a multicultural History of Australia
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Commentary on: Ethnic rights »
Prof Andrew Jakubowicz.
Text Commentary
Staking a claim for respect
From the late 1960s - Migrants demand their rights - in the workplace and elsewhere.
A strike in 1973 at Ford’s Broadmeadows plant in Victoria, where 80 per cent of the work force were from non-English speaking backgrounds, was a landmark event for migrant workers. As artist Stergios Proios comments about his poster The Barrier is not Language: Ford Broadmeadows 1973: “The determination of the Ford migrant work force during the strike showed a side of ethnic working people which had been suppressed by many sections of the community. It demonstrated that those people are capable of demanding their rights...” The strike over pay and conditions lasted eleven weeks, against the advice of union officials. The militancy of the rank and file surprised the union movement, which had not come to terms with structural inequalities which discriminated against migrants heavily concentrated in low income jobs.
The movement for the rights of migrants, or ethnic rights as it came to be called, had begun in Melbourne in the 1960s as activists like Alan Matheson and Des Storer began working with inner city migrant youth. Even earlier than the move in Melbourne toward ethno-specific welfare organisations like Co.As.It. and Greek Welfare, several church bodies had established inner city street projects; the two most enduring were the Ecumenical Migration Centre (EMC) and the Centre for Urban Research and Action (CURA) which had grown from the Fitzroy Ecumenical Migration Centre. While the EMC was involved in providing services, CURA's mission was to help community groups to organise themselves and demand rights, rather than largesse, from the government.
In Sydney parallel groups emerged such as South City Community Aid and the Migrant Issues Group. Their philosophy, which also underpinned the newly created Greek Welfare body, was that migrants were not simply people with needs to be met, but participants in Australian society with rights to be realised. This crucial shift in perception was also one of the underpinnings for the development of the Ethnic Communities' Councils.
Migrant and other activists saw the issue of rights as covering many fields - the right to work, the right to learn English but also to have information available in community languages, the right to cultural maintenance, the right to social security and housing, the right to have access to government and community resources, and the right to move from the margins of society to the mainstream.
A key factor in the shift to the notion of ethnic rights were the Migrant Workers' Conferences in the late 1960s and early '70s. These were national forums where issues were raised outside the union movement. They were supported by several left-wing unions and by individuals of the right wing, and in Melbourne operated out of the Trades Hall, but were essentially independent of the organised trade union movement. Many activists felt that the union movement was less than responsive to migrant workers' needs. One of the key demands which came out of these conferences was the right of workers to learn English on the job or in the workplace. Migrant Workers' Centres were established around Australia which worked in parallel with the welfare rights officers appointed by the Department of Social Security under the Labor government minister Bill Hayden (later Australia's Governor-General) following the dismantling of the Department of Immigration in 1974.
Under Whitlam, therefore, there was a convergence of grassroots movements toward ethnic rights in the workplace and in the delivery of welfare services, an intellectual shift which was moving social debate away from integrationism and toward multiculturalism, and a government open to the argument for equality of rights of all citizens. But as in all social movements, everyone was not marching in step or even to the same tune; there were still elements within the ALP and certainly within the conservative parties who had not abandoned the idea of migrants being encouraged to assimilate into some idealised Australia, and the union movement retained enough echoes of Calwell and his White Australia emphasis to make it very slow in responding to inequities in the workplace. Within ethnic communities there were also tensions, internally and across communities. But a momentum toward a major social shift had begun - and it proved unstoppable.
Further reference:
Castles, Stephen (et al) Mistaken identity: multiculturalism and the demise of nationalism in Australia, 3rd ed, Sydney, Pluto Press, 1992.
Collins, Jock Migrant Hands in a Distant Land: Australia's post-war immigration, Sydney, Pluto Press, 1988.
Jakubowicz, Andrew; Morrissey, Michael; and Palser, Joanne Ethnicity, class and social policy in Australia, SWRC reports and proceedings, no 46, Sydney, Social Welfare Research Centre - University of New South Wales, 1984.
Jupp, James (ed) The Australian People: an Encyclopedia of the Nation, Its People and their Origins, Sydney, Angus and Robertson, 1988.