Green’s Dictionary of Slang

(Aus./US) the betrayal of one’s fellow workers, the breaking of a strike.

1886		Globe (Sydney) 24 Mar. 4/6: No union would convict men of scabbery who had made work under protest.
1895		Worker (Wagga Wagga, NSW) 27 Apr. 1/5: The second price, even if above Union rates, is scabbery.
1900		D. DeLeon in Daily People 2 Dec. 🌐 The officers of the Union [...] whom we have termed Labor Fakirs, or the Organized Scabbery of the Union.
1910		J. Connolly Workers’ Republic 286: Carson’s army is out on the warpath demanding the blood of the ‘Papists’, and ‘Wee Joe Devlin’ has been lecturing in Belfast upon Isaac Butt, whilst the organisation of which he is head is organising scabbery in Dublin.
1916		Barrier Miner (Broken hill, NSW) 15 Jan. 4/6: Any-one who went past the picket lines [...] was a scab, no matter under what card or union he cloaked his scabbery.
1928		West Australian (Perth) 16 Aug. 18/2: The action of the Katoora was an action of the blackest ‘scabbery’.
1931		Class Struggle I:3 Aug/Sept. 🌐 So long as the Communists were not threatening, the bosses wanted two reformist insignificant unions in the field so as to divide and confuse the workers, and to make sell-outs and scabbery easy.
1949		Militant (N.Y.) 13 June 🌐 The heroic strike of the Canadian Seamen’s Union, entering its third month, is reaching into ports of every major country despite blows from all sides. Government terror, organized scabbery, the strikebreaking orders issued by British trade union bureaucrats, and now a stab in the back by the Trades and Labor Council of Canada.
1954		Worker (Brisbane) 24 May 4/1: ‘Scabbery was being practised,’ said Mr Bukowski.
1971		F.J. Hardy Outcasts of Foolgarah (1975) 192: Chilla couldn’t see any logic in helping Jack Slyme to profit from scabbery.
1999		Workers Online No. 37 29 Oct. 🌐 Even if the strike action is approved by the majority, there is no requirement for all of the voters to participate in the action (an open invitation to scabbery).
2002		Angry People (Aus.) 🌐 The gutless scabbery of the Australian Workers’ Union (also known as Australia’s Worst Union) was blown out of the water when working class shearers broke away to form their own union, the Shearers’ and Rural Workers’ Union.