BY MARG PERROTT
WOLLONGONG — March 9 was the 25th anniversary of the victory of the longest teachers' strike in Australian history, the Warilla strike, a date which was commemorated by a dinner of 60 veterans and supporters here.
In 1976, the teachers at Warilla High School walked off the job when a relief science teacher was removed from the school. They stayed out for 28 days and, with the support of the NSW Teachers' Federation, the community and other local unions (most importantly the maritime unions), they got the teacher reinstated and started the push for smaller class sizes and extra funding for disadvantaged schools.
Jim Bradley, organiser of the event and author of The Magnificent Forty — A short history of Australia's longest teacher's strike explained to 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly the lengths he and other teachers went to to raise support.
Teachers addressed countless union meetings; they raised support in all the local schools and with workers at the BHP steelworks and on the waterfront; they enlisted the wholehearted support of the South Coast Labor Council, then headed by Merv Nixon; they won the backing of left-wingers like local Labor MP George Petersen; they even held Year 12 classes in their own homes and at the Warilla surf club.
Speaker after speaker at the event emphasised the importance of unity between the trade union movement and the community. They spoke of how some were "a bit sus" about militant unionists, like the Painters and Dockers' Stan Woodbury, at first, but when the community realised that this strike was about getting a fair go for working-class children they pulled out all the stops to force the government to back down.
The final straw for the NSW government came in a meeting with NSW Teachers' Federation representatives on March 8. The Port Kembla Ports' Committee had just closed the port and 15 ships lay idle off Wollongong, which was costing the companies $150,000 per day and was threatening to bring the steelworks to a halt.
On that day, union representatives met with the Public Service Board's Gerry Gleeson, who was to go on to head the Premier's department under both Neville Wran and Nick Greiner.
"It must have been a surreal moment for all those present at the meeting when it became apparent that Gleeson ... did not seem to be aware that the playing field had tilted sharply towards the vertical in our favour", Bradley explained. "The [union] representatives asked themselves 'Do these guys know about the ships?'."
Finally one of the union's team interrupted Gleeson with that very question. Gleeson asked "What ships?" and then went deathly white when told the details — he excused himself for a moment and left the room.
"Returning a few minutes later", Bradley recalls with a smile, "Gleeson crestfallenly capitulated with the simple words we'd waited four weeks to be delivered: 'you've got your science teacher'."