Chapter 4 - Work on the Railways - Rail, Tram and Bus Union of NSW

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*On Wooden Rails <strong>Chapter</strong> 4 8/30/05 8:25 PM Page 128 On Wooden Rails - Celebrating 150 Years of <strong>Work</strong> on the NSW Railways “Locomotives and carriages get pretty dirty whilst in service, therefore head protection of some kind was often worn. Berets, whether home made or ex-army, were worn by some; others sported old felt hats; and many regularly made paper hats out of folded up newspapers…… when the oxygen stream cutting button was pressed to oxidise a horn stay or brake rigging nut or bolt, a shower of sparks and white hot metal spewed all around, so head protection and a good pair of long armed chrome leather gloves were desirable.” 6 Henry Lawson (poet and author) worked as a carriage painter at Hudson Brothers workshops at Clyde and his story, titled ‘Two Boys at Grinder Brothers’ provides a glimpse into the harsh working conditions and abuse of child labour during his time at Clyde. “Five or six half-grown larrikins sat on the cemented sill of the big window of Grinder Bros. Railway Coach factory waiting for the work bell, and one of the number was Bill Anderson – known as ‘Castor Hoil’ – a young terror of fourteen or fifteen. His boss was a sub-contractor for the coach-painting and always tried to find twenty minutes’ work for his boys just about five or ten minutes before the bell rang. He employed boys because they were cheap and he had a lot of rough work, and they could get under floors and ‘bogies’ with their pots and brushes, and do all the ‘priming’ and paint the trucks. His name was Collins, and the boys were called ‘Collins’ Babies’. It was a joke in the shop that he had a ‘weaning’ contract. The boys were all “over fourteen”, of course, because of the 128 Group of <strong>Work</strong>shop <strong>Work</strong>ers, 1934 Education Act. Some were nine or ten – wages from five shillings to ten shillings. It didn’t matter to Grinder Brothers so long as the contracts were completed and the dividends paid.” 7 In another story featuring one of the main characters from Two Boys at Grinder Brothers, another grim image is drawn: “In one of these years a paragraph appeared in a daily paper to the effect that a constable had discovered a little boy asleep on the steps of Grinder Bros factory at four o’clock one rainy morning. He awakened him and demanded an explanation. The little fellow explained that he worked there and he was frightened of being late; he started work at six, and was apparently greatly astonished to hear that it was only four. The constable examined a small parcel which the frightened child had in his hand. It contained a clean apron and three slices of bread and treacle. The child further explained that he woke up and thought it was late, and didn’t like to wake mother and ask her the time ‘because she’d been washin’. He didn’t look at the clock because they ‘didn’t have one.’” The character of the fourteen year old Arvie Aspinall dies in both stories from exposure to the wet and cold, coming and going to ‘Grinder’s’, and Collins [the contractor], as Lawson put it, ‘was one ‘baby’ short the next day.” 8 “In the Smiths Shops winter was pretty pleasant because the forge fires gave good relief from the cold. The large round holes in the top of the buildings would filter in a shaft of light, the appearance of a floodlight and as the sun rose higher, the beam moved across the floor. I remember it was like a floodlight on the old dirt floors and in the air, millions of sparkling fine particles of coal dust and smoke haze shimmered like the colours of the rainbow !” “In summer, however, the shops would be almost unbearably hot. Many of the jobs throughout the workshops involved working in front of a hot furnace, over a roaring forge fire, or in the superheated confines of a locomotive’s fire box. These could be unpleasant conditions….” 9 6 Richard Butcher, The Great Eveleigh Railway <strong>Work</strong>shops, Sydney, 2004, p 205 7 Henry Lawson, Two Boys at Grinder Bros, from A Campfire Yarn: Complete <strong>Work</strong>s 1885-1900, p 199 8 Henry Lawson, Arvie Aspinall’s Alarm Clock, from A Campfire Yarn: Complete <strong>Work</strong>s 1885-1900, p 201 9 Butcher, op.cit., p 206 <strong>Chapter</strong> 4 - <strong>Work</strong> on the Railways
*On Wooden Rails <strong>Chapter</strong> 4 8/30/05 8:25 PM Page 129 At the Centre of Community Life Eveleigh workshops also provide a clear illustration of the distinctive role of the railways in their communities and the links between work, communities, industrial and political activity. Their position as a major employer contributed to the growth of the working class suburbs around them, and the life within those communities. It has been noted earlier in this book that the relationship between the workshops and the political life of the state was particularly strong. With more than 25 parliamentarians coming out of the workshops, among them Premiers McGowan, McKell and Cahill. This relationship cannot be separated from the close community ties, the religious and social networks and kinship that existed in these neighbourhoods. The railway communities around the workshops not only supplied the parliaments with significant numbers of members, they directly shaped and influenced their political views and were electorally well placed to hold them accountable at the ballot box. The networks that made up the ‘railway family’ in these communities, were not only political in nature. The neighbourhood, sporting, and religious engagements all went to the shaping of the identities of the neighbourhoods, the people who lived in them and in turn, the values and practices that went with them into the workplace. In situations where generations of workers are employed in the same location (fathers, grandfathers, sons, brothers, cousins, often all working in the workshops), there is a particularly strong bond between the issues of the workplace and those of the community around it. Stan Jones is a typical example of the closeness and overlap of these networks. He went to work in Eveleigh in the mid-1920s, where he “joined his father who was a boilermaker, and his uncle and cousins who were moulders and machinists. ……. Neighbourhood networks were fundamentally affected by such overlapping bonds of family, class and workplace. …Like his father, Jones was born in Redfern where he lived with his family in Wells Street. His aunt lived next door, while his grandfather and other members of his extended family lived in Eveleigh Street, almost immediately behind.” 10 On Wooden Rails - Celebrating 150 Years of <strong>Work</strong> on the NSW Railways These networks also extended to a range of social activities, including parties, dances, church meetings and sporting events. The identity of the workshop workers seems to be as much defined by their experiences in the workshops, as in their local communities and neighbourhood. They proudly celebrated their common work, their sporting heroes and their civic and political leaders. Red Square and <strong>Work</strong>shop Politics <strong>Work</strong>shop Apprentices The uses of space for industrial meetings at the workshops were a powerful means for the workers, their unions and political leaders, to not only cultivate a sense of cross-sectional class identity and solidarity, but also as an act of defiance and claim of territory and terrain. Particularly after the events during the 1917 general strike, in which Eveleigh and the Randwick Tram workshops played a central organising role and the subsequent formation of rank and file shop committees, workplace meetings staked a claim on the industrial space. During the 1920s, the Australian Railways Union was holding regular gate meetings, then lunch-hour meetings within the workshops. These general meetings of the shop committees were not limited to sectional or work area specific issues, making them dangerous from the perspective of the Railway Commissioners. 11 Many of the meetings were deemed ‘political’ by the Railway Commissioners and prohibited union officials from addressing such meetings on railway premises in 1930. As Taksa describes, this gave rise to a very interesting and bold use of public space immediately outside or at the entrances to the railway premises, as the sites for protest and industrial action. Politicians such as Scullin and Jack Lang chose the Eveleigh gates to deliver their policy and election speeches in the 1920s and 1930s. 10Lucy Taksa, Labour Politics at the Eveleigh Railway <strong>Work</strong>shops, in Markey (ed), Labour and Community: Historical Essaya, University of Wollongong Press, 2001, p62 11Lucy Taksa, ‘Pumping the Life-Bl;ood into Politics and Place’: Labour Culture and the Eveleigh Railway <strong>Work</strong>shops, Labour History, No 79, November 2000, Pp 11 – 34 <strong>Chapter</strong> 4 - <strong>Work</strong> on the Railways 129
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Chapter 4 - Work on the Railways - Rail, Tram and Bus Union of NSW

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