The Unknown Industrial Prisoner (45 page)

The little white man stood. ‘We'll try to retain the one and a half per cent retrospectivity for you that we got via the metal trades. So don't worry. All in here'—he thumped and brandished the company's schedule—‘all this still stands even if we accept now with our tails between our legs.'

An unidentified man fidgeting in the body of the hall half-rose to his feet and said half aloud, ‘We're all piss-weak.' Those near him heard clearly enough, glanced mildly at him and puffed mildly on their cigarettes and pipes, as his bottom sank back where it belonged, but those farther away, eager to be diverted by any interruption, leaned their heads towards their neighbours, nudged and asked, ‘Whadesay?' from the side of their mouths. ‘We're all weak as piss,' was the usual mild answer. Radiating outwards like spokes of a wheel, this interruption persisted until all were satisfied they had heard the remark. From a distance, the nudge, the heads leaning inwards, the pause, the repetition further out from the centre, went on. From the platform, the leaders of these mild men observed the ripples spreading outwards. Wind on a field of wheat. The message didn't reach them till after the meeting.

Another man stood. ‘We're not fools to disagree with this motion at all. Look at Union history! Imagine what it's going to be like in the future. Here in this thing we've accepted redundancy with no fight and stand-downs when they're slack and a pool of rejects. I say get a good barrister and spend some money and take our chance in court. The only reason the company offers us one cent is because if they say they can't afford to pay anything the court can examine their books. I know we'll end up with the same-sized slice of the cake because whatever we get, prices go up. But prices still go up even if we get nothing. I say fight!'

He got only murmured support, just as no one gave more than murmured opposition. They'd made their gesture of defiance. They were weak. They had got used to eating three meals a day. Every day. If anyone had to stick his neck out, let it be someone else. Yesterday's ardour had scared them. Yesterday they had been defiant, powerful, and knew they should be punished for it. Yet they were still getting the money promised. Who cared about a few rights? They crumbled. Each had in him a small traitor who wanted to eat, drink, make love and be left alone. They didn't know that their Union's Federal Executive was not willing to spend money to back their case in court. Once in court, a rival Union was waiting to step in and claim half the members at Puroil. They had no chance either way. The company and the Union wanted the same thing: acceptance and no fuss.

 

A GRATIFIED SMILE Just for the fun of it, when they were back at work the Humdinger let go a rumour.

‘When the plants are running well, they're going to let a few germs go in the water cooler and in the food from the canteen, so we get crook and have our sickies when times are good. Then when the plants play up we've got no sickies left and we can't stay away.'

He repeated this to the Murray Cod, Quick Tip, the Elder Statesman and the Western Salesman; all good talkers and tried and true alarmists. The Humdinger sat back and watched his bullet being fired over and over into the soft receptive bodies of prisoners helpless to defend themselves against rumour. He felt powerful, like a politician who calms a population with lies, then smiles as his lies are repeated as truth, are believed, and finally come to be accepted as axioms men live by.

The Samurai spent a day in bed sweating out a chill and was startled when the Brown Snake didn't pay him. Even the time off for his arm hadn't mopped up all the sick days he hadn't taken in the past few years. In his office the Brown Snake sat thinking how clever he was to put the words
More Information Required
on the Samurai's application for pay. He knew the ones who wouldn't be bothered explaining to some office joker. And if he did complain the words could easily be changed. He smiled. It was so easy.

 

A DECENT CHAP The Wild Bull of the Pampas had lost his neck—instead of eighteen inches he had fifteen and a half—and three stone besides. The danger flag was up.

No one contradicted him or tried to calm him when he rattled on and on about money and how was he going to manage and he could only put away ten dollars a week. He was single. Soon he would be in hospital again, the doctors would pump him up the extra three stone with calming drugs and he would cease to worry about money for six months. It never occurred to him to do something about getting more money. He was too decent a chap for that. He hated the notion of combining against his employer. He even hated trade unions. He was a lab man and jumped at the company's offer to include lab men on the staff. He could get away from trade unions for good. What were they but Communist fronts? It as good as said so in the papers. Outmoded. Unnecessary in a planned economy.

The thing that bothered him now was that the company had the whip out to staff men and were putting them off if they got an inch out of line. Overtime was gone, the number of tests doubled. And the shrewdies who wouldn't have a bar of staff status were not only under the Union's wing and talking back to Custard Guts the lab chief, they were getting so many doublers they were starting to pick and choose. How would he make ends meet with no overtime? The low types—reds and unionists—were laughing behind his back. He was one of those called up for foreman interviews and had helped persuade the others to get on the staff. On top of it all, there were only four plant men made foreman, the other four came from outside and didn't have a clue about the refinery.

The company must have something in mind for staff men, something to make up for all this. They would announce it at the right time and everything would be made right. Just a matter of patience. If you have staff privileges you must expect to earn them. The company expects a staff man to have higher standards and not just complain. Besides, they only made you staff status if you were a decent chap.

 

WITHOUT REPRISAL You're nothing but a number, now.

The phrase became a sort of greeting, an open password, in the grounds of the Puroil Termitary and Grinding Works and beyond it into the pocket-handkerchief lawns and cell-like rooms of the worker-spawning laboratories, dormitories and marshalling yards known as suburbs.

Some prisoners still relied on charms to ward off the company's all-powerful displeasure and the cold winds of separation. ‘Someone told me I'd be a foreman before long…' ‘I'm an old digger, they'll look after me—I go the company's way…' ‘The Enforcer is my brother-in-law—they wouldn't sack me. No, I can't tell you why.' The old fictions.

The good old days had never seemed so precious and so remote as now when they appeared to be gone for ever. Instinctively the men should have huddled together, in fear, in anger, in a mood of action. What they did was divide, every man for himself, and were an easy prey for the triumphant managing class, who still lived among them—their houses dotted here and there—without reprisals, though in the main they tended to gather in suburbs they wished to call their own, safe from the smell of the product and poverty.

 

BRASS BUTTONS Yesterday Kramden had been a company-oriented trade unionist; today he was newly appointed safety officer. They dressed him in the black uniform of a fire officer. Macabre had been outed. In the shake-up they had made him responsible for plant safety but given him no authority or initiative. All he could do was recommend action to the safety council, who opposed action if it cost money and only acted if the fuss made by the men rose to danger level on the fuss-meter. The new man was quite content to be told what to do. The company had what it wanted; a man who followed orders, didn't clutter the air with his own opinions, and could be left holding the bag if something happened.

Yesterday Kramden had been flipping cigarette butts into sandboxes full of paper and laughing at the blaze; today it was a safety hazard.

‘Get the proper rubbish tins for those papers or I'll have your smoking permit!' he roared at some cracker men.

‘Let the company put tins there.'

‘You apply for them. You want us to do everything for you!'

‘Take the smoking permit, then, and Puroil will have you for rocking the boat.'

He wore the uniform proudly and strutted as poor Macabre never did. But then Macabre was never dressed in a uniform, with shiny brass buttons.

The sixty-kilo boiler water had to burst the rubber hose some time and it chose a moment when the Gypsy Fiddler was holding it, directing it down a drain. He was scalded from chest to knees. When they carried him in Kramden abused him and Calamity Jane refused to treat him. She never touched men there.

Next day the plant plot was crowded with big yellow signs: safety hats must be worn at all times.

 

THE CONFIDENT-AUTHORITATIVE MANNER Far Away Places had a few lungfuls of acid from the alkylate plant and went to see Doctor Death about his cough in his own time. Sometimes he couldn't blow a whole tune on his mouthpiece for coughing.

‘I make a weekly tour of the refinery,' said Doctor Death. ‘There are no bad drains or fumes anywhere in the whole complex of plants. We have an unusually high degree of freedom from noxious gases and dusts.'

Far Away coughed a little, trying to direct the droplets of moisture away from the placid expanse of Doctor Death's beautiful suit. He was trying to cough softly, so as not to appear by his actions to be contradicting the physician's statements of faith in what he had been told by his chief contact, the Spotted Trout. There were no tours of the refinery. A lie in these circumstances, though, was no worse than a lying word of comfort and good cheer to the about-to-be-bereaved relatives of the terminally ill.

18
THE FALL

TEXT FOR THE GLASS CANOE ‘A man's internal development marches a little way on before his achievement and his achievement is a little ahead of his reputation. A man needs all the self-confidence he can muster not to believe of himself the things others believe.'

He wrote it out on a piece of cardboard and read it before going to bed, every night for three nights. After that, writing was not good enough: he printed it. It took several attempts before he got it done as he liked it. The cardboard was glossy white one side and bare the other; the box he took it from had contained his dead wife's last brassiere. The bit of brassiere box was appropriate because the thing it contained had in turn contained a woman's breasts, pointing steadfastly forward. Tilted slightly upward. Parallel with his own temporarily revived ambitions and his hope in the future that recurred like an illness. So he was in the training pool. He wouldn't let it get him down, he would overcome this obstacle, too.

 

HOSPITALITY The Humdinger stood cursing. Both gauge glasses had blown on the high-pressure steam drums, the Samurai had isolated them. Two years before this, the Humdinger had read up his boiler manual to go for his ticket.

What's the first thing you check on your boiler? Answer: The level in the gauge glass. What do you do if there's no water in the glass? Cut the fires. It is of the greatest importance that those in charge of a boiler shall know with absolute certainty the height of the water level in the boiler. He got his ticket. No trouble. The company was eager for men to get boiler tickets, so his three hundred hours which he hadn't spent on or around a boiler was winked at and signed as a fact, and they gave him a letter to the examiner, mentioning half a dozen boilers he'd never seen.

He looked at his instruments. They showed levels. But he remembered all too clearly times they had shown levels when the boiler was empty; he remembered panics when there were no levels on the instrument panel and no time for men to climb one hundred and forty-nine vertical rungs on ten different ladders to the gauge glasses, but there was still water in the boilers. How much? No one knew. It was as much as his job was worth to cut the fires without orders, though if there was an explosion he would lose his ticket immediately.

In his examination he found the inspector knew nothing of the boilers he worked on. He was asked questions on the Lamont, the B & W, Cornish, Lancashire, Scotch Marine, Locomotive, the Vertical, Colonial, Yarrow, John Thompson, and Stirling. Even the Jackass, of which there was still one in New South Wales. The principles were the same, but he found it strange that the inspector didn't recognize boilers that operated for months or years at a time, twenty-four hours a day. He was given questions on morning duties, banking the fires at lunchtime when steam demand was low and closing the boiler down at knock-off time. He laughed. He tried to say something about hot carbon-monoxide gas being the main burner on his boilers, with hydrocarbon gas auxiliaries, but the man thought he was being funny. He tried to say these boilers were integrated with a cyclic reaction and regeneration process and their high-pressure steam was vital to a huge compressor on the other end of the process, and that the hot flue gases, besides providing steam, did a second duty in driving turbo-expanders which provided air for the regeneration process and also air for its own combustion chambers, but the man started to talk about grinding up coal.

He waited. The Samurai found the Slug and demanded fitters. No fitters. The one maintenance man was a mile away on an important job. The sight glasses needed many bolts undone before new ones were fitted. For this job spanners were used, and no operator could even carry a spanner at that stage.

He cursed Puroil, the Slug, gauge glasses, boilers, the inspector. Then, as if in answer to a prayer, he saw him. The very same man. Supported by Puroil men, the Python and several others.

Macabre, disgruntled, had made a phone call giving a list of unsafe conditions. The Humdinger didn't know of the phone call. The Python did: the inspector had spilled his guts after he was wined and dined in the manager's private dining-room. No PR room for this man, nothing but luxury was good enough.