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...formal worker organization.
Early attempts to describe and analyse the growth of worker organization, have (such as the Webbs), while acknowledging isolated and short-lived instances of collective worker organization such as strikes and journeymen's societies over several hundred years, placed an over-riding emphasis on the development of formal (in terms of rules, bureaucratic structures, and the like) and relatively stable or permanent unions pioneered by craft workers before spreading to other groups. (1) The limitations of predominantly institutional accounts of worker organization have long been acknowledged. In Britain, the us, Canada, and elsewhere, a raff of scholarly research has pointed to an array of more ephemeral organized activity among workers and has stressed the need to see the growth of an institutionalized labour movement in the context of broader social movements. As E.P. Thompson has shown, the transition from pre-industrial plebians to a working class was a fragmented process, with defence of customary rights and ritualized forms of protest playing a critical role in resistance to the new order. (2) There are a growing number of studies of riots, strikes, and other forms of collective action by workers outside the auspices of unions in the 18th and 19th centuries, including canal builders, navvies, and merchant seamen. Other historians, such as Richard Price, have used a labour process perspective (including reference to work organization and the customary wages and conditions of particular work groups) to provide less institutionalist accounts of the evolution of union organization and worker activity in a particular industry (in Price's case the British building industry between 1830 and 1914). (3)
At a broader level, there have been examinations of long term trends in strike activity and at least one of these, namely Shorter and Tilly's study of strikes in France between 1830 and 1968, gives some attention to the activity of non-unionized workers. (4) Further, evidence has been presented that unfree (convicts and slaves) and semi-free labour (such as indentured workers) occupied a critical part of global capitalism throughout the 19th and into the 20th century and, therefore, organized and other forms of resistance by these workers should not be viewed as entirely alien from broader labour struggles. (5) Other researchers have highlighted the importance of early unionate bodies like journeymen's societies in the 18th century, or demonstrated how unions grew out of or at least drew on earlier forms of occupational association and their strategies (such as the reconfiguration of the tramping system and House of Call into the union hiring hall). (6) More recently, it has been argued that there is a need to recognize a more ambiguous relationship between unions and other associations with a predominantly working-class membership, most notably friendly societies. (7)
The just mentioned research provides critical insights into the important role played by informal or spontaneous alliances of workers both in the lead up to unions and alongside them for some time thereafter, as well as suggesting a longer and more volatile period before formal organizations achieved some stability. It has helped to "recover" rank-and-file struggles and otherwise neglected social movements that were both a response to shared experiences and helped to shape worker tactics and ideas, as well as employer and government practices. On the other hand, many studies just discussed have been both particularist and anti-institutionalist, largely ignoring broader connections or how such activity related to formal organization. Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker's ambitious attempt to draw various strands of dissent among slaves, artisans, seamen, and other workers in the 17th and 18th centuries together avoids the problem of particularism. (8) However, irrespective of whether their synthesis succeeds--and this has been the subject of some debate--the connection between such movements and formal organization remains unexplored. We believe there is a need to move beyond simply privileging formal or informal organization as the most authentic expression of worker activity, but rather to recognize both and analyse the interrelationship between the two. The present article provides a method for achieving this as well as presenting the results of applying this method to a particular country and historical context.
As far as we are aware, aside from Shorter and Tilly, there have been few attempts to systematically examine the relationship between informal worker associations and collective activity and formal union organization in a particular country (as opposed to a particular industry or group of workers) over a period of time. In particular, it can be argued that the impulse to collective organization that led to the emergence and growth of a union movement can be better understood when placed within the historically contingent context of other options and potentially wider array of organized activity by workers. One arguably critical aspect of this is the relationship of formal union organization to informal alliances of workers such as a group of non-unionized workers who strike without formal organizational backing and who do not form a union in the process of such activity. To assess the effect or importance of such activity research would investigate the extent of informal organization and its characteristics (such as numbers and type of workers involved, duration of activity, issues addressed, and the like) and compare this to formal union organization. Should we exclude informal or more short-lived organization by workers from a consideration of the development of unions or worker organization more generally? Only by assessing informal activity among all groups of workers and for an extended period can judgements be made about whether informal organization was principally confined to groups as an immediate precursor to formal organization or was something that continued (at least in some industries) after formal organization was initiated? Further, when all informal activity is considered does it suggest an impulse for collective organization among a broader array of workers at an earlier period than that suggested in conventional accounts of union growth and development?
As already suggested, most recent attempts to describe the emergence and growth of organized labour in countries with which we are familiar leave these questions largely unanswered. At best, an examination of broad social movements (and their relationship to class, politics, and regulation) and more conspicuous instances of informal activism (such as machine-breaking in England) has been incorporated alongside accounts of union growth that often differ little from the Webbs' typology, apart from periodization and (sometimes) the centrality accorded to craft unions in early developments. (9) This result is more one of infusing new information and perspectives than a synthesized account of worker activity. The failure to address these questions is not surprising since to systematically identify and assess both informal and formal worker organization for any country (even a small one) over an extended period is a major undertaking that will almost certainly require the generation of new sources of data and new methods of analysis. The present paper uses a purpose-built database on worker organization in Australia to examine the growth and emergence of both formal and informal worker organization between 1795 and 1850. Before proceeding to do this it is important to identify existing research that deals with informal collective action by workers.
There are a number of bodies of research that address informal worker organization or informal influences of formal organization. Most obviously, there is work of E.P. Thompson, Eric Hobsbawm, George Rude, among others, on widespread but informally organized resistance by English workers in the 18th and early 19th centuries including machine breaking, riots, and other forms of collective protest by home-based weavers and knitters and rural labourers. (10) In their detailed study of the "Captain Swing" explosion of discontent in eastern England in 1830, Hobsbawm and Rude note that active sabotage of threshing machines, ricks, and barns were accompanied with petitions and threats signed "Captain Swing." (11) Thompson points to another indication of widespread under-currents of dissent in his study of the use of threatening letters in the 18th and early 19th centuries. (12) His examination shows that threatening letters often addressed social and economic grievances. In some instances there is explicit or circumstantial evidence that letters were an adjunct to collective action by workers (such as threatening letters sent to employers and blacklegs in the midst of a strike). Thompson's analysis suggests that surviving evidence understates the number of cases where such letters were connected to informal collective organization and action.
There is also a comparatively large body of research dealing with necessarily informal forms of resistance, including organized resistance on the part of slaves, convicts, and other categories of unfree or semi-free labour (such as European and non-European workers under indenture) in the 17th, 18th, 19th, and even early 20th centuries in Africa, the Americas, and Australia. Prominent examples of this include Mary Turner's research on tacit bargaining and forms of resistance among slaves in the Caribbean. (13) This research tends to highlight the need of employers to secure some level of cooperation from even the most legally subordinated forms of labour and how the bargaining power implicit in this, when combined with oppressive conditions and opportunities for workers to collaborate, gave rise to informal forms of collective organization. Parallelling Rediker's arguments in relation to piracy by seamen, Hamish Maxwell-Stewart's research on transported convicts in Australia argues the move to banditry (namely bushranging) needs to be seen as a form of protest, and on occasion an organized one. (14) Indeed, there are cases where banditry was a clear consequence of failed collective protest. The most infamous of these occurred at James Mudie's Castle Forbes Estate in the Hunter Valley (north of Sydney) in 1833. Responding to repeated ill treatment (striking men and bringing them before magistrates to be flogged for trivial offences) by Mudie's son-in-law (Lanarch) who was in charge of the estate, the convict servants sent one of their number to the Governor with a petition. However, as his application was irregular, and his absence unauthorized, the man was put in chains and flogged at which point the men rose in revolt, robbed the estate, and sought to murder Lanarch. At their trial, and speeches on the gallows prior to being hanged, the men implored the Governor to prevent cruelties, which led to their act of desperation. (15) In 1846 a gang of probationer convicts employed at Deloraine, Tasmania went on strike when the superintendent refused to make up for rations stolen by several absconding colleagues. Punished for their refusal to work, the men absconded and raided neighbouring properties until they were apprehended and charged with armed robbery. At the resulting trial 12 of the 21 involved were sentenced to death, but this was commuted and the men were sent to Port Arthur. (16) Such cases highlight the risks of overt collective action. In a number of other cases groups of convicts in chain gangs attacked their supervisor in response to harsh treatment or poor rations even at the almost certain risk of being executed and there are also cases where the murder of a fellow prisoner was reportedly instigated as an extreme means of escaping conditions that were no longer seen as endurable by those involved. (17) More typically, convicts engaged in tacit forms of resistance, notably go-slows and temporary absence, where it is more difficult to detect collective organization, although some of this activity clearly relied on a degree of collaboration. (18) As Hirst observes, the diaries, books, and reminiscences of early settlers contain occasional explicit references to collective action, such as the convict servants assigned to L.E. Threkald, who refused their meat ration and raided his own pork supply, obliging him to return seven to the government. Threkald sought better men while those he discarded hoped for a better job once they had completed a stint on a road gang. (19)
In recent years a growing body of research has pointed to extensive informal collective action among particular groups of free workers from outside the trades in a roughly comparable period, most notably construction labourers, railway navvies, and seamen and other maritime workers. (20) Thus, a scattered body of literature documents organized resistance on the part of European, American, and Australasian whalers and merchant seamen from the late 17th century onwards. (21) These studies indicate that collective action by seamen and whalers, ranging from go-slows and organized forms of mass desertion through to strikes, mutiny, and even piracy were a widespread phenomenon, shaping both regulatory intervention and court practices. For example, examining the 3,336 logbooks of us whaleships--the biggest whaling fleet in the world for much of the 19th century--Cooper Busch identified 230 work stoppages between 1830 and 1919 by what was essentially a non-unionized workforce. (22) The need to see the origins of collective action by seamen in terms of working conditions (including discipline) has been emphasized to the point where it calls for a re-evaluation of even the most extreme forms of protest, namely piracy. Rediker argues that piracy in the Caribbean was a phenomenon shaped by the prior work experiences of ex-merchant seamen who crewed pirate ships. (23) According to Rediker, pirates adopted a more participative and egalitarian command and reward system, and even sought the views of a captured crew when deciding the fate of their captain.
Other research has shown the act of desertion was not simply an individualized response to poor conditions on board a particular ship. Mass or collective desertion from a ship or group of ships was common and required some level of organization among seamen as well as crimps. In her detailed study of seamen in eastern Canada, Judith Fingard labels desertion and refusal to proceed as incipient forms of collective action and places them in the context of other common forms of collective action by seamen including refusals to work on ship, which were in no way connected to formal union organization. (24) Widespread desertion can be seen as a response to more general features of maritime employment and regulation (including lengthy articles) and was recognized by contemporaries as part of a bargaining process to secure better conditions (through cash advances or a new berth in a port where higher wages prevailed). Desertion by both groups and individuals was also sometimes linked to an ongoing dispute and collective action, such as refusal to undertake particular tasks. (25)
Some detailed studies trace a history of collective protest among predominantly non-unionized groups of canal builders, railway navvies, and other labourers. Thus, Peter Way, in his study of canal builders in North America, argues these workers rioted or struck on virtually every canal, although most activity occurred in Canada where they accounted for 15 per cent of all strikes in the period 1815-59. (26) Way identified 160 such incidents between 1780 and 1860--a count he stressed was preliminary--with most incidents occurring between 1820 and 1850 and riots outnumbering strikes by a ratio of around two to one. (27) In addition to these specialized studies some researchers have sought to indicate a broader array of worker protests as part of broader accounts of the development of organized labour and the evolution of industrial conflict. Conspicuous here is Bryan Palmer's review of labour protest and organization in 19th-century Canada, which formally claims to only cover the period 1820-1890 but actually includes evidence of activity from the late 18th century. (28) Palmer does not restrict his consideration to strikes, and identifies over 400 riots predominantly involving canallers, railway, ship, and other labourers, seamen, soldiers, and raftsmen. Palmer argues riots were sparked by a complex mixture of ethno-cultural (rivalry between French and Irish raftsmen, political, and socio-economic factors such as low wages, but were progressively replaced by less ambiguous forms of industrial protest as capital and labour consolidated. (29) Turning to strikes, Palmer identified 70 strikes by unskilled workers in the period 1815-1859 (or 53 per cent of the total strikes for the period) with railway labourers (22 strikes or 16.6 per cent of the total) and canal labourers (20 strikes or 15.1 per cent of the total) being most prominent. Palmer does not identify the number of cases where these strikes were linked to a formal organization but in the context of other comments in the paper it seems sale to presume that much of this activity occurred outside the auspices of a formal union.
Finally, we can point to a few studies that trace the development of worker organization in a particular industry, and in so doing examine the various organizational options open to workers as well as more informal activity. For example, using a labour process perspective, Greg Patmore's study of workers in the New South Wales government railways prior to 1878 traces their involvement in sickness/accident funds, friendly societies, and social groups, as well as temporary combinations. (30) The latter ranged from a petition for a pay increase by thirteen railway porters in 1857 to protests against wage cuts involving hundreds of workers in the early 1870s. (31) The broader organizational involvement of railway workers and temporary informal combinations over a long period provide a clear and important precursor to the emergence of railway unions. In a similar vein, Peter Sheldon charts the growth of informal combinations among water and sewerage workers in Sydney over the course of the 19th century, and how...
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