Bennett, Owen (2024) Accepting Unemployment: Unions, Radicals, and the Right to Work, 1945-1976. PhD thesis, Victoria University.

Abstract

This thesis examines the Australian union movement’s engagement with unemployment policy between 1945 and 1976, with a particular focus on the rise and fall of the post-war full employment framework. Drawing primarily on archival materials from the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU), Amalgamated Metal Workers Union (AMWU), and Communist Party of Australia (CPA), the thesis traces the often-conflicting responses to rising unemployment from ‘radical’ and ‘reformist’ unions. It finds that the union movement played a critical and often overlooked role in both the maintenance of the post-war full employment framework and its rapid decline during the mid-1970s. Using Goran Therborn’s historical and materialist ‘politics of full employment’ framework, this thesis argues that the rise and fall of full employment in Australia was not inevitable but rather part of a contested political process in which the unions played an important role. The thesis is divided into four parts. Part I provides a literature review and a summary of the unions’ engagement with unemployment before the Second World War. Part II covers the 1945-1963 period. Tracing the rise of the ‘right to work radicals’, it highlights the important role played by the unions in defending full employment from its political enemies. Part III, which covers the 1964-75 period, examines the unions’ retreat from this role and the subsequent decline of full employment in Australia. Finally, part IV investigates the union movement’s acceptance of high levels of unemployment during the 1975-76 period.

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