[1] 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.
[2] The dispute culminated in a 10-week national strike by shearers in 1983[2] and was resolved by the decision of the Australian Conciliation and Arbitration Commission to allow the use of the wide comb shears.
[3] The historical background is covered in some detail in a book about industrial relations in Australian shearing through the twentieth century.
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.
The restriction on wide combs was a union rule dating from 1910, and it had formally been incorporated into the Award in 1926.