Like what you've read?

On Line Opinion is the only Australian site where you get all sides of the story. We don't
charge, but we need your support. Here�s how you can help.

  • Advertise

    We have a monthly audience of 70,000 and advertising packages from $200 a month.

  • Volunteer

    We always need commissioning editors and sub-editors.

  • Contribute

    Got something to say? Submit an essay.


 The National Forum   Donate   Your Account   On Line Opinion   Forum   Blogs   Polling   About   
On Line Opinion logo ON LINE OPINION - Australia's e-journal of social and political debate

Subscribe!
Subscribe





On Line Opinion is a not-for-profit publication and relies on the generosity of its sponsors, editors and contributors. If you would like to help, contact us.
___________

Syndicate
RSS/XML


RSS 2.0

What do we want? Equal Pay! When do we want it? Now!

By Liz Ross - posted Wednesday, 22 June 2011


Winning equal pay then became an extremely cumbersome process, with unions having to prove the case with detailed studies and submissions. Not surprisingly in the end only 18 percent of women got formal equal pay. "The result for the women in the meat industry," Zelda noted, "meant that only 12 percent of women would receive equal pay." Only 120 women out of 2,000 won equal rates!

Well no-one was going to let it go at that. Zelda continues the story. Some time later she went to a meeting of the Victorian Employed Women's Organizations' Council, VEWOC. It was made up of the trade unions with female members. Only two women turned up for the meeting, Zelda and Diane Sonnenberg from the Insurance Staff Federation. Zelda recalls, "We started talking and she said that maybe we needed to chain ourselves up like the Suffragettes did. We laughed, but I thought about it and said I was prepared to do it."

So Zelda chained herself to the Government offices' doors. Some women contacted her afterwards and a number of them decided to do the same again in October 1969, when there was a teachers' strike. This time they went to the Arbitration Commission.

Advertisement

Yvonne Smith: 'We stood outside calling out slogans which could be heard inside the (Arbitration) Court and waving banners such as: "Unequal Pay is Sex Discrimination" and "Make 1969 Equal Pay Year."

Equal pay was granted, but as the current fight by the Australian Services Union shows, women are still fighting to win it.

However in 1969 one union decided to implement the decision its way. Taking industrial action at both the industry and workplace level delivered equal pay to 90 percent of women members of the Amalgamated Engineering Union (now the AMWU) by the start of 1972.

As well, more women joined the union and more became shop stewards. The union commented that "a feature of the activity was the readiness of the women concerned to take industrial action to support their demand."

Compare this with the banking and insurance industry, which comprised of around 50 percent women and which followed, to the letter, the 1969 decision process, just going to the courts and taking no industrial action. They won nothing.

In the end what mattered was not the number of women in the industry, but the industrial strength and militancy of the union (and also their politics, in a more general sense).

Advertisement

In the meantime, Women's Liberation groups had sprung up around Australia, Zelda being one of the founders in Melbourne. It had a number of working class demands, including that for full economic equality – pay, right to work, job opportunities, child care, maternity leave, and the like.

With increasing numbers of women in the workplace, wage inequality was an obvious target for the Movement's attention. Activists joined the picket lines of striking Sportsgirl machinists, and supported Melbourne tram conductresses trying to get jobs as drivers. The movement's orientation to women as workers affected the unions. A Working Women's Group was set up in the middle of 1972.

By 1972, there was an increased push for 'real' equal pay and the unions again took the case to the Arbitration Commission. While agreeing to widen equal pay to "equal pay for work of equal value" – 'similar content or tasks' rather than 'identical' work, there was still no basic equal pay rate. More crucially employers (over 60 percent) rushed to reclassify women's jobs onto a different and lower scale to men in similar work. So unions had to fight for equal pay all over again.

  1. Pages:
  2. 1
  3. 2
  4. Page 3
  5. 4
  6. All


Discuss in our Forums

See what other readers are saying about this article!

Click here to read & post comments.

19 posts so far.

Share this:
reddit this reddit thisbookmark with del.icio.us Del.icio.usdigg thisseed newsvineSeed NewsvineStumbleUpon StumbleUponsubmit to propellerkwoff it

About the Author

Liz Ross is an activist and member of Socialist Alternative.

Other articles by this Author

All articles by Liz Ross

Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

Article Tools
Comment 19 comments
Print Printable version
Subscribe Subscribe
Email Email a friend
Advertisement

About Us Search Discuss Feedback Legals Privacy