. Spokeswoman Dameeli Coates addressed labor Council to mark the event.

Postcard
Tokyo Youth Call
Tokyo unions are relying on young organisers to infiltrate workplaces as part of a major organising campaign, which focuses on non-unionised companies, reports Mary Yaager.

Bosswatch
Still Crazy After All These Years
With new research suggests CEO carry similar personality traits to psycho-paths, the AGM season is proving that there’s little room for logic in our nation’s board rooms.

E D I T O R I A L

Why The User Should Pay
Unions have often been the victims of the user-pays ethos – the pointy end of the assault on the State by the Top End of Town that has left our public sector looking like the poor relation to the corporates.

N E W S

Bargaining Fees In the Dock

Deadly ‘Slave Labour’ Racket Exposed

Zoo Workers Buck Indecent Proposal

Cabinet Takes Stick To Abbott's Carrot

Cyber Action Behind Hilton Win

Aussies Back On Board

City Workers To Help Country Cousins

Sour Taste for Wine Workers

Government Grounds Ansett Levy

TAB Workers Winners as Cup Strike Averted

Aussie Post Gets Mail On Sick Leave

Council Backs Community Radio Venture

First Steps to Compo Clean-Up

Workers Out! Conference Opens In Sydney

Aussie Union Rep Power, Yes Please: TUC

New Burma Shame File

Activists Notebook

L E T T E R S

WHAT YOU CAN DO

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In Labour’s Image

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Darling St Balmain may now be jammed with coffee drinkers and fine dining establishments, but a different way of walking the road highlights the labour heritage.

The Active Service Brigade held meetings at "Unity Square (corner of Beattie St) in the 1890s, the Socialist Labour Party met at the corner of National St in the 1920s, the old Pioneer Hall at Nelson St was used by the Communist Party, the Labour League, daily speaker classes went on and the ALP Federal Council met there in 1931. The list goes on down the street.

You can find this sort of information with which you can plan your walking tours of Sydney and a tour of NSW labour heritage sites in "Places, Protests and Memorabilia: the Labour Heritage Register of NSW" by Terry Irving and Lucy Taksa.

The Register "aims to elicit an active engagement with heritage as a living, historically based aspect of public life. Live it by walking it after reading this guide, have it with you as you travel so that when you arrive in Maitland you can easily race the places of significance to workers then and now. Its not just meeting sites, but also factories, pubs, houses and marketplaces. If your own town or a site you know about isn't there then you can let the authors know so that the register becomes a living entity in itself, and can develop to a comprehensive coverage of NSW as a labour site.

As Jack Mundey pointed out at the launch, the union movement in Australia has one of the proudest histories of any union movement in the world, but too little is preserved, recorded or celebrated on the street. There are plenty of books and articles from out active historians and industrial relations people, but no record (until now) of the places themselves that have been part of the shaping of the labour movement.

The register also includes a database of collections of historical material held by people and some institutions in NSW with the aim and hope that these collections can one day form the core of a labour heritage museum in Sydney, a central site where people can learn about labour's past and its present and future directions. Terry Irving commented at the launch in 1996 of the project that developed into this printed register that it is part of "bringing labour history to the public mind" and promoting walking and looking with the labour history of streets and localities in mind is a great way to do this. The emphasis of your walk and touring using the Register would necessarily be in the Hunter Valley, the Illawarra, Broken Hill, Central Sydney and some suburbs however, a reason to burrow through your local archives and see what your locality could add.

Bob Gould, handed all those who went to the launch of the Register in the Trades Hall Banner Room his critique. Apart from debates about the philosophical and methodological approaches to such a register, Bob 's comments can serve to expand the Register. It can be part of a broad labour project that all those in the movement can be thankful to Terry Irving and Lucy Taksa for getting starting.

The Banner Room itself holds the material that has been the most significant recovery of heritage material. The banners are wonderful examples of workers displaying their skills but as the authors note, they are removed from any sort of context and access is difficult.

So what is labour heritage?

The authors see it as "the part played by working people in making our communities, building our labour movement and establishing a democratic and fair society....It is as diverse as working people themselves; it reflects the lives of women, men, young people and adults, the indigenous people, the immigrants from many countries, as well as those born in Australia."

The diversity of people, event and place is seen on the first page of the labour precincts - towns section where we see listed a co-operative butcher shop in Abermain, a Masonic Hall in Armidale, Dugan's Shakespeare Hotel in Bourke. Within particularly well known labour towns we an also see the variety of places registered. In Broken Hill we have the Trades Hall, but also a newspaper office, a printery, the cemetery and a Memorial Rose Garden.

Why is a sense of place important? Michael Pearson and Sharon Sullivan in "Looking After Heritage Places" argue that a "sense of place" - an identity - is something all communities need, and indeed it can be argued... that a principle cause of alienation, crime and dysfunction is the loss of this sense of identity." These points are behind the reasons why the idea of a labour precinct is used in the Register as an organizing method and an object of studies to come. Peter Sams referred to a need to re-establish the notion of a labour precinct around Trades Hall. There are plenty of sites of significance around the Sussex St, Dixon St, Goulburn St area.

A precinct is more than "simply a place where working people live and labour.... Where there are residential and employment features of a precinct, it is a political space. It provides spatial identity for the labour movement, both as a subject for its own political efforts and as an object of its opponents' efforts. It is formed therefore as much by its own internal processes that mobilize the movement in and through this political space as by its interactions with the local and central state in response to the need to represent and protect the movement's working-class citizens, wherever they work or dwell."

Many localities are seeking to preserve their industrial heritage but the labour heritage must be distinguished from this gazing at particular sentimental sites. These efforts do help with established a labour heritage however, as people realise that certain environments are in peril, and the people have made these environments, they are not rock formations, but built places where people have interacted for particular purposes.

Heritage is "inherently political" as Raphael Samuel has pointed out.

As Irving and Taksa conclude, "This Register represents a first tentative step towards identifying our State's labour heritage. ...It provides a source for historical research and a basis for celebrating the labour movement's founding role in our society's history and the lives of ordinary working people. ...We hope the project simply marks the beginning of other activities, which will recognize the importance of labour heritage." The Labour Heritage Register is necessary to "ensure that a collective memory of labour traditions is retained and passed down to our children...[and] continue that tradition of active and critical citizenship."

Places, Protests and Memorabilia: the Labour Heritage Register of New South Wales by Terry Irving and Lucy Taksa. Published by the Industrial Relations Research Centre, University of NSW (UNSW Studies in Australian Industrial relations no. 43) 2002

Available from the IRRC at the University of NSW Sydney 2052

© 1999-2002 Workers Online
Workers Online is a resource for the Labour movement
provided by the Labor Council of NSW
URL: http://workers.labor.net.au/features/200211/c_historicalfeature_register.html
Last Modified: 15 Nov 2005