"It’s like having your home knocked down": Place, Identity and Community at General Motors-Holden’s Woodville Factory
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2021
Authors
Sendziuk, P.
Collins, C.
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Oral History Association Of Australia Journal, 2021; 43:57-84
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Carolyn Collins and Paul Sendziuk
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Abstract
In post-war Australia, General Motors-Holden and its factories were seen as symbols of progress, with newspapers and company literature emphasising the sheer size of the built structures (and the enormous machinery inside them), the speed of production lines and the massive outputs they generated. Usually located in industrialised, working-class suburbs, factories were built with utility, not aesthetics, in mind for work that was often dirty, repetitive, noisy, and dangerous. Far from being places of untold Dickensian horrors, however, oral histories reveal how Holden’s workers inhabited these spaces and made them their own, creating socially constructed workplaces with which they forged deep connections that continued to resonate beyond their employment. This article focuses on GMH’s long-lasting factory at Woodville (Adelaide) and a group of workers who were employed there for various periods, doing a variety of jobs, between 1945 and 1990. Their memories challenge traditional impressions of factory life, and reveal deeply felt, if complicated, attachments to place that have outlasted the physical structures of the factory itself.
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© 2021 Oral History Australia