A Gippsland Union: The Victorian Coal Miners Association 1893-1915

by P.D. Gardner

On the first of January 1903 the members of the Victorian Coal Miners Association, a Gippsland union based in Outtrim, Jumbunna and Korumburra, were locked out. Thus began a drawn out battle between capital and labour which lasted seventy weeks and was generally known as the great strike. The following years saw the struggle continue with the temporary disbandment of the union, a Royal Commission on the Coal Industry, a Select Committee on the same a few years later, and a landmark High Court case known as the "Jumbunna case".Coal capital continued to struggle against the union well into the next decade when the dominance of the State Coal Mine at Wonthaggi, and its conciliatory policies towards the union, saw the VCMA once more established on a firm footing with the private mines in decline. A Gippsland Union published on the centenary of the 'great strike' documents in detail the miners' struggles.Peter Gardner has done well !Do you want to down the sweater,break the economic fetter,brighten things and make them better ?join the Union- Trapper ON 25.06.1902Foreword by Edgar Ross. Editor, Common Cause 1935-1967 (the miners union paper)

178 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2003