Introduction - Don Sutherland

These 4 pages are from "The Metal Worker" that cover the start and the culmination of the winning of the 38-hour week through to 1981. Although reduced working hours had been or were being achieved here and there, June 1980 marked the serious escalation of the struggle into an across-the-board achievement that flowed to all Australian workers.

Laurie Carmichael led this struggle at the national level.

He elaborated on it in his lectures on "Strategy" to the Organising Works trainees in the mid-1990's. He cited this campaign as one of three case studies of his framework for strategy as it applied to union leaders. The others were the defeat of the penal powers in 1969, and the Vietnam Moratorium Campaign. 

This campaign incorporated a wage increase in the early stages of the 1981-2 recession, supervised by the then Fraser Liberal government.

You can read his article about the struggle at this site: click here.