ABSTRACT
In some manufacturing like textiles, clothing and footwear, mechanisation and cheaper mass-produced imports weakening colonial unions by the 1840s accelerated over succeeding decades. In baking and butchering, most worked in small retail/production outlets where long trading hours/intense competition weakened craft controls. Informal workplace-based collective action remained common, especially where numbers were insufficient to sustain unions. In August 1851 Bathurst bootmakers thanked their master for increasing wages while hatters working for Bidencope’s Hobart struck over reduced wages in 1876. Most trades examined in this chapter had little capacity to use craft- exclusion and unilateral regulation. Organisational volatility undermined friendly benefit provision (accident, sickness and death/funeral) even in hazardous trades like baking and leather-making.
