Forging A United Community
UNIONS played a vital role in building the social infrastructure Karratha needed after it was gazetted on August 8, 1969.
Industrial chaos raged across the Pilbara. In the weeks leading up to the gazetting of the new townsite, thousands of workers at Hamersley Iron sites went on strike to improve conditions such as refrigeration, food and wages.
By the early 1970s, Pilbara unions won several landmark disputes involving reduction of hours, over award payments, subsidised flights, dust money and improvements in food and housing.
Militant action won these ‘freedoms’, often highly publicised and costly to both sides. The Pilbara was for most of its formative years, “a union place”.
One of the key organisers who helped improve conditions for thousands of workers in the North-West says before Karratha emerged from the dust most workers in the mining industry were housed in tents and slept in swags. Aircon was a luxury.
“Dampier was a canvas city,” recalls Kelvin McCann, now Chief Operations Officer at Ngurratjuta-Pmara Ntjarra Aboriginal Corporation in the Northern Territory. Karratha was created as an overflow for Dampier.
“Yes we got pubs, footy ovals, bowling greens and supermarket prices similar to Perth. No-one would have been happy without the unions then. It always required leverage, workers had to form a union to ask for and get conditions improved.”
Detailed in ’50 Years of Boom, Bust & Red Dog – The Life & Times of Karratha City’, it was in this political and industrial maelstrom that Karratha was forged as a mining town.
Three months before Karratha was gazetted, workers at Tom Price, Mount Newman and Goldsworthy stopped production as part of a statewide strike involving up to 100,000 unionists.
Unionists at Tom Price stopped work in June and July because of concerns over dust, hot water, blankets and food. At Goldsworthy, all unions went on strike in July over shop committee recognition and at two Hamersley Iron sites workers downed tools for 17 days over issues including dust, refrigeration, food and heat money.
