Vatukoula - rock of gold : labour in the goldmining industry of Fiji, 1930-1970
Creators: name: Emberson-Bain, 'Atu
Publisher: name: The Australian National University
Year: 1985
Subjects: subject: Working class HistoryFiji
subject: Gold mines and mining HistoryFiji

description: This is a study of the making of a working class: a reconstruction of the history of wage labour in the Fiji goldmining industry. It examines the operations of a group of associated Australian mining companies and explores the singular features of Fiji's principal - and today only - mining town of Vatukoula. Through this, it seeks to illuminate the mechanics of labour supply and control in one sector of the colonial labour market. Mining capitalism gave birth to a new-found colonial prosperity, especially prized in the grim circumstances of the 1930's world depression. The discovery of payable deposits of gold-bearing ore heralded the injection of foreign capital, mostly of Australian origin, and an enthusiastic 'rush' to the colony. Competitive mining gave way to monopolistic production within a few years. It was a transition that owed much to state policy and the political influence quickly acquired by large scale mining capital. (chapter two) With the establishment of the new industry, Fijians were for the first time engaged as the largest component of an urban industrial workforce. Drawn in varying proportions from all 14 provinces of the colony, they were for at least a decade migrant and indentured. The forces of labour mobilisation were diverse and the balance between economic, social and political variants shifted significantly during the years under review. Contrary to conventional opinion, it is proposed that migration was often d response to the structural imbalances in the rural economy, particularly the increasing inaccessibility of agricultural land. Non-economic pressures produced a rationalised system of recruitment and, in the long term, were responsible for the proletarianisation of Fijian mine labour, (chapter three) The primary source of the group's prosperity were the men who, through their toil, converted an amorphous mass of subterranean rock into bars of refined gold. As elsewhere in the colonial labour market, the wage-labour relationship in the industry was an inherently exploitative one. Exploitation assumed racial form, and the character and rationale of a discriminatory job and wage structure is thus examined in some detail. (chapter four) Segregation and discrimination were also institutionalised outside the workplace. They were ancillary devices by which the basic needs of mine labour were subordinated to the quest for profit; and they helped to maintain an efficient system of control. Low investment in labour welfare took its toll on the health and safety of mineworkers. (chapters five and seven) The challenge of mine labour took a variety of forms; but like social interaction in general, industrial bargaining and organised protest were moulded (and contained) by production relations based on racial differentiation. The colonial state and the Fijian chieftaincy assisted in the control as in the recruitment of labour, thereby helping to safeguard the industry's system of accumulation. (chapter six) As the prospects for sustained prosperity began to look bleak from the early 1950's, a battle was waged to check the spiralling production costs that were so threatening to an industry locked into a fixed pricing system. Fijian mine labour was the main casualty. Changes in the pattern of organised resistance and its growing strength demonstrated, however, that capital's dominance was by no means assured, (chapter seven)