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The light on the hill and the ‘right to work’

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  • Victor Quirk

Abstract

In 1945 the Curtin Labor Government declared it had the capacity and responsibility to permanently eliminate the blight of unemployment from the lives of Australians in its White Paper ‘Full Employment in Australia’. This was the culmination of a century of struggle to establish the ‘right to work’, once a key objective of the 19th century labour movement. Deeply resented and long resisted by employer groups, the policy was abandoned in the mid-1970s, without an electoral mandate. Although the Australian Labor Party and union movement urged public vigilance to preserve full employment during 23 years of Liberal rule, after 1978 they quietly dropped the policy as the Australian Labor Party turned increasingly to corporate donors for the money they needed to stay electorally competitive. While few leading lights of today’s Labor movement care to discuss it, it is right that Australians celebrate this bold statement of our right to work, and the 30 years of full employment it heralded. JEL Codes: P16, P35, N37

Suggested Citation

  • Victor Quirk, 2018. "The light on the hill and the ‘right to work’," The Economic and Labour Relations Review, , vol. 29(4), pages 459-480, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:ecolab:v:29:y:2018:i:4:p:459-480
    DOI: 10.1177/1035304618817413
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Australian Labor Party; full employment; job guarantee; neoliberalism; post-Keynesian economic theory; post-war Australia; right to work; unemployment;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • P16 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Capitalist Economies - - - Capitalist Institutions; Welfare State
    • P35 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Socialist Institutions and Their Transitions - - - Public Finance
    • N37 - Economic History - - Labor and Consumers, Demography, Education, Health, Welfare, Income, Wealth, Religion, and Philanthropy - - - Africa; Oceania

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