Being bored I wandered down to the ETU archives to read through some minutes of meetings—as you do! I began with the very first page of a heavy, worn, brown leather-bound volume which was the minutes of the executive of 18 April 1918. President Bill Stewart was in the chair. The handwritten script was the swirly Edwardian style but neat and easy to read, and as I began to read, it was easy to imagine the scratch of pen nib on the paper 

As exciting as an executive meeting can get, their business was to decide to let a representative of the Victorian Labour Council address the general meeting of members, how to get some members to pay their arrears, whether the members of the Musicians Union, who were in dispute, should be allowed to march in the Eight Hour Day Procession and that the Branch should offer our banner to the Federal Council for the use of all branches. The reason for that was because the ETU Federal Council had just moved to Sydney. 

Having sucked out all the excitement there was on the two pages of those April minutes, my interest shifted to the banner and the Eight Hour Day; what they stood for, why our forebears were so passionate about them.

The fight for an eight-hour day, although won by the building workers of Melbourne in 1856, took decades before it became accepted throughout industry. Being so hard won, the time to spend in recreation was valued as sacred and it began to be celebrated each year in April with a grandiose parade complete with the most elaborate and expensive of banners representing each union and the trades or occupations within it. 

The banners of the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century were a major part of union culture that celebrated the momentous achievements of the eight-hour day victory and all it stood for both in achievement and example for future social development. According to historian Andrew Reeves, banners proclaimed the hopes and traditions of the union movement and were expensive pieces of artwork ranging from ₤50 to £200 when a week’s wage amounted to something like ₤3. The bigger the union, the flashier the banner, often showing in fine detail the skills of the workers represented. 

It would be another forty-seven years before the Victorian ETU could take its place in the parade but take our place we did. The only banners we have any record of are pictures of the motley thing trundled out in our first eight-hour parade in 1903 which was a collection of switches and light fittings; and the one of 1913, most likely the one referred to in the minutes, which represented our trades with appropriate stateliness and dignity. Banners were an art form and unions would raise money to pay for them with donations, concert parties and the issuing of debentures. 

So, for our first parade, with only 91 members, and six months in existence, it is understandable that we could only scrub up with a few switches and light fittings. At least we were there in the parade from our inception and our trade was represented in that grand demonstration of artisan finery—motley banner and all.

An 1883 testimonial for James Stephens, the unionist who conceived the eight hours system of labour, described the eight-hour day as “one of the greatest modern reforms that has blessed the working classes of the colonies.”  Ben Douglas, another of our eight-hour pioneers jumped up and told the crowd at the 1891 parade that; “…reform was not attained by tyranny or by the pernicious process of strikes, but by the force of moral suasion,” and his words were greeted by loud cheers from the crowd. 

The Sydney-Morning Herald said of the 1910 parade that: ‘…labour’s day of celebration was not a “strike” demonstration; there was a higher and nobler meaning to it all. It was a peaceful celebration of the sentiment of unity and strength; and of the majesty of labour.’

Members of the ETU became members of the eight-hour day committee and as the minutes of our executive show they valued highly the business of the eight-hour celebrations. They were the corner stones on which to build a campaign for a shorter working week and even as an infant organisation, we were part of that campaign winning the 40hr week in Brunswick and other councils more than a decade before it would become the norm. Our forebears were showing leadership in this campaign, while at the same time building the specific foundation on which the electrical trades could grow.

The weight of the big worn leather minutes book seemed heavier after my mind had wandered as it did; heavier because of the richness of achievement documented on the pages; achievements not only of the shorter hours campaigns but all those other victories.