Disputes at Kayser Bondor, Power Developments, Ladbrokes and a host of others around the country in recent months are clear evidence of growing confidence and combativity of women workers. Last June’s NAC demonstration of 30,000 testified to the success of the women’s movement in penetrating areas of the trade union movement previously uninvolved in the fight for women’s liberation.
Trade union activity among women has steadily increased since the early equal pay battles of the late sixties. Now the crisis is hitting women hard both at home and at work, and ideas of Women’s Liberation have begun to take hold in the working class.
We mustn’t forget, however, that there have also been defeats and setbacks, and many instances of women going out the gate first. There is no guarantee that the small, fierce struggles, or the limited success of a single issue campaign such as NAC, will be strong enough in halting the immense attack being launched by the bosses. Unless such fights are linked, broadened and taken onto the offensive, the gains that we have forced out of the government and the employers will be lost. We must be clear that, too, that defeats for women, whether at home or at work, are a defeat for the class as a whole.
How it affects women
Capitalist crisis always hits the oppressed sections of the working class hardest. As the bosses attempt to solve their problems at the expense of the workers, they intensify their policy of divide and rule to take advantage of the weaker sections.
The present crisis is no exception. Throughout Europe, the ‘reserve army of labour’ is being told that its services are no longer wanted. Black workers and “guest” workers are being thrown out of work and hounded by increased restrictions and immigration controls.
Women workers are being forced back into the home. There are sackings and cuts in the welfare state which force women to shoulder the burden of the old, the young and the sick. There is an ideological offensive to back this up, with the ‘experts’ saying that nursery education isn’t such a great thing after all, and shedding crocodile tears for ‘latch-key’ children.
Besides all this, workers are taking big cuts in real wages and increases in work levels.
The success of the bosses’ ideological attack would severely handicap the unemployment struggle. The call for women and black workers to go out of the gate first is not being made just by extreme right wingers, but also by many trade unionists who are militant on other issues; and even those won over from racist ideas will retain their chauvinist ideas about women. Much to the benefit of the bosses, sexist ideology implies that jobs for women aren’t seen as the ‘right’ they are for men, and that the fight for equal pay is seen as a luxury rather than a necessity. And this ideology is very deep rooted.
How it affects women
Unemployment figures always understate the number of women out of work. But even the official figures show that in the last year, while the number of men out of work rose by just over half, the number of women jobless has doubled. Office workers, computer operators, technicians and canteen staff have all been affected. Night cleaners find themselves covering areas previously worked on by two women. Even the traditionally ‘safe’ jobs in the public sector such as teaching, nursing and social work are no longer guaranteed.
In the Birmingham and Black Country areas, there are numerous examples showing the ironies of public sector cuts. Nurses nearing the end of their training find themselves without jobs to go to, while women are told that they have to have their babies at home where previously they would have gone into hospital. Nursery nurses are unemployed while longstanding nurseries are being closed down. Teachers are out of work when there is a crying need for smaller classes and special courses for unemployed youth.
Such examples show the importance of linking up those who work in the public sector, and those affected by it. Women can play a vital role here.
The fight for the right of women to work is crucial in both sectors. Two examples show some of the dangers and the possibilities for a fight back. In BSR, Blackheath, earlier this year redundancies were announced. As in many other firms, the first to go were the women on the twilight shift. The women themselves were prepared to fight, but both the union officials and the shop floor leadership on the day shift failed to involve them. So BSR were able to carry through their plans. In contrast, men and women workers at Personna have occupied together.
To overcome such unevenness, socialists must propagandise against the bosses’ divide and rule tactics and formulate particular slogans and demands which will take the women’s struggle onto the offensive. We have to show that once you start saying that one section should go out first — whether it’s women, black workers or even unmarried workers — you start playing the bosses’ game. For women, the following points are particularly important:
- The right for women to work.
- Resistance to all cuts of part-timers.
- No worsening of conditions — no worker should do another’s job.
Equal pay
The fight for equal pay has come to be seen as a ‘luxury’ in most unions. Instead of the equal pay battle intensifying as the date when the Act comes into force approaches, disputes have lately been few and far between. In threatening redundancies, the bosses effectively utilise the many loopholes in the Act.
Two recent successful strikes have involved newly recruited TASS women members. At both Newark, and in Lye, Bronx Engineering, women clerical workers fed up with waiting for equal pay and being told that the jobs they did were not strictly comparable to the men’s, took the initiative. In both cases they shocked the men into activity and gained their support, and got their action officially recognised by the union. This shows the importance of fighting for support from the men in a particular workplace, and the paramount importance of the fight inside the unions to take the women’s struggle seriously.
These women now face the danger of a job evaluation scheme. The pressure on the union has to be kept up to ensure that management is not allowed to invent spurious grades which allow them to depress women’s wages. We have to fight for:
- Equal pay for work of equal value now.
- Mutuality to apply to all job evaluation and regrading.
- Step up the campaign in the unions for equal pay.
Unionisation
The fight by groups of low paid women for the full £6 has strengthened unionisation in several backward workplaces. The most important of these has been at Kayser Bondor in Merthyr Tydfill, where three weeks of round the clock picketing forced the Courtaulds management to concede the £6 in two stages. This struggle has given a big impetus to other workers fighting the Courtauld management.
Though these struggles are important, we must not give way to the Labour government’s propaganda about the £6 being fair to the low paid. We must keep up our pressure to smash the limit. There are real snags in the flat rate £6 for low paid workers. First, it doesn’t go on piecework, bonus or overtime pay. Second, many women bringing up kids on their own find that increases squeezed out of employers are immediately lost because of the low thresholds for taxation and the Family Income Supplement. We must fight against all wage limits, for a living minimum wage and for the trade union movement to demand a non-means tested grant for single parent families.
How should we organise?
To fight for all these demands needs a high degree of consciousness and organisation amongst women workers. The fight for support from men is only just starting, but the present struggles show women’s ability to fight and win support from other sections of the class.
But however spontaneous, determined and hard are many battles involving women, the employers’ offensive will beat us unless we overcome isolation and develop a strategy for organising, unionising and taking the women’s struggle forward.
First, we need to battle in the unions against prejudice. It is the job of all socialists to argue consistently against sexism. But fine words are not enough. We need union branch meetings at times suitable for us, special trades council sub-committees, campaigns for more nurseries and against all closures, and fully paid maternity leave.
We must campaign in the rank and file organisations for priority to be given to the fight for women’s rights, and we must urge women to get involved. We need to build up women’s caucuses in the unions and fight for special conferences and action committees. Within the unions, we must watch out for the stranglehold that union bureaucracies can exert. In some of the white collar unions where women have been organising (ATTI, ASTMS and Nalgo) we have found that only constant rank and file pressure will prevent us from being hived off into safe ‘advisory’ committees with no power or influence.
Second, we have to campaign for unionisation. Individual trades unions and trades councils have an important role to play in initiating such campaigns, but a real fight must show women themselves the necessity of unionisation, and the need to pressure men trade unionists into active support.
In Birmingham three recent disputes have highlighted the importance of rank and file support. At Yarnolds, the official strike of 40 women for 20 weeks ended in defeat because local trade unionists failed to provide the consistent help and solidarity action that were needed to win. But at Hampton Stampings and Power Developments, local AUEW rank and file militants gave solid support which helped to win the strikes.
Unionisation attempts in South London at Sunlight and Sanitas highlight the problems of convincing women workers they need to be in the union when the union leadership, whether at official or shop floor level, isn’t prepared to take the women’s struggle seriously. At Sanitas, a strike forced the re-instatement of a woman who had been organising; whereas at Sunlight, the management succeeded in sacking a militant woman trying to organise the laundry.
When disputes occur, there are a number of things that women must get organised for themselves right from the start. Workplace meetings to discuss disputes and possible action are important. There are frequent complaints from men trade unionists about women being uninterested and unreliable. But these same militants usually fail to explain what’s going on. In a strike situation, special arrangements have to be made such as creches and baby sitters, especially if picketing has to be outside normal hours.
To campaign on these issues and take the struggle forward needs national organisation and co-ordination. Socialist women need an organisation; even the revolutionary party will have to have special caucuses for women.
The need for rank and file women’s organisations is paramount. At the moment, we don’t have either a revolutionary party or a national scale socialist women’s movement. Both the revolutionary left and the women’s movement are wracked by splits. But we must start to make links between the various struggles and campaigns, encourage militant women to join the wider movement, argue for involvement in the campaigns against the cuts, and participate in local action groups and national campaigns such as the National Abortion Campaign and the Working Women’s Charter. We hope revolutionary socialists, women and men, will discuss with us ways in which we can build the movement amongst women at work and at home and how we can step up the fight for women’s liberation in the labour movement.
The Women’s Voice rally
Members of Workers Power consistently argued, when they were in IS, for a serious attitude to women’s work. We have pointed out that if we are to fight for the kinds of demands and activities described in the previous article, if we are to develop a real fighting strategy for women workers and if we are to link up workers and housewives, we need a genuine rank and file women’s paper which can be effectively used to organise women. We have argued against those in the women’s movement who think that women can end their oppression without joining the fight with the working class to change society — but we have insisted that the fight for women’s liberation starts here and now and that all socialists, women and men, have a duty to be active in that fight.
Did the recent Women’s Voice rally provide real leadership and involve women in concerted activity? With 600 present and speakers from many areas on a range of aspects of women’s struggles, it was certainly one of the biggest gatherings of socialist women there has been, and evidence of the growth of militancy and determination amongst them. But although some of the biggest cheers went to calls for a movement of ‘revolutionary feminists’, the rally offered little real guidance on the way forward. Rallies are not enough. IS women and supporters of Women’s Voice will have to argue that Women’s Voice has to get down to the serious task of planning consistent strategy and activity. Proper conferences, national and regional, are needed to pool experience and draw the conclusions. Active rank and file Women’s Voice groups are needed, ones that are not simply recruiting grounds for IS, but which agitate and intervene in local battles — whether around NAC, nurseries etc or trade union issues. IS should drop its sectarian attitude to the Working Women’s Charter; if the Charter and its campaign has faults, then IS should join and work to change it.
The Working Women’s Charter Campaign does offer socialist women a chance to involve working women and gain support in the existing trade union movement. We should campaign within it and for it. It isn’t the only arena for work but we must not ignore its possibilities. We urge women socialists and trades unionists to attend the London Cuts Campaign Conference organised by the Charter, and the National Conference planned for the new year.
