Rural Press Club Address 2002

Around the time when one of Australia’s great painters Tom Roberts put brush to canvas to create the romanticised shearing shed scene in the Shearing of The Rams, the newly formed Australian Shearing Union was fighting for the pay and conditions of Shearers.

It was the time of the legendary Shearers strikes which rolled on and off for the shearing seasons across 1891 to 1894.

Shearers - organized for the first time by a young Victorian Shearer from Creswick, David Temple - wanted to narrow the class gap and be rid of the master servant relationship that characterized their relationship with the Pastoralists.

Pastoralists saw themselves - as described in The Australian Pastoralists Review of 1891 - as "men who by superior intelligence, enterprise, and business aptitude have built up for themselves pastoral properties...[and were] the real builders of the national wealth and prosperity of these colonies.''

It was comments like these that triggered a Shearers' uprising, and the spirit of that time was stirringly captured in Henry Lawson's Freedom on the Wallaby with lines such as:

But Freedom's on the Wallaby,
She'll knock the tyrants silly
She's going to light another fire
And boil another billy

The Shearers were determined to keep their hard won new world rights to belong to a union; to have inhabitable sleeping quarters, and not be paid below the settled amount, (which varied from colony to colony but was not less than 20s per 100 sheep). Some pastoralists were trying to charge as low as 17s and six per 100 sheep. By 1890, it was estimated there were more than 25,000 Shearers, which was just under half the shearing workforce. They were tired of having their wages forfeited without appeal, of bearing the cost of paying for their blades, and being ordered to work beyond the eight-hour day.

These were desperate times, with passion high on both sides, and as history records the strikes turned to bloody battles with Shearers killed and sheds razed.

But while Tom Roberts painting shows a productive and busy workplace with no room for passengers in the shearing shed, it is an important painting because it encapsulates how early Australia viewed herself - a country born from the sheep's back, built by back-breaking work. It's an iconic Australian painting of one of her most-loved trades.

From the Australian Shearers Union, the Australian Workers' Union was born in 1894 when the ASU merged with the General Laborers Union and one of the ASU forefathers William Spence, a lay preacher with a Scottish accent, took on the role of secretary.

For the next century under the AWU banner, shearing has had its glory times and its share of hard times. Among the hard times was the 1956 strike where pastoralists again tried to undermine the settled amount. A more recent struggle was the 1983 wide comb dispute. This was an eight-week strike sparked by the Industrial Relations Commission's decision to grant the National farmers' Federation application to alter the Pastoral Award to allow the use of wide combs. It split Shearers into two camps: those that supported the change to the faster wide comb, and those who vowed to stick with the narrow comb claiming that it was superior to the New Zealand import that they believed damaged the dense Merino fleece and cut the sheep's sensitive, wrinkled skin. The underlying fear was that New Zealand shearers would follow and work non-union for lower than award conditions by virtue of the low (42%) New Zealand exchange rate. The dispute lost momentum as unionists starved and today the wide comb is the most commonly used comb. But what is most remarkable is that these three great strikes over the last 110 years - 1891-1894, 1956 and 1983 - were essentially about shearers defending existing conditions not seeking new benefits.

Today, life for Shearers is tougher than its needs to be. This was the conclusion of a recent Auspoll survey, commissioned by the AWU, talking and listening to almost 200 Shearers and shed-hands from South Australia, Tasmania, Victoria and New South Wales in detailed interviews on a wide range of issues.

The AWU is concerned about the disparity that has been allowed to grow over the last decade between rural and city living standards, a point I will return to. So we undertook the survey to measure the anecdotal evidence that we were hearing from AWU activists in the sheds about the hardship faced by Shearers. The Pastoral Award asserts that a casual piecework Shearer with their own equipment who is capable of shearing 500 sheep in a week can make $890 gross a week. But our survey reveals a much grimmer annual reality for the Shearer.

The survey showed most full-time Shearers average nine months work a year and they work on an average of 24 properties with 16 different employers. Sixty per cent of Shearers said they were paid over the award ($178 per 100 sheep), indicating that the current rate is too low and the market rate demands Shearers be paid above it. But even so, when they take out the cost of travel, food, accommodation and their tools; and when you consider that their income is affected by weather, the size of sheep, the efficiency of the people around them, and the design of the wool shed, their take home pay is somewhat diminished. In reality, most Shearers earn below the average adult wage. The AWU survey shows most shearers earn less than $35000 a year and shedhands earn on average $18,000 a year. Forty-two per cent said they had trouble getting a loan or finance because shearing work was not regular enough. Just over half supplemented their income with some other type of casual work that was not in the wool industry. Perhaps a more poignant measure of the decline of the shearers' wages since the wide comb dispute were the comments of long-time shearers reminded us that the former benchmark was that once upon a time shearing a sheep could buy a pot of beer whereas this is now a memory at a $1.78 per sheep and $2.50 per pot.

More detailed findings of the survey showed many Shearers perceived that they were not well respected in the community, but unlike the 1890s, 81 per cent believed their employers treated them respectfully. An alarming 87 per cent believed they would not be able to afford a comfortable retirement on the money they had earned and some, mainly non-union members, were not even paid superannuation. Although more than half had been working for more than 20 years, 99 per cent have never received long service leave. Sixty-four per cent of Shearers said they were worried or very worried about the likelihood of being injured at work and therefore unable to earn an income. When it came to formal training most Shearers, 55 percent, said they had never had any formal training in shearing. Shearers least likely to have had formal training were over 45.

Shearers said their income was also affected by factors often outside their control;
· the type of sheep they were shearing and how well the owner had prepared them .
· the weather,
· the ability of the shedhand to keep up
· personal injuries caused by working with your back constantly bent,
· and the condition of their tools. On average a Shearer spends almost $3000 a year on tools and many were spending more of their personal time maintaining them.

Over half believed the skill levels of the job had also increased. Part of this observation was due to the view that the weight and size of sheep had increased significantly. Pastoralists have been breeding larger sheep to get more wool output for proportionately less cost. Over 90 per cent of Shearers said the weight and size of sheep had increased.

They found their traveling time and cost of travel with rising petrol prices had increased and their personal lives were adversely affected by being away from home so often. 67 per cent believed travel costs had increased "a lot" rather than "a little" in recent years.

A snapshot of the age profile of the interviewees found Australia's shearers to be ageing;
· two thirds of Shearers were aged over 36, and 1/3 were over 46 years.
· Only 6 per cent were aged under 25.
· Just over half (51 per cent) had been working in the profession for more than 20 years

This is in sad contrast to sixteen years ago, when a 1986 study by the Australian Wool Corporation showed the average age of working Shearers to be younger than now. Then, two-thirds were aged under 40 and one in 12 were under 20 years of age.

The latest survey also reveals damning responses about the future of the profession. Seventy per cent of Shearers said they would not encourage their friends, family or children to become Shearers. When questioned further about their reasons for not encouraging others to follow their career path they said it was the "demanding nature of the work" and their belief that the "industry is declining". Some thought there were better jobs in other industries with better conditions. Seventy-one per cent said they would take up another job on similar pay if they had the opportunity.

Shearers said that they wanted their union, the AWU, to have a more visible presence in their workplaces and continue improving their working and living conditions.
The findings of this survey give us a clear message that we need to keep fighting for improved wages and conditions for Shearers.

Asked what the priorities should be to improve their lot, the top of the list was an improvement in superannuation, closely followed by higher piece rates and improved travel allowance. They also said it was very important to include an allowance for the time they spend on tool maintenance, of say $5 for every 100 sheep sheared, and to have junior rates abolished. Two out of three Shearers supported a slight increase in the piece rate to cut their working week from 40 hours to a standard 38 hours a week. Clearly, better occupational health and safety would also give the profession of shearing greater attraction and avoid the preventable, senseless, wasteful and sacrificial injuries to hard-working Australians.

Our research supports Australian Bureau of Statistics census data and other research that paints the picture of a widening gulf between rural and city living standards. It shows wages, employment and education attainment levels are lower in rural Australia than metropolitan Australia.

The 2001 ABS and Australian Tax Office data reveals Australians in rural areas earn on average 15 per cent less than Australians in urban areas. In some instances the average income of adult rural Australians was around the minimum wage of $400 compared to the average weekly earnings of $837.60.

Limited employment opportunities in rural areas leads many young people to seek employment in major cities resulting in the fragmentation of families and the destruction of rural communities. The unemployment rate is 7.1 per cent yet rural areas like Gippsland have an unemployment rate of 14 per cent. The true rural level of unemployment is hidden because many unemployed Australians, particularly the youth, leave their hometowns and move to big cities to find work. As a result rural areas have a higher than average population of older Australians. Education attainment levels are also higher in metropolitan Australia which enjoys the lion's share of tertiary institutions.

These are some of the disparities that exist between city and rural Australians. There are many complex reasons for this growing disparity. I believe some of the differences can be attributed to the patchy application of enterprise bargaining in rural Australia and non-existent role in the pastoral industry. While it has been a successful system for unionized workers in delivering higher pay and conditions in strong industries, unfortunately many workers where enterprise bargaining does not apply have suffered because it is the sole mechanism for Australian workers to gain meaningful pay rises. Despite the omission of the rural pastoral workforce from enterprise bargaining, this has not deterred the Howard Government from stripping awards and strongly resisting moderate safety net increases. By renewing awards, such as the Pastoral Award, to include common conditions achieved in enterprise bargaining in the cities, we can help narrow the gulf between the strong and the weak.

In consultation with the former Whitlam minister and deputy president of the AIRC Joe Riordan, the AWU has developed a strategy to improve the minimum standards in the Pastoral Award. Through the AIRC we will fight for financial recognition of the extra work created by the increased size of sheep, and seek to provide an allowance for tool maintenance and improved travel allowance. The AWU is applying to have the casual loading increased to 25 per cent, and we will ensure employers are complying with the law by paying the compulsory eight percent soon to be nine percent superannuation. And we can't forget the second class citizens of wool sheds, the shed-hand. Shed-hands don't receive travel allowance and it is no wonder that shearer numbers are flagging when we remember most shearers were shed-hands first. Portable Long service leave is also long overdue because of the nature of shearing and the requirement to work for multiple employers should not be an excuse to avoid LSL.

We know we can make progress in this great Australian industry. Last year the AWU with WorkSafe Victoria developed comprehensive national occupational health and safety guidelines for Shearers. During the past six months shearing sheds around the country have been provided with copies of the guidelines, and we are rolling out training programs across Australia to ensure Shearers understand and follow the guidelines, which we anticipate will help reduce the number of workplace injuries suffered by Shearers.

Worksafe is working with us to implement the following additional breakthrough safety initiatives;
· The Cornerstone Establishment project - this will oversee the renovation of 7 selected shearing sheds all over Victoria to a model standard. These best practice sheds will be accessible to other farmers. ($40,000)
· OH and S training - never ever done before. Offers shearing industry people the opportunity to become more aware of their safety and that of their industry and peers. ($100,000)
· The back harness support project - 2 of our members have been electrocuted in the last 6 or 7 weeks (one up near Beechworth and one at Bairnsdale). Because our members were working on unsafe back harnesses which had come into contact with wires in the shed. The installation of permanent back harness support systems that will not conduct electricity will prevent injury. The provision of $40,000 worth of subsidised systems into the model sheds will revolutionise safety and save workcover and pastoralists thousands of dollars.
· The fitting of emergency switches to all sheds to bring them to the same safety standards as other industries.
· The AWU will also seek a Worksafe compliance program similar to the lifesaving ROPS campaign on tractors to ensure the installation of emergency stop buttons on the 6,000 or so older wool presses.

From the days when David Temple followed the bush tracks that threaded throughout the Western Districts of Victoria, southeastern South Australia and the Riverina recruiting Shearers, to today, the AWU has continued to work to improve the lot of Shearers. The survey was an essential first step to identify the contemporary needs and problems faced by Shearers. Now we must act on the disquieting facts we have found.