Footnotes
1.Australian Bureau of Statistics, Australian Industry, 2011–12, no. 8155.0 (:ABS, 2013).
2.Paul Cleary, Too Much Luck: The Mining Boom and Australia’s Future(:Black Inc, 2011), 79–83.
3. “Statement on Monetary Policy: May 2012, Box C: Resource Exports in 2011,”
Reserve Bank of Australia, accessed August2015,http://www.rba.gov.au/publications/smp/2012/may/html/box-c.html.
4.Donald Denoon, Settler Capitalism: The Dynamics of Dependent Development in the Southern Hemisphere(:Clarendon Press, 1983) pays re-reading;Roger Hayter,Trevor J. Barnes andMichael J. Bradshaw, “Relocating Resource Peripheries to the Core of Economic Geography’s Theorizing: Rationale and Agenda,” Area 35(2003):15–23has a compelling account of the geographical and social distinctiveness of Canada and by extension Australia as a resource economy.
5.Pam Swain, Strategic Choices: A Study of the Interaction of Industrial Relations and Corporate Strategy in the Pilbara Iron Ore Industry(:Curtin University of Technology, 1995), xi.
6.Swain, Strategic Choices, 78.
7.Jolly Read, Marksy: The Life of Jack Marks(:Read Media, 1998).
8.Bobbie Oliver, Unity is Strength: A History of the Australian Labor Party and the Trades and Labor Council in Western Australia(:API Network, 2003), 348–52.
9.Howard Smith andHerb Thompson, “Industrial Relations and the Law: A Case Study of Robe River,” The Australian Quarterly 59, no. 3–4(1987):297–305;Herb Thompson, “The Pilbara Iron Ore Industry: Mining Cycles and Capital-Labour Relations,” Journal of Australian Political Economy 21(1987):66–82;Herb Thompson andHoward Smith, “Conflict at Robe River,” Arena 79(1987):76–91; earlier byHerb Thompson, “Confrontation in the Pilbara: The Hamersley Iron Ore Strike,” Arena 50(1980):15–31;Herb Thompson, “Shorter Working Hours or Redundancies: Class Conflict in the Pilbara,” Arena 56(1980):113–27;Herb Thompson, “Normalisation: Industrial Relations and Community Control in the Pilbara,” The Australian Quarterly 53, no. 3(1981):301–24;Herb Thompson, “The Capital-Labour Relation in the Mining Sector,” Journal of Australian Political Economy 15(1983):64–85;Herb Thompson, “Class and Gender in the Pilbara,” Arena 68(1984):124–40.
10.Scott MacWilliam, “Marginalizing Opposition to the Accord,” Arena 92(1990):146–50.
11.Norm Dufty, Industrial Relations in the Pilbara Iron Ore Industry(:Western Australian Institute of Technology, 1984) which draws on Dunlop’s version of systems theory, as do several research theses, notably Helen Court, “Industrial Disputes in the Pilbara”(MEc thesis,University of Western Australia, 1976). See also:Erroll P. Lovett, “The Structure of Industrial Negotiations within the Pilbara Iron Ore Industry”(MA thesis,Monash University, 1980);Stephen Frenkel, “Industrial Conflict, Workplace Characteristics and Accommodation Structures in the Pilbara Iron Ore Industry,” Journal of Industrial Relations 20, no. 4(1978):386–406; see alsoKosmas Tsokhas, Beyond Dependence: Companies, Labour Processes and Australian Mining(:Melbourne, 1986) on the labour process in the mines.
12.Bert Thompson andDon Bartlem, “The Hamersley Iron Ore Strike,” Arena 55(1980):15–31;Norm Dufty, “The 1979 Hamersley Strike,” Australian Bulletin of Labour 8, no. 4(1982):210–28; see alsoOliver, Unity is Strength, 277–79.
13.Ray Fells, “Award Restructuring: But How Did We Get our Awards in the First Place? The Development of the Award and Union Structures in the Iron Ore Industry,” Papers in Labour History, no. 11(June1993):2–19.
14.Clark Kerr andAbraham Siegel
“The Interindustry Propensity to Strike: An International Comparison,”inIndustrial Conflict, ed.Arthur Kornhauser,Robert Dubin andArthur M. Ross(:McGraw-Hill, 1954), 189–212.
15.Peter Dicken, Global Shift: Mapping the Changing Contours of the World Economy, 6th ed. (:Sage, 2011), 56.
16.For an overview, seeAl Rainnie,Andy Herod andSusan McGrath-Champ, “Review and Positions: Global Production Networks and Labour,” Competition and Change 15, no. 2(2011):155–69.
17.Jane Wills, “Space, Place, and Tradition in Working Class Organisation,”inOrganising the Landscape: Geographical Perspectives on Labor Unionism, ed.Andy Herod(:Minnesota University Press, 1988), 132, original emphasis.
18.Bradon Ellem andJohn Shields, “Rethinking ‘Regional Industrial Relations’: Space, Place and the Social Relations of Work,” Journal of Industrial Relations 41, no. 4(1999):536–60;Bradon Ellem andSusan McGrath-Champ, “Labor Geography and Labor History: Insights and Outcomes from a Decade of Cross-Disciplinary Dialogue”, Labor History 53, no. 3(2012):355–72.
19.Doreen Massey, Spatial Divisions of Labour: Social Structures and the Geography of Production(:Macmillan, 1995, first published1984), 4, 49.
20.David Harvey, The Limits to Capital(:Blackwell, 1982);Karl Marx andFrederick Engels, Selected Works(:Progress Publishers, 1968), 38–39.
21.Jamie Peck, Work-Place: The Social Regulation of Labor Markets(:Guilford Press, 1996) 15, emphasis added. For a full explanation of these geographical readings, seeBradon Ellem, “Scaling Labour: Australian Unions and Global Mining,” Work, Employment and Society 20, no. 2(2006):369–87.
22.Denoon, Settler Capitalism. On contemporary resource reliance, seeNeil Argent, “Reinterpreting Core and Periphery in Australia’s Mineral and Energy Resources Boom: An Innisian Perspective on the Pilbara,” Australian Geographer 44, no. 3(2013):323–40andHayter,Barnes andBradshaw, “Relocating Resource Peripheries.”
23.On this paradox, seeRaewyn Connell, Southern Theory: The Global Dynamics of Knowledge in Social Science(:Allen & Unwin, 2007).
24.Thompson andSmith, “Conflict at Robe River,” 91.
25.Thompson, “The Pilbara Iron Ore Industry.”For a more general history, seeAlan Trengrove, Adventure in Iron: Hamersley’s First Decade(:Stockwell Press, 1976). On one aspect of Indigenous history, seeMichael Hess, “Black and Red: The Pilbara Pastoral Workers’ Strike, 1946,” Aboriginal History 18, no. 1–2(1994):65–86.
26.Dufty, Industrial Relations, 77–84.
27. Ibid., ch. 1;Fells, “Award Restructuring”;Lovett, “The Structure of Industrial Negotiations.”
28.Court, “Industrial Disputes in the Pilbara,” 161.
29.Bradon Ellem, “Unions, Community, Work and Family in Australia’s Iron Ore Sector,” Labour & Industry 25, no. 1(2015):9–22, available online athttp://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10301763.2015.1043511.
30.Dufty, Industrial Relations, ch. 1;Swain, Strategic Choices, 50.
31.Dufty, Industrial Relations, 9–10;Swain, Strategic Choices, 66–69. Cleveland Cliffs’ home operations were, and now as Cliffs Natural Resources remain, in the State of Ohio.
32.For a recent overview, seeChris F. Wright, “The Prices and Incomes Accord: Its Significance, Impact and Legacy,” Journal of Industrial Relations 56, no. 2(2014):264–72;Andrew Scott, “Looking to Sweden in Order to Reconstruct Australia,” Scandinavian Journal of History 34, no. 3(2009):330–52.
33.Swain, Strategic Choices, 52–56.
34.Business Council of Australia, Enterprise-Based Bargaining Units: A Better Way of Working(:BCA, 1989). For an overview of the period, seeBraham Dabscheck, Australian Industrial Relations in the 1980s(:Oxford University Press, 1989).
35.Dabscheck, Australian Industrial Relations, ch. 6.
36.Ibid.For different reasons, the ALP government and the ACTU squashed apparently powerful unions, notably the Builders’ Labourers’ Federation in 1986 and, after the Robe River dispute, the Pilots’ Federation.
37.Smith andThompson, “Industrial Relations and the Law,” 298;Swain, Strategic Choices, 53–54.
38.Reported inWendy Lowenstein, Weevils at Work: What’s Happening to Work in Australia(:Catalyst Press, 1997), 179.
39.Swain, Strategic Choices, 66–69. For simplicity’s sake the common term “Robe” or “Robe River” is used below.
40.Charles Copeman, “The Robe River Affair,” Proceedings of the Conferences of the H. R. Nicholls Society 3(1987), H. R. Nicholls Society Archives, accessed August 2015,http://archive.hrnicholls.com.au/archives/vol3/vol3-8.php;Swain, Strategic Choices, 66–69;Thompson andSmith “Conflict at Robe River,” 77–78;Smith andThompson, “Industrial Relations and the Law,” 298.
41.Terry S. Reynolds andVirginia P. Dawson, Iron Will: Cleveland-Cliffs and the Mining of Iron Ore, 1847–2006(:Wayne State University Press, 2011).
42.Even allowing for a degree of flattery – this was in a presentation to the Society – this is telling: Copeman, “The Robe River Affair,” last paragraph. For a compelling analysis of local varieties of neo-liberalism, seeJamie Peck, Constructions of Neoliberal Reason(:Oxford University Press, 2010) esp. ch. 1. For Australia, seeDamien Cahill, The End of Laissez-Faire? On the Durability of Embedded Neoliberalism(:Edward Elgar Publishing, 2014).
43.14 May 1986: cited among other places inPaul Kelly, The End of Certainty: The Story of the 1980s(:Allen & Unwin, 1992), 196.
44.Copeman, “The Robe River Affair.”
45. Ibid.
46. Ibid;Swain, Strategic Choices, 248–49. For a sympathetic explanation of the trigger to this action,Patrick Getlin, The Power Switch at Robe, (:Australian Institute for Public Policy, 1990).
47.Copeman, “The Robe River Affair.”
48.Widely accepted in anecdotal terms, this claim is sourced to a mining conference in the early 1990s inHerb Thompson, “The APPM Dispute: The Dinosaur and Turtles vs the ACTU,” Economic and Labour Relations Review 3, no. 2(1992):153.
49.Copeman, “The Robe River Affair.”
50.Charles Copeman, “I. R. Lessons from Recent Mining Industry History,” Proceedings of the Conferences of the H. R. Nicholls Society 13(1992),H. R. Nicholls Society Archives, accessed August 2015,http://archive.hrnicholls.com.au/archives/vol13/vol13-7.php.
51.Copeman, “The Robe River Affair.”
52.These claims are still used against unions in the Pilbara: see for exampleAustralian Mining Monthly(September2011):14.
53.Swain, Strategic Choices, 243–50, has a full account of the lead-up to Peko’s takeover in July.
54. Ibid, 251.
55.Ian McRae, letter to, for example, the Australian Workers’ Union, 31 July 1986, provided by Bruce Bonnor, former Robe employee, copy in possession of the author. See alsoSwain, Strategic Choices, 236.
56.Ian McRae, “Memo to All Staff: Union Representatives,”31st July1986, memorandum provided byBruce Bonnor, copy in possession of the author.
57.Ian McRae, General Manager Operations, Notice to All Employees,” 31st July 1986, memorandum provided by Bruce Bonnor, copy in possession of the author.
58.SeeDabscheck, Australian Industrial Relations, 123, on the thinking in the Society on this matter.
59.Copeman, “The Robe River Affair”;Swain, Strategic Choices, 247.
60.See especiallySwain, Strategic Choices, 234.
61.Copeman quoted inSwain, Strategic Choices, 252.
62.Thompson andSmith, “Conflict at Robe River,” 79–82.Swain, Strategic Choices, 255–70has a detailed account of this period including State government attempts to find a compromise.
63.Swain, Strategic Choices, 273–74;Thompson andSmith, “Conflict at Robe River,” 79–80.
64.Thompson andSmith, “Conflict at Robe River,” 82–83;Swain, Strategic Choices, 270–71;Bruce Bonnor, interview with author, 16 November2005;Graeme Haynes, former ETU convenor, interview with author, 23 November 2006.
65.Swain, Strategic Choices, 275.
66.SeeRead, Marksy, 321, 347–48;Thompson andSmith, “Conflict at Robe River,” 80–81for discussion of growing resentment;Bonnor, interview;Haynes, interview.
67. Workplace News, June1989, no publisher details, copy in possession of author.
68. Ibid.
69.Swain, Strategic Choices, 290;Read, Marksy, 347–52;Bonnor, interview; Haynes, interview; Jim Murie, ETU official, interview with author, 16 November 2005; Lea Anderson, former Pilbara AMWU administrative worker, interview with author, 27 November 2006.
70.Copies fromBruce Bonnor, covering 1987–88, in possession of the author.
71.Thompson andSmith, “Conflict at Robe River,” 84;Swain, Strategic Choices, 284–88.
72. Australian Financial Review, 19 January1987.
73.Thompson andSmith, “Conflict at Robe River,” 84. On the “rescaling” of regulation generally, seeSally Weller, “Power and Scale: The Shifting Geography of Industrial Relations Law in Australia,” Antipode 31, no. 5(2007):896–915. On the Pilbara, seeBradon Ellem, “Resource Peripheries and Neo-Liberalism: The Pilbara and the Remaking of Industrial Relations in Australia,” Australian Geographer 46, no. 3(September2015):323–37.
74.Smith andThompson, “Industrial Relations and the Law,” 302.
75.Swain, Strategic Choices, 290.
76.Thompson andSmith, “Conflict at Robe River,” 86.
77. Australian Financial Review, 23 December1987, 5 January1988, 22 March1988.
78.Tsokhas, Beyond Dependence, 194–99.
79.Swain, Strategic Choices, 69.
80.Copeman, “I. R. Lessons from Recent Mining Industry History.”
81.Thompson andSmith, “Conflict at Robe River,”esp.84;Read, Marksy, 347–52.
82.Read, Marksy, 350.
83. Ibid, 348–50; compareLowenstein, Weevils, 178–80;Haynes, interview;Anderson, interview. Also see various issues ofResist to Exist; copies provided to the author by workers but there is a set in the National Library.
84.Lowenstein, Weevils, 178.
85.Harold Peden inLowenstein, Weevils, 179.
86.“Rob”inIbid., 180.
87. Australian Financial Review, 13 April, 22 April1988;Tom McDonald andMalcolm Rimmer, “Award Restructuring and Wages Policy,” Growth 37(1989):111–34.
88. Western Australian Industrial Gazette(hereafterWAIG) 73(1992):382;McDonald andMalcolm Rimmer, “Award Restructuring”;Australian Financial Review, 13 April, 22 April1988.
89. Australian Financial Review, 5 July, 8 July1991;Geoff Spencer, “Seamen Battle Robe River Thug Tactics,” Green Left Weekly, no. 34(1991), accessed August 2015,https://www.greenleft.org.au/node/297. For a full account see the Parliamentary statement by Larry Graham, MLA, Pilbara, Western Australian Legislative Assembly, Hansard, 24 September1991, 4989–95.
90. Australian Financial Review, 13 April, 22 April1988, 1 December1989. ForHamersley Iron, seeBruce Hearn Mackinnon, Behind WorkChoices: How One Company Changed Australia’s Industrial Relations(:Heidelberg Press, 2007), ch. 4.
91. Green Left Weeklyprovided rare analysis: seehttps://www.greenleft.org.au/node/4315; see alsoAustralian Financial Review, 10 December, 22 December1992, 4 June, 16 June1993, 14 July1994.
92.Various issues ofResist to Existattest to this, as do all author’s interviews cited above. For some public hints, seeAustralian Financial Review, 1 December1989; see alsoLowenstein, Weevils, 178–88.
93. WAIG 69(1989):3000;WAIG 70(1990):1659, 2083.
94. WAIG 71(1990):582.
95.Cited inAustralian Financial Review, 1 December1989.
96.For overviews of legislative changes in the States, seeStephen Deery andRichard Mitchell, eds, Employment Relations: Individualisation and Union Exclusion(:The Federation Press, 1999).
97. Australian Financial Review, 24 August1993. For the cancellation of the award, seeWAIG 73(1993):2646.
98.Hearn MacKinnon, Behind WorkChoices, ch. 4.
99.Many of these tactics are summarised inDavid Peetz, Brave New Workplace: How Individual Contracts are Changing Our Jobs(:Allen & Unwin, 2006), ch, 5. For mining, seeJohn T. Ludeke, The Line in the Sand: The Long Road to Staff Employment in Comalco(:Wilkinson Books, 1996).
100.Thompson, “The APPM Dispute.”
101. Australian, 31 December1996. In 2003, when workers in other parts of Rio Tinto’s Pilbara operations voted against an employer-mandated non-union agreement, Robe workers supported it:Bradon Ellem, “New Unionism in the Old Economy: Community and Collectivism in the Pilbara,” Journal of Industrial Relations 45, no. 4(2003):423–41.
102.For an overview, seeEllem, “Unions, Community, Work and Family.”
103.David Peetz, “Decollectivist Strategies in Oceania,” Relations Industrielles/Industrial Relations 57, no. 2(2002):252–53; see alsoHearn Mackinnon, Behind WorkChoices, in general.
104.Stuart Macintyre, “Labour, Capital and Arbitration,”inState and Economy in Australia, ed.Brian Head(:Oxford University Press, 1983), 105.
105.Smith andThompson, “Industrial Relations and the Law,” 304.
106.Quoted inSwain, Strategic Choices, 260.