1951 was post war and the country was booming economically, for this reason the cost of living was rising substantially. The federation of Labour took out a general wage order through the Arbitration Court and promised everyone in the unions covered by this court to a 15% pay rise. This was meant to include the watersiders, but the Waterfront Industry Commission was in control of the watersider’s wages, they broke this promise of a pay rise and said that the watersiders can live off over time and get paid for that.The watersiders were already working 15 hour days at a time so they refused to work overtime, for this they were locked out of the wharf and our ports around the country came to a stand-still.
The watersider’s reaction to this was to try and change the policy of the lockout and get their 15% pay rise. The governments’ reaction to the ‘strike’ by watersiders was to call a State of Emergency and call in the current servicemen (navy, army) to work on the wharves so that New Zealand was still getting their essential supplies.The perspective that is being dealt with in this situation as this is a political issue; this means that was relating to government policy making as distinguished from administration or law. This affects the issue because it was a government policy made by the Arbitration Court to give all unions protected by it a 15% pay rise so that they can live more comfortably within the rising cost of living, but the watersiders did not receive it because their industry commission were the ones who controlled their pay and whether they should get a pay rise or not.The political is perspective is correct because both sides of this fight were fuelled by political reasoning.
The watersiders wanted the 15% pay rise that they were promised by the Arbitration Court, which the Waterfront Industry Commission were not giving them. The president of the National Watersiders Union Jock Barnes was the man who led the charge for the watersiders to get their pay rise.Yet on the other hand the government had been in disagreement with the National Watersiders Union for years because of this organisations reputation for fighting firm but fighting fair and getting what the watersiders needed such as better working conditions, pay rises, first aid training etc. So the government were supporting the Waterfront Industry Commission which saw a lock out happen and a state of emergency called by Sidney Holland. The government was led by Prime Minister Sidney Holland and the National Party with Labour refusing to take side.
A POV that supports the watersider’s end of the campaign is Jock Barnes. He was the National President of the Watersiders Union from 1944. He was supporting the need for a pay rise for the watersiders because he valued fairness and equality for all workers that were under the Federation of Labours support for unions. The reason he supported the watersiders was because he wanted fairness and equality for all of his workers and he wanted to fight for them and protect their rights.Their rights were being violated and Jock Barnes felt this was wrong and did not think that it was fair for the watersiders to not get the pay rise that everyone else under the protection of the Federation of Labour received. The social actions that Jock Barnes encouraged the watersiders to take were to get the support of other unions known as the ‘blue collared workers’ who were the manual labourers, the support that the watersiders received from these other unionists was for them to go on strike from their jobs in protest against the government.
The reason that the blue collared workers supported the watersiders is not only because they wanted to but they knew that the watersiders would do the same for them if they were in any situation where they needed support “we met, and it was decided straight away that we would go on strike, because we knew that they would have done the same for us”.Watersiders were banned from getting their side of their story out, it was made illegal through the state of emergency regulations, including censorship that the government put in place, so instead of putting their publications out through mainstream news and newspapers they made illegal pamphlets and posters and got their word out through overnight distribution done by those who were brave enough to distribute the pamphlets and put up posters around town, it was called the underground press, “Most of this was done, not the writing and stuff but the distribution was done at night” (Rona Bailey-wife of waterside).Eventually the country had 20,000 workers on strike and over 2,000 families needing to be fed without any money coming into the family. Communities were joined together and donations were made for the watersiders; they came in the form of mainly food and money, “You’d get up in the morning and there’d be something on your front door step”. (Fred Rix- Huntly Miner).
Jock Barnes fought a hard fight to keep the watersiders rights alive and he knew that if they lost it in the end then there were going to be some big consequences for everybody who was involved. United we stand, Divided we fall” (Banner used for Watersiders Union).The watersiders put up the fight not only because they wanted the same pay rise as everybody else but because they did not think that it was fair that they were the only ones missing out on the 15% pay rise just because their Waterfront Industry Commission decided that they did not want to give them one, they did not want their commission to be able to overrule the Federation of Labours order through the Arbitration Court that included every worker that was protected by any sort of union in their job.Jock Barnes thought that the watersiders deserved their pay rise, if not only because they were hard workers but because he believed in fairness and equality for all which meant that he wanted his watersiders to be treated equally as everybody else who was apart of different unions that did get the pay rise because this was the fair way to do it and nobody should be seen as under anybody else when it comes to terms of how hard they had been working and how dangerous their jobs were.Jocks’ perspective is shaped by the social justice world view point which encompasses the belief in freedom from persecution and the right to fair and just treatment.
On the other side of the battle was New Zealand’s current Prime Minister at the time, Sidney Holland and his National Government. He did not believe that the watersiders should be getting the full 15% pay rise and offered them the 9% pay rise instead, he did not want them to feel like they had any power under their union and he most definitely did not want them to get what they wanted.This was because he did not like the power that the National Watersiders Union had, nor did he like the power that Jock Barnes had whilst he was in charge of the union. Sidney Holland valued economic stability, and by giving the watersiders a larger pay rise he would not have been able to hold on to because the watersiders would have just kept asking for more pay rises because they believed their job was very demanding and dangerous.Giving out pay rises was not a good way to create economic stability for New Zealand.
Not only was it that Sidney Holland did not want to give them what they wanted but the watersiders had recently received a 6% pay rise so that is why they were offered the 9% pay rise to make it up to the final 15%, but the watersiders were not happy with this and did not think they were being treated fairly and equally.The National Government and Sidney Holland created many social actions that were rather successful, but the most influential in the end was the State of Emergency that was issued to the nation and made the lock out into a strike for the watersiders. Sidney Holland called the state of emergency and would not let the cabinet in parliament at the time discuss it, or discuss the issues around it and what social actions they could take that would better suit the issue.The emergency regulations were as follows; all current servicemen were to be employed on the wharves, to help any watersider in anyway was an offense, you could receive 3 months in jail for giving a watersider or their family food, publications supporting the watersiders were banned, police could arrest anybody without any warrant, no public meetings were allowed to be held (3 or more people), no public support to be shown for watersiders, censorship over what was in public publications, watersiders union was deregistered, all documents and assets were seized and the union no longer existed, police could shoot at their own will and regulations forbid conversations about any of the regulations. This was the government’s largest social action.Once the watersiders began to fight back the police were a lot tougher on the regulations; setting up road blocks out of Ohura to lock in all miners and prevent any food getting in to feed the miners families, police raided cartoonist’s houses that were publicly publishing drawings supporting the watersiders, police stopped any supplies of food that they knew was going into certain areas for strikers.
Bill Andersen (Auckland Watersider) said “ I don’t think we expected the severity of the regulations” which meant that the government had made a good choice about putting up the regulations and cracking down hard on them once the watersiders were getting stronger with their support and when the government began to weaken.The government made the watersiders agree to 7 regulations before they were to return to work in March 1951, the watersiders still did not return to work except for those under immense who had to feed their families. Sidney Holland shut down the National Watersiders Union and created smaller provincial unions so that they did not have as much power in their hands to be able to do things like strike and put the government under a lot of pressure to give them a pay rise and other things like safer work conditions, first aid training etc.When the new union was set up and watersiders were called to register for the Auckland Branch on 28th of April, 191 men signed up to the new union and the regulations under a new president and 1,500+ men turned up to register their anger and frustration at not only the government who set up this new union but at their colleagues who were registering for the new union.
Sidney Holland’s social action of calling a state of emergency was a crucial part in the government still trying to protect itself while keeping the wharves running but keeping watersiders locked out. Sidney Holland thought that the watersiders had too much power and he did not like this.He did not want them to get what they wanted nor did he want to give them what they wanted, he thought this because he thought that the watersiders were complainers and that they always got what they wanted anyway, and also they had just had a 6% pay rise before the 15% rise came into effect. Sidney’s perspective is shaped by the conservative world view point which values the well-being of society as a whole in a traditional view opposing change, this is more important than individual rights. The watersiders faced many consequences as a direct result of their social actions they performed against the government, but some of the consequences that happened were because of the watersiders but affected the entire country.
Watersiders families went without food and necessities that they needed because they were not getting paid, which meant that they did not have the funds to eat, because of this a lot of division was caused in families and stress about loss of income which affected how people respected each other and how they viewed each other. E. g. women may have looked at their husbands like they were letting down their families and bringing on a burden that they did not really need, “Whole families, if not communities were affected”.Another real consequence that watersiders faced was those who were loyal to the union all the way throughout the lock out were black listed from being able to get any other jobs, and they were not allowed to get a job on the water front again. Only those companies who supported the watersiders majorly would employ those black listed watersiders after the list came out from the government.
Discrimination was held against the unions for watersiders for years. A potential consequence the watersiders could have faced was death through the protest that they marched on the 2nd of May 1951 to parliament down Cuba Street and were met by police officers on cross roads section of the march that saw 22 injured severely with head injuries etc. This was a large event that caused a lot of strife for the watersiders but also the police even though they faced no question as to why they saw fit to beat these ‘peaceful’ protestors. During the watersiders lock out the government suffered many losses that became very real consequences for them and Sidney Holland.The government knew that they would eventually weaken which they did; at this point they had to ask all of the strikers and watersiders to return to work under a set of conditions that they must follow if they wanted to keep their jobs. This was the government’s way of looking like they still had power when they were actually crumbling under the pressure and loss of income through the produce not being transported fast enough, and some was not even reaching their destinations.
This quickly sent businesses downhill and created an economic down fall and loss of profit. It was estimated that there was between 50 - 150 million pounds loss of profit to the country that would have also been a loss of profits back to the “motherland”.A potential consequence that the government could have faced was they could have collapsed under the pressure of the watersiders union and the striking of other unions and they could have given the unions what they wanted which was the 15% pay rise that everybody was given who was protected by the Federation of Labour. This could have caused even more trouble down the road because it would have given the watersiders union more power than they already had which was exactly what the government did not want. There were many things that could have been modifications throughout the 1951 Waterside Dispute and many things which could have possibly not been done at all.The watersider’s best social action that they took was getting all other unions that they could collect to support them into strike, this made the government stop and listen for a little while and begin to compromise just a little bit even though it turned into the watersiders getting nothing at all because they simply did not want the 9% pay rise they wanted the full 15%.
By the watersiders protesting against the government it helped them retain some of the power that they had even though that did not last under the governments emergency regulations that they introduced. On the other hand the watersiders could have compromised with the government and taken the 9% pay rise and then later on ask for the other 6% they thought they were not getting, this would have saved families going hungry and the wharves could have continued to be worked by the people who knew how to work them the best and had the most experience, the watersiders.By the watersiders continuing to work they could have compromised at the same time and still get paid for their work rather than not getting paid for the 5 months that the lock out/ strike lasted. The best social action that the government took out was the emergency regulations because it meant that the wharves were still being worked by the current servicemen of the country and the goods that desperately needed to be delivered country wide could be like normal, until workers refused to transport ‘scabbed goods’ that had be unloaded from the ships by unionists who had gone back to work under the government’s new regulations.
This kept the government with more power in their hands than the watersiders union because the countries wharves were once again in working order, just with significantly less experienced workers.Yet the government could have gone straight into compromise with the watersiders instead of just locking them out when they did not want to work the over time in order to get paid more, this would have saved the watersiders and the government time and money which would have allowed the country to keep gaining profit instead of losing between 50-150 million pounds through the 5 months where the wharves were not being worked properly.I think that the government and watersiders could have taken this issue to the back stages instead of letting it affect the whole country; it would have been easier for everyone if the watersiders kept working while they were negotiating with the government. They would have still been getting their wages to feed their family and keep on living while the supplies for the country and exports leaving the country were still being loaded and unloaded and the country would not have come to a stand still on the watersider.
It also would have saved the government money for having to bring in the current servicemen to work the wharves when they did not know exactly what they were doing, also when they were not as time efficient as the watersiders themselves because they would not have been as confident in their jobs as the people who done that every day were. In the end the policy change did not work for the watersiders because they did not get their pay rise that they wanted and they were stripped of any power that they did have within their union, so Jock Barnes felt like he did not fulfil his values when he failed to be able to change the policy for his union members.
