Unionist and clever boxer fought back when stung

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STAN SHARKEY: 1933-2024

Stan Sharkey was the nationalist person of gathering workers, a erstwhile amateur and nonrecreational boxer, jockey, apprentice bricklayer and past skilled tradesman and communist.

Sharkey served arsenic the archetypal associated National Secretary of the Construction Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU), and held elder positions successful the Building Workers Industrial Union (BWIU).

Stan Sharkey was president of the Building Workers Industrial Union, and is seen present connected the tract of the Grosvenor Building successful Sydney successful 1984.

Along with different now-departed veterans, specified arsenic Pat Clancy, Tom McDonald and Ernie Boatswain, helium provided enactment to found manufacture superannuation, severance pay, and banning unsafe practices.

Sharkey was calved successful Matraville, Sydney, 1 of 12 children to James Patrick Sharkey (World War I seasoned and jack-of-all-trades) and Gladys (domestic duties). Stan grew up short, pugnacious and chromatic broke successful a assemblage of labourers, tradies and home workers successful a mixed assemblage of Indigenous, Anglo and Celtic Australians.

During World War II, his parent joined Jessie Street’s Progressive Housewives Association, which aboriginal became the Union of Australian Woman, loosely aligned with communist enactment sympathisers. Yet some his parents were members of the Labor Party successful a agelong of Sydney’s eastbound suburbs that was unmistakeably poor.

Stan and Paula Sharkey aft Stan’s beingness was threatened via gunshots and car tampering successful 1985.

A relative of his father, Lance Sharkey (1898-1967), long-time person of the Communist Party of Australia from the Depression years to the 1960s, became the much powerful, governmental influence.

Aged eight, aft galore schoolyard fights astatine Matraville School, past Daceyville Primary, helium was sent to Billy Moran’s gymnasium adjacent Central obstruction presumption for boxing lessons. He needed toughening. Schoolkids would bully him, sometimes whispering, sometimes shouting “Sharkey the Com, Sharkey the Com”, alluding to his notorious relative. Moving to Maroubra Junction High, connected a abbreviated fuse, Sharkey punched 1 tormentor and was expelled.

Remarkably for idiosyncratic who trained hard, was fiercely competitive, and who could present a almighty precocious close cut, Sharkey presented successful the 1970s onwards arsenic mellow, calm and adjacent gentlemanly.

Sharkey says that Upton Sinclair’s caller Oil, Howard Fast’s novels (Spartacus was his astir famous), the Rev. Hewlett Johnson’s Red Dean of Canterbury, The Socialist Sixth of the World, radicalised him. Listening to speakers successful the Sydney Domain sealed his involvement successful communism, and helium was schooled successful Marxist governmental system astatine the CPA Marx schools. A beingness adherent to Soviet communism, helium lone relented erstwhile the full edifice yet collapsed.

Sharkey was humble, mostly without hubris; it was communal to perceive him described arsenic the nicest of each the national leaders, a listener, ever trying to find communal ground, but with a steely determination to get the close outcome.

During his boxing career, the Melbourne-based sports commentator Ron Casey wrote a full-page diagnostic successful the Daily Mirror paper successful which helium described Sharkey arsenic “a clever boxer, who fights backmost champion erstwhile stung”. Years later, Sharkey recalled that those fewer words summed up his full doctrine of life.

When helium was elected a full-time organiser of the BWIU, the past State Secretary, Pat Clancy, inducted the recruit. Part pep talk, portion admonition, Clancy insisted connected impeccable idiosyncratic behaviour, and the request to formal neatly, wearing a garment and tie, but thing flashy. This was nary bourgeois hankering for respectability; it was reflective of a working-class determination to confidently look the portion successful representing and defending members. Smart casual was much communal successful the 1980s onwards.

Clancy ever insisted connected a mindset of courtesy, not lone to national members and non-member workers connected enactment sites but besides with employers, making definite that earlier speaking to members connected the job, the organiser visited the tract bureau to counsel absorption that they were there. In a sometimes-rough industry, Clancy counselled to ne'er get provoked into fisticuffs.

After the extremity of World War II, the BWIU and others established the Tranby grooming assemblage for Indigenous, predominantly young people, successful a spot purchased for that intent successful Glebe. The national donated wealth towards the acquisition but besides organised unpaid labour among its members to person respective aged houses into a modernised grooming college. They touted for apprenticeships for specified young people. Many an apprentice carpenter, for example, was trained connected the occupation successful the operation of the Opera House. For galore decades, Sharkey was intimately progressive successful this co-operative.

In the precocious 1960s, Sharkey campaigned to prohibition “overhand” bricklaying. This was wherever determination was nary outer scaffolding; bricklayers worked connected the borderline of a many-storeyed building, without protection, hanging implicit the ledge, thing betwixt them and the factual footpath below.

Stan Sharkey addresses builders astatine the “Save the Building Industry Rally” astatine Chifley Square successful 1976.

Another concern run centred connected mishap wage and afloat grant wages for each gathering workers injured connected the job. The gathering manufacture was dangerous. Yet compensation payments were inadequate to screen owe oregon rent assistance for a family, fto unsocial mean expenses. Numerous stop-work meetings and, ultimately, assorted hearings earlier the Industrial Relations Commission yielded a affirmative outcome. In the aboriginal 1970s, Sharkey successfully fought against the dispossession of the Indigenous colonisation of La Perouse for a improvement by L.J. Hooker.

In the conflict against the lawlessness of the BLF, 1 incidental stands out. In the aboriginal 1980s, 1 nighttime aft midnight helium heard a sound “like metallic rubbing connected metal” coming from his car parked beneath his chamber window. A airy shone successful the acheronian and 1 of the men interfering with his vehicle, features obscured successful the gloom, shouted: “One mode oregon different we’re going to get you …” . Automatic firearm occurrence deed the flat block. The adjacent day, constabulary advised that his car was wired to explode. Such bastardry led the NSW premier Neville Wran to telephone for the deregistration of the BLF, which the NSW and national Labor governments instantly proceeded to do.

Along with Ernie MacDonald, a past 33-year seasoned of Civil and Civic, Sharkey played an important relation successful the Construction Industry Development Agency, the assemblage acceptable up by the Hawke Labor authorities successful 1991 to radically overhaul the gathering industry. Conducting concern fairly, ensuring the workforce was efficaciously trained and credentialed, was a motivation imperative for leaders of their calibre.

In 1990, helium called 1 of the Labor Council representatives connected the Board of NSW State Super and said: “I cognize you person consolidated the sites astatine the country of Phillip, Bent, and Bridge Street. I stake you mean to bash a large development, a mates of bureau towers. The rumour ‘around the traps’ is that you’ll grant the occupation to Lend Lease. Can I get you to reconsider? I deliberation you should measure the bid by Bruno Grollo. It would beryllium bully successful Sydney if Lend Lease had a spot of competition.”

“Grocon [Grollo’s company] are doing 101 Collins Street. You could usage the aforesaid builders and aforesaid architects for both. Grollo person not done a large 1 successful Sydney. I cannot warrant everything would beryllium strike-free. You cognize that. But I tin warrant I volition personally person my oculus connected the occupation and marque definite immoderate unnecessary disruptions are minimised and prevented.” This indicated an entrepreneurial flare. Governor Phillip and Governor Macquarie Towers, 2 bureau landmarks of Sydney were the result.

It would dishonour Sharkey to overgarment him arsenic a saint. He was human, real, flawed, vulnerable, honest, understated, brave, and helium made a just stock of mistakes. He was sometimes wrong, pugnacious connected himself for needing to bash better, but broadly respected crossed ideological barriers.

He was besides a beardown internationalist and portion of the Australian national enactment that financially supported the African National Congress and galore different planetary union-related bodies. He personally met Nelson Mandela aft his merchandise from situation successful South Africa successful aboriginal 1990.

Stan Sharkey - NSW Secretary of The Building Workers Industrial Union, 1980.

Sharkey died successful June aft a agelong conflict with Alzheimer’s. Before his caput went blank, helium completed memoirs, A Life Well Lived, to recollect cardinal events.

It is fitting that erstwhile helium died, the South Sydney Rabbitohs released a connection mourning the nonaccomplishment of a renowned supporter, who did truthful overmuch to organise for the Club’s return, aft a two-year hiatus, to the authoritative rugby league competition.

Sharkey lit the signifier for the national movement, his members, and his family. He illuminated and enriched thousands of lives and was a usher to many.

He is survived by his woman Paula and his 5 children Maxine, Steve, Kerry, Debra and Emma and a mob of grandchildren.