Recognising the TWU Pioneers

If we are to continue to build a strong and effective Transport Workers Union, then we must recognise the great struggles undertaken by previous generations of transport workers. They helped to create the industrial protections which today’s transport workers rightly expect when they enter the workplace.

Only a strong and united Transport Workers Union can protect the industrial conditions of transport workers. After all, the union is nothing more than its members, gathered together in common cause. When you read the stories in Proud to be a TWU Member, it’s clear that is the great lesson these union pioneers offer. They could not win alone; only by working with their mates, and with the TWU behind them, could they succeed.

On the Road with Eric (Nip) Reedle:
Eric Reedie, or ‘Nip’ as he has always been known, was born in Pyrmont, New South Wales in 1908. The Pyrmont Nip grew up in was markedly different to the one which evolved after the wharves were constructed and converted the suburb into a busy port facility. As was the case with many youngsters of his generation, he made his acquaintance with paid work at a very early age by first gathering empty bottles, which he sold for 7 pence a dozen. By the age of ten or eleven, Nip worked for the local bakery, ‘doing’ the stables out for the horses before graduating to the Metropolitan Ice Company where he would harness the horses and load the cart. Life was often hard. “We were stuck for dough, we were poor. I walked around with me arse out of me trousers. No shame in it.”

Saved By Soccer: Jim Osbourne Scores the Job
As a youngster, the two things that Jim Osborne was most passionate about were horses and soccer. His love of the first literally put him on the road and his love and skill in the second ensured that he stayed there. One of four children, Jim was born at Wallsend, near Newcastle in 1908.  His father worked as a contractor for the Wallsend Coal Company, carting coal in a horse-drawn dray. Whilst Jim was still a young boy, his father was taken ill and was unable to continue to work. “I was a pretty strong kid. I took over his job.” At the tender age of thirteen Jim took his first job as a driver.

Len Thomas and Working Life with Tullochs
Born in 1915, Len Thomas was exposed to the ideals of trade unionism at an early age. His father was a shearer who had been involved in the 1891 Shearers’ Strike in Queensland, which lasted six months and ended in defeat for the shearer’s union. The squatters refused to employ Len’s father because of his involvement in the dispute. “He often told us how he was black-balled, and had to change his name to get a job.” His father’s experience, and the fight led by the shearers union, left a strong impression on Len. “The agitation they started led to conditions improving 100%. They were poorly treated in those days.” Len’s father chased worked from state to state, “wherever there was a [sheep] run”. The family ended up in Sydney, where his father found itinerant work in the wool stores, on the railways, or on construction sites. There were few permanent jobs available.

Les Myers and Life on the Bone Waggon
Like most young boys of his generation, Les Myers left school to start working life at the age of 13. Born in Redfern, New South Wales in 1904, Les’s first job was with Anthony Hordens in Sydney, where he swept floors and took parcels to the delivery section. However his career in the retail trade was cut-short when he was dismissed for being outside the premises without permission during working hours.

Ray Jolliffe, the 5 Million Kilometre Man
The popular song of several decades ago, Six Days on the Road, still has a special meaning for TWU life member Ray Jolliffe. Ray drove the big rigs and he drove them long distances - over thirty years, something like five million kilometres. That’s a lot of highway.

Peter O’Nain, The Baggage Handlers Rep
Peter O’Nain, “a mad old leftie”, as he called himself, was a stalwart of the TWU at Kingsford-Smith Airport for twenty years. But his working life started in very different circumstances. “My first job after school when I was 14 was in the shearing -  I went into the shearing sheds as a rouseabout and I stayed there seven years, during the 1950s, in the Bourke district - Bourke, Moree and Murrurundi areas. Mainly because my uncle was a shearer and he got me a job. It’s something I don’t regret, the only thing that I regret was ever giving it away.”

These excerpts are from rom Proud to be a TWU Member: Transport Workers tell their stories, by Harry Knowles & Mark Hearn published by the Transport Workers Union, NSW Branch.

Retired Members can Still Be Active
Even though you have retired from work it does not mean that you cannot still be active in the fight to Secure a better Future for working Australians and their families. For more details contact the TWU Call centre on (02) 99120700 or sign on to our activist’s register.