On this day 98 years ago, government officials and business leaders in NSW and Victoria were struggling to get strikers back to work almost 10 days after the official conclusion of "The Great Strike".
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"It is plain that the union defence committee's policy is to continue the strike as far as practicable on sectional lines, in which NSW coal miners, and the seamen and the wharf labourers will be the chief actors," The [Melbourne] Age reported.
"This policy is, admittedly, dictated by financial expediency. At a meeting of the wharf labourers' union held yesterday, assurances of increased financial support for this plan were forthcoming.
"For the present, therefore, it would appear that, failing some unforseen development, there is no prospect of an early settlement."
The strike was much more than the dispute over a new labour costing system introduced by the NSW Department of Railways and Tramways that prompted the first action on August 6, 1917.
It quickly grew into a major stoush along class lines with workers angry over a fall in real wages of almost 30 per cent since 1914, the threat of conscription and, according to some, disaffection amongst Irish Australians who had a history dating back to the Eureka Stockade of opposition to Strikthe state and fresh memories of the Easter 1916 uprising in Dublin.
A major issue was the price of food, which had jumped by 28.2 per cent in Melbourne in less than three years.
"Food was a highly emotive issue that galvanised into action not only the labour movement but also women," Joan Beaumont has written in Broken Nation.
"As the socialist and feminist Adela Pankhurst said, it was `sinful to waste, to fill storehouses with meat and wood, and warehouses with clothes and boots, while human stomachs are empty and human bodies want clothes'."
The strike was broken by September 9 with the union leaders capitulating and agreeing to a return to work.
This agreement was repudiated by many workers, some of whom were still on strike in December, however.
A notable entry on the list of strikers was Ben Chifley, then a train driver and a future war-time prime minister.
He was dismissed for striking and subsequently rehired on a lower wage and with reduced seniority.