The NSW 24-hour General Strike - October 23, 1991

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On October 23, 1991, between 800,000 and one million workers in NSW took part in a 24-hour general strike - the first action of its kind for decades.

The anti-union Industrial Relations Bill of Nick Greiner and his NSW Liberal government were the target of a union campaign to “stop Greiner's industrial coup”.

Yet despite all the “give Nick the flick” rhetoric, the NSW Labor Council (today called Unions NSW) allowed Greiner's anti-union laws to come into effect without organising any further industrial action.

Greiner's anti-union government wins power
In March 1988, Nick Greiner defeated Labor in the state elections. A year later he moved to introduce laws that would make most strikes illegal and allow for new workplace agreements. It was only the Labor-Democrat majority in the NSW upper house that blocked these laws.

That all changed in May 1991. The Liberal's anti-union laws triggered new elections that saw Greiner scrape back into power.

His minority government was now dependent on the support of four independents in the lower house and Fred and Elaine Nile from the Christian far-right in the upper house.

In August 1991 the Liberals introduced the NSW Industrial Relations Bill to parliament.

Employers with workers covered by NSW awards were freed to slash hard-won conditions and entitlements as well as average out the 40-hour week over the year to avoid overtime, weekend and holiday penalty rates.

Union right of entry was restricted to seven days written notice in advance of any visit.

Severe penalties of up to $100,000 a day for unions and $10,000 a day for individuals were also put in place.

Provisions for deregistering unions, suspending awards, seizing union assets and imprisoning unionists were streamlined. The powers of the NSW Industrial Commission were reduced and workers encouraged to leave existing unions to form enterprise unions.

NSW Labor Council finally moves into action
These laws had been on the cards for years. Yet the NSW Labor Council only seriously began to act after the IR Bill was introduced to parliament.

The NSW Labor Council fired its first salvo on September 17, 1991. Unions demonstrated across NSW. Over 15,000 rallied outside NSW parliament in Sydney. Another 8000 attended the South Coast Labour Council mass meeting and voted for a 24-hour statewide stoppage.

The United Mineworkers Federation (now part of the CFMEU) held a statewide 24-hour stoppage on the day.

Then on September 26, the entire city of Broken Hill struck for 24 hours. Most workplaces and businesses closed while 10,000 of the city's 24,000 residents marched down the main street.

24-hour General Strike - on again, off again
It was the growing pressure for action from different quarters that forced the Labor Council to call a statewide one-day stoppage.

At first they chose October 15, 1991 - the day the IR Bill was introduced to the upper house. Then two days after announcing the planned stoppage, Labor Council Secretary Michael Easson postponed it.

Easson did not want to disrupt a Sydney visit by International Olympic Committee members that might damage the city's bid for the 2000 Olympic Games (Easson was also a member of the Sydney Olympics 2000 Bid Committee).

The planned stoppage was called off three days later after Greiner agrees to talks. By now the Labor Council's “total” and “in principle” opposition to the IR Bill had shrunk to four sticking points. Yet Greiner refused to budge.

The cancelled 24-hour statewide stoppage was on again - this time for October 23, 1991.

NSW 24-hour General Strike goes ahead
The response to the Labor Council's call for a general stoppage is far beyond anything they expected. Despite minimal organisation, between 800,000 and one million workers take part in the stoppage.

October 23 saw most large workplaces across NSW closed.

No coal was mined and no steel produced. Construction sites and wharves lay idle. Public transport was shut down completely. All international and most domestic flights were cancelled. Most schools were unable to run classes.

Large rallies took place in Newcastle and Wollongong, yet the Labor Council refused to organise any Sydney rally. Labor Council leaders even refused to speak to any media on the day.

The Labor Council had previously did its best to channel discontent into support for Labor by letting its leaders speak at earlier Sky Channel meetings called by the unions.

But this blind faith in the Labor Party and the Industrial Commission “umpire” bit the Labor Council on the arse. Labor leader Bob Carr refused to support the October 23 strike and the Industrial Commission declared it illegal.

Other union “friends” (such as “progressive” independent Clover Moore) voted with the Liberals to condemn the Labor Council's strike.

Labor Council lives with anti-union laws
The Industrial Relations Act was passed by the NSW upper house on October 30, 1991 and came into effect on April 1, 1992.

The Labor Council did not call for any further action once these laws were passed (despite various calls for further action from unions on the NSW South Coast and Broken Hill).

A determined union campaign of regular protests and general strike action could have “given Nick the flick”.

For the NSW Labor Council however, the one-day general strike was not the start of such a union campaign. Pressure from the union ranks had forced the Labor Council to call the stoppage. This body then did everything in its power to defuse this pressure.

The NSW right-wing union leadership were more than willing to live with Greiner's IR Bill and were happy to simply wait for his government to fall.

Fortunately for workers in NSW, these anti-union laws were not extensively implemented. The Greiner government was extremely shaky. It could not rely on help from Federal Labor. This all meant that no large employer felt inclined to use these laws against their workforce.

Fortunately for the Labor Council, the Greiner government did eventually fall - in a corruption scandal of its own doing. Greiner was sprung offering a former Liberal minister a plum senior public service job the same day the MP resigned. Greiner was then forced to resign in June 1992.

The Liberals lurched along for three years under former industrial relations minister John Fahey until Labor's Bob Carr won the state elections in 1995. Carr went on to repeal large chunks of Greiner’s IR Bill.

The 24-hour NSW general strike of 1991 shows that peak union bodies can be pressured into calling industrial action. But these same bodies will nearly always work to defuse and disorganise this action.

Only strong grassroots union organisation - strike committees, cross-union rank and file groups etc. - can help to ensure that this does not happen.