From Chapter 8
Benefits
'Slow' workers
Providing benefits was only one of the compensation schemes that labourers developed to cushion their lot. They knew that those of them lucky enough to escape death or disablement were weakened by a thousand cuts and strains. Labourers were more likely than most wage-earners to be worn down. They were also the least likely to have earned enough to have savings. Few kept up a life insurance policy. Aged and invalid pensions were miserly, and rehabilitation or Superannuation unknown. Labourers, therefore, clung to whatever jobs they could around sites. Their unions exempted "slow" members from core provisions in the Awards to let them earn something, even to accept piece-rates for cleaning bricks at so much per 1,000.
From the nineteenth century, the ULPS had allowed members over 45 to cut whatever deal they could, so long as they upheld the Eight-Hour Day. The 1905 Queensland Compensation Act paid only a fraction of the entitlement to a worker with an infirm certificate.[1] The 1913 ABLF Log included "Permit work" for those over 50, or who had been incapacitated. To limit their numbers, the union approved who was eligible for the concession. (p. 21) In some industries, a worker had to rely on the union secretary for a permit, with no right of appeal. The NSW system operated the other way around. The Registrar of the State Arbitration Court granted the permit but the union secretary could then object if he suspected a scam. (p. 360)
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Unless policed by the organisers, permits for "slow workers" became a dodge for bosses. The concession opened the way to sweating when employers advertised for "men with permits". (p. 68) The bigger contractors worried that spec builders used "slow" workers to under-bid for contracts. Loughnan reported in 1913 that "a number of employers were getting cheap labour at the expense of their rivals." He gave an example where the union had granted permits to five men whom the contractor put to work flat out mixing mortar, four holding "their own with men in good physical condition." The MBA's representative interjected: "That is no good to us." (p. 361)
The members' demand for permits increased when work became scarce as did their willingness to accept whatever terms they could get.[2] Hence, by 1935, the Branch in Victoria decided to enforce its Awards. Loughnan noted that the MBA expressed "sympathy" for labourers who had been incapacitated or grown old in their service but when asked to put this kind-heartedness into practice "by employing the men in the erection of the building, they gave an evasive answer."[3]
"Slow" did not always mean old. In 1937, a 39-year old labourer with the Sydney Water Board was off work for 12 months after being hit on the head by a bucket. The Board took him back as on light duties which included looking after the "change houses, attending to showers, drying workers wet clothes, boiling water for meals, and doing any light laboring, odd jobs, or messages."[4]
From 1960, the ABLF reconsidered its provision for "slow workers" since mechanisation was increasing the range of tasks that they could perform.[5] Some machines reduced the stress and strain on bone and muscle, thereby extending the working lives of navvies.[6] On the other hand, machines intensified the pace of work so that older men found themselves at a new disadvantage. This rethinking of the category of "slow worker" was an early sign that labourers were lifting themselves out of the bottom end of the market for labour power. The Federation fought for its casual labour force to have the entitlements of permanent employees.[7]
To extend the earning life of its members, the Federation won paid holidays and portable long-service leave.[8] Superannuation came in the 1980s.[9] At all times, the union pushed for higher wages to compensate labourers for the time they lost following the job and during downturns in the cycle of construction. A higher wage-rate also made up for the shorter span of years during which a labourer could earn top money than did most tradesmen and professionals. No more than 15 percent of brickies' labourers continued after turning fifty.
The 1978 Award provided that aged and infirm workers be paid at a lower rate for no more than 12 months at a stretch. Such arrangements still needed the written approval of the Federation. The union pressed employers to keep jobs as hoist-drivers and "billy boy" for its older members. Some of the resistance to women labourers was because they took these positions away from injured or aging members.[10] Around the same time, union calls for full-time safety and first-aid officers provided chances for a few more labourers to stay on, compensating them for decades of body stress.
Queensland levied its members in the mid-1970s to provide Christmas hampers to retired members and their widows.[11] Gallagher blocked a move to make members with twenty years service in the industry pay union dues, arguing that their honorary status was little enough recognition for their hard labours. Was he thinking of his dad?[12]
When Jack Mundey stepped aside as NSW Branch Secretary to return to industry in September 1973 he was 42. By that age, most labourers had withdrawn from the trade or were seeking easy options on sites. Mundey had been a full-time official for the previous eleven years during which building operations had changed, his hands had softened, his muscles slackened. That long lay-off had protected his body from the "usual bangs and scrapes" so that he was in a better position to keep going than were many of his middle-aged members; however, his body had lost the tautness that they retained. He could have kept going as a "nipper" more surely than as a steel fixer. Mundey went back, got his photograph taken, but, as his wife commented: "He goes to the job - he just doesn't get there very often."[13] Those who mocked Mundey's reluctance to put in a full week's work ignored the toll that labouring took. As he had remarked: "Every builders' labourer wants to be something else. A man's a mug to be a builders' labourer. It's a bastard of a job."[14]