People Australia

Stanford Alfred (Stan) Jones (1908-1985) railway clerk and trade union official

Birth: 1908 at Redfern, Sydney, New South Wales, son of native-born parents Steven Jones (1878-1921), a boilermaker dismissed in 1917 strike and never re-employed by railway department, and Mary F. Parsons (b.1878). Marriage: 1934 at Sydney to Dorothy Mullaney. They had two sons and one daughter. Death: 27 August 1985 in hospital at Kogarah, and buried at Woronora Cemetery, Sutherland, Sydney; usual residence Kooreela Street, Kingsgrove.

• Joined Department of Government Railways and Australian Railway Union (ARU) in early 1920s. Initially worked at Eveleigh Workshops. Was Eveleigh sub-branch representative on the ARU and delegate to numerous State conferences.
• Active on Workshop Committees as secretary of Central Council of Railway Shop Committees and played a leading role in Eveleigh ARU sub-branch – described as a ‘latter day Carnot’ in these two roles.
• Retrenched during Depression. Described as a labourer in electoral rolls in 1930-1933. Re-employed about 1934 in far-western NSW, that year he worked in the Permanent-Way office at Parkes. Transferred to south coast, Narrabri and Lithgow and returned to Eveleigh workshops in 1936.
• Life member, ARU. By retirement had worked forty-eight years on railways. President of the Retired Members’ Organisation, from 1976-1985. Senior vice-president, NSW Transport Authorities Retired Employees’ Association.
• Active in Australian Labor Party.
• Was an eloquent worker spokesman. In 1939 he described:

“Row upon row of drab, smoke-grimed buildings housing a throbbing energy which pulses forth to the accompaniment of the thump, thump thump, of giant presses, torturing white-hot steel into servitude. This is Eveleigh Workshops, the heart of the State’s transport system.

There is a steady drone of high-powered machinery, drilling, boring and turning in every possible fashion; the clatter of overhead cranes, hurrying and scurrying, fetching and carrying, and the staccato noise of the boilermakers’ rattler . . .

Seemingly submerged in this medley is the human element – 2600 individuals, the strongest of them but puny weaklings beside the machines they control.

Yet they make it all possible. Without them the roaring giant would be but a whispering ghost.” 

• Cause of death: myocardial infarction (6 hours), congestive cardiac failure (2 years), ischaemic heart disease (12 years), atherosclerosis (13 years)  and cerebro-vascular disease (13 years).

Sources
Railroad, September 1985.