What is it about?
During World War II, the Australian Government designed a freight locomotive based on an earlier Beyer–Peacock Garratt engine. Unfortunately the Australian Standard Garratt [ASG] had many design flaws and was unsafe. The engine drivers' union in Western Australia went on strike over these issues in 1946 and as a result of the disruption caused, the State Labor government lost an election.
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Why is it important?
Few studies of the homefront in wartime discuss industrial issues, apart from criticising unions when they took strike action. It is important to understand the conditions that workers, especially those in reserved occupations, endured. Unions were often very reluctant to take direct action during a time of national crisis. This paper details the union's repeated, unsucessful attempts to have the engines made safer or removed from service, before they finally resorted to strike.
Perspectives
In this paper, I combine three interests, labour history, society in war and railways. It arose out of a history that I was writing of the Western Austraian Locomotive Engine Drivers' Union (Black Swan Press, 2016). I believe, too, that trade unions have been given a bad press during wartime (in Australia, at least) with one recent book claiming that they actually "conspired" against the war effort. In all of my research on Australia's experience of war, I have never found evidence of such a claim. I have found that unions encouraged their members to endure poor conditions in the belief that these would be redressed when peace came, only to find that they were not.
Professor Bobbie Oliver
Curtin University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: The Australian Standard Garratt, The Journal of Transport History, June 2012, SAGE Publications,
DOI: 10.7227/tjth.33.1.3.
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