The New South Wales Railway Commissioners' Strategic Pre-Planning for the Mass Strike of 1917

Abstract

There is evidence to suggest that senior management in the New South Wales railway service pre-planned for the waged staff's withdrawal of labour in early August 1917, which preceded the mass strike. The aims of this strategic pre-planning were to break the power and resolve of the railway unions. The article examines two strategies adopted by the senior management; the stockpiling of coal prior to the dispute as a means of weakening the capacity of a coal miners' strike to disrupt the railway service; and the creation of a pool of conservative salaried railway staff within the Locomotive Branch, devoted to intensifying the productivity of waged labour and to eliminating rank and file militancy.

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