ABSTRACT
Building on the various union initiatives, ideas about a changing role percolated within the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU). As well as supporting individual union campaigns, it was agreed that the ACTU should adopt a more overt role in contrast to its earlier passivity. The Seafarers’ Retirement Fund trust deed was signed on 9 February 1973, with the fund operative from 3 May. As with Stevedoring Employees Retirement Fund, the fund’s moneys were managed by specialist investment advisers, but it was otherwise a self-administered scheme. With campaigning for pensions primarily undertaken by unions focusing on particular occupations or industries, early arguments had relied more on the features of work, which made earlier access to a pension necessary. Invocation of international developments underpinned the Miners’ Federation pointing to pension funds for coal miners in various European countries in the 1930s, as did the Seamen’s Union in the 1960s.
