Working Life in the 1890's

 

Well here I am at my second attempt to write this post the first I did yesterday (Saturday) to be ready for Thursday but it would not save and I ended up losing all that I had written.

Well this is about working life in the 1890's and yes I know so far the posts have been about stuff happening between the 1850's till the 1880's but that is coming to an end.

During the period between 1875 to 1889 Victoria and New South Wales for the most part enjoyed boom conditions, though interspersed with pockets of recession and intermittent unemployment. This is when the New South Wales trades and Labour Council approached the problems of management and labour from a political standpoint.

As before this there was a tradition of sponsoring candidates sympathetic to the labour movement. It was in August of 1890 a general meeting of the Australian Labour Council drafted a parliamentary platform. Such political planning was justified later in the month when the Maritime Strike started.

By 1890 the boom was changing into an economic collapse and in May 1895 several banks closed their doors and fortunes were lost overnight as inflated share prices and land values plummeting. This of course affected employment as business slowed down and many factories closed or reduced their operating hours and workforce.

From the start of the 1890's the Australian colonies experienced strikes by workers who at last felt their unions were strong enough to negotiate in their favour. Unfortunately, with the increasingly bad economic times, coupled with a fear of the unions, encouraged managements and colonial governments to put down the strikes with great severity.

That's it for this week.