T he present paper examines the evolution of the management of the labour process within the male convict gang system. The organisation of convicts into discrete and enduring collective work units was a vital and productive part of the colonial economy and of the convict labour process generally. In providing a detailed account of the history of management's adoption of labour process structures and strategies the present paper shows that some of these were determined by changing management objectives while others were the result of covert and/or overt convict resistance. The paper offers evidence of the interaction between the management and the convict, and argues that the origins of Australian industrial relations are to be found amongst our convict workers rather than with the arrival of free labour.
Despite its significance as a mechanism for controlling and extracting productivity from a workforce, the nature and character of convict supervision has been largely ignored by historians. To redress this neglect, this article establishes the character of the supervision of male convicts employed in government labour gangs. It is concluded that supervision was, until at least 1822, a critically important strategy for the extraction of labour effort from convict gangs and that it was rationally designed, systematically structured and effectively performed. After 1822 supervision was much more concerned with discipline and control although it was no less sophisticated or complex. 48 Clearing gangs were agricultural gangs designed to clear new or already settled land for a fee per acre.
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