Laurie Carmichael and Dick Scott raise the questions to be discussed among members about the forthcoming 1974 wages and conditions campaign, using the pages of the AMWU’s monthly journal.

This is the end of the second full year of the Whitlam Labor government and, of course, after the defeat of the penal powers in 1969. The new Labor government soon inherited a global recession through no fault of their own.

The unions had to work out how to make wage and other gains in the context of a recession and a Labor government more on the defensive because of that.

Note the use of questions to build membership involvement from below.