Labor and the Living Wage 1890–1910
Authors: MACARTHY P. G. 
Published: July 2010

It is clear that the Australian labour movement did not subscribe to any identifiable political ideology, did not blue‐print a grand master‐plan, the application of which eventuated in the complex arrangements of industrial control and the establishment of the national minimum wage. More in character would be the proposition that labour deployed its scarce resources at the points most likely to yield the greatest short‐term rewards. It was logical, for instance, given enhanced political power, to concentrate effort on raising wages and improving conditions in government employment; but equally the campaign was an expedient devised to remedy obvious malpractices of sub‐contractors. Labour's policies may be thought of more as a series of short‐term expediences evolved as experience taught, rather than a continuum of inter‐related policies being part of a preconceived plan of action. Economic and political conditions mostly dictated the pace and direction of change: labour mostly capitalized on opportunities as they occurred.

In the process, however, the Australian labour movement inadvertently helped to carve out for itself, and for Australia, the most complete system of state regulated industrial control outside the present day socialist countries. It became socially acceptable for governments to set standards of work, to specify and enforce a pattern of social conditions matching the rigours of an abstract concept of social justice. In the name of settling industrial disputes pacifically, governments assumed the role, or were given the task, of enforcing a wage structure which assumed a parity of power between the two sides of industry, and particularly postulated a ‘living wage’ based at least ostensibly on a criterion of social welfare as distinct from one of industrial capacity.

Ultimately, it is with the latter consideration we are most concerned, for the ‘living wage’ formed the conceptial basis of the Harvester judgment and the national minimum wage. The tactics employed by the labour movement to raise wages required continual harping on the standard of living; the iniquity of a wages system tolerating a level of income for the unskilled which a consensus of opinion owned to be socially undesirable. Though labour's indignation of a bricklayer's getting 8 shillings a day when he ‘rightfully’ deserved 10 shillings was of measure equal to that of labourers' receiving less than a subsistence wage, public concern was the greater for ‘a man, wife and three children’ living on 30 shillings a week. Moreover, whilst in the 1900s tradesmen generally regained union rates, oversupply in the labour market kept those of the unskilled at a markedly and obviously lower level than in the decades of prosperity.

Labour's policy as we have seen, operated to involve governments directly in redressing power relativities in industrial affairs, and to the fashioning of institutions through which government authority could function. Of equal importance was the cumulative product of campaigns conducted to make these institutions social, political and legal realities. The mechanism developed to meet such needs is interesting and merits careful exposition: but more interesting possibly is the impact of publicity in conditioning society to approve state action guaranteeing a minimum wage for every Australian.

We cannot here attempt to analyze the cause or direction of shifts in public sentiment. We need to note, nonetheless, that labour's policies served to focus the spotlight of public concern on a set of ‘injustice’ which few could avoid recognizing. Labour spelled out the premises and little effort on the part of the general public was needed to draw logical conclusions. For more than a decade and a half, with but one brief respite, Australia experienced conditions of high unemployment. And for more than a decade and a half there occurred an unbroken series of ‘monster demonstrations’, protest meetings, well‐publicized deputations to governments, rallies of the unemployed, ‘revelations' at industrial arbitration hearings, exposés by the Anti‐Sweating League, social‐welfare orientated parliamentary debates—the whole drawing attention to and eliciting sympathy for ’the unskilled labourer‘. Understandably the Bulletinconcluded: ’The public has had “living wage” so much dinned into its ear that it has come to regard a bare “living wage” as the proper wage for a working man to get.‘43

If we couple this public acceptance of society's obligation to guarantee the working man a ‘living wage’ with the imperative that government ought to ensure industrial tranquillity, judgment when he did, where he did and why it was received with so little disapprobation.