science

Wide Comb dispute

Wide Comb dispute is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Wide Comb dispute rather than just read about it. In short: The Wide Comb dispute was a landmark Australian industrial dispute. Australian sheep shearers, represented by the Australian Workers' Union, opposed the alteration of the Federal Pastoral Industry Award to allow the use of shearing equipment that used combs wider than 2.5 inches.

Key takeaways

Wide Comb dispute belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Wide Comb dispute to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Wide Comb dispute from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

The Wide Comb dispute was a landmark Australian industrial dispute. Australian sheep shearers, represented by the Australian Workers' Union, opposed the alteration of the Federal Pastoral Industry Award to allow the use of shearing equipment that used combs wider than 2.5 inches. Business and farming groups, such as the National Farmers Federation, supported the alteration of the award as they believed that the wider combs increased productivity. The dispute culminated in a 10-week national strike by shearers in 1983 and was resolved by the decision of the Australian Conciliation and Arbitration Commission to allow the use of the wide comb shears. The defeat of the AWU in the wide comb dispute has been widely cited as the cause of a decline in union membership and militancy amongst Australian shearers. The historical background is covered in some detail in a book about industrial relations in Australian shearing through the twentieth century. The core problem had less to do with the traditional "class war" between shearers and the graziers, but arose from a longstanding cultural rift amongst shearers themselves. Union opposition to wide combs and the use of New Zealand shearers is also dramatised in Dennis McIntosh's 2008 novel Beaten by a blow: a shearer's story. Moneymaking "gun" shearers were only too happy to use wide combs, which had been introduced by New Zealand shearers in Western Australia from the late-1960s. On the other hand, the AWU feared it would lead to the erosion of terms and conditions that had been built into the Pastoral Award over many decades, and diehard unionists resented the cavalier attitude of the moneymakers to these regulations. At heart it was about AWU control over woolsheds at shearing time. The restriction on wide combs was a union rule dating from 1910, and it had formally been incorporated into the Award in 1926. The rule had been around for so long that few people had a very clear idea about how it had come about or why it was regarded as so sacred by the unionists. Not long after the dispute ended, in 1987, one independent observer suggested that it was "an argument about values" and "not about the facts". AWU officials described wide combs as "immoral and repulsive".

References

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Wide Comb dispute

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Wide Comb dispute claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Wide Comb dispute before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Wide Comb dispute ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Wide Comb dispute

In research: Wide Comb dispute appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Wide Comb dispute in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Wide Comb dispute is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1983 labor disputes and strikes, Agriculture and forestry strikes, Australian sheep industry, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Wide Comb dispute outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Wide Comb dispute in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Wide Comb dispute means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Wide Comb dispute out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Wide Comb dispute in simple terms?

Why does Wide Comb dispute matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Wide Comb dispute?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Wide Comb dispute.