“Great book on the Depression….so good it is impossible to praise it sufficiently without sounding absurd”
– The Age
Many Australians believe that immigrants have made their fortunes running milk bars, delicatessens or small businesses. Most, however, have done the dirty work of a developed country – cleaners, seasonal workers, labourers, process workers, all jobs for which the main qualification is to be unskilled and reward low wages.
Compiled from interviews with many Port wharfies, it records their working lives and class war on the waterfront between 1900 and 1998. First published in 1982, the 1998 edition includes an added section on the Patrick conspiracy of that year.
“Work is not just what we do for a living, it is what we do with our lives.’ Wendy Lowenstein has done it again. Interviewing people in . and out of work, she brings alive today’s Australia. Her informants spare neither Labour or Liberal governments, employers or trade union bureaucrats. Warmly recommended.”
– Robyn Gollan, Emeritus Professor of History Australian National University