Dollar Sweets Dispute

The Dollar Sweets dispute in 1985 was a small industrial dispute with major legal ramifications in industrial relations where an employer resorted to a common law verdict and damages in a case in the Supreme Court of Victoria to resolve a dispute after industrial courts proved ineffective. It was the first time a trade union was forced to pay common law damages to an employer for losses suffered through picketing in Australia. The dispute was also significant for boosting the career of the barrister representing the company, Peter Costello, leading him to stand for federal Parliament and become Treasurer in the Howard Government.

Dollar Sweets was a confectionery company in the Melbourne suburb of Malvern employing 27 people on a 38-hour week basis. The award for the industry specified a 40-hour week. The Hawke Government and the ACTU had entered into a wages accord which provided employer superannuation, reduced taxation and other social gains in return for unions agreeing to not pursue excessive wage claims. At the same time, centralised wage fixing was introduced in September 1983 where indexed wage rises were automatically granted to those workers whose unions undertook to abide by the Arbitration Commission's principles.

Several small unions, including the Federated Confectioners Association of Australia, refused to join the accord.

The company owner, Fred Stauder, proposed an agreement with his employees in November 1983, that if they agreed to abide by the principles of the Arbitration Commission, the company would pay them the prescribed increases. All 27 employees agreed to the proposal.

In July 1985, the Federated Confectioners Association started a campaign with employers for a 36-hour week. Although this breached Arbitration Commission wage-fixing principles, the union had never agreed to accept those principles. When the union demanded negotiations with Stauder on a 36-hour week, Stauder told the union he could not afford to reduce hours and offered to show his accounts to the union. A reduction in hours would have also broken the 1983 agreement Stauder had reached with his employees.

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