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

WHAT DO WE WANT? EQUAL PAY! WHEN DO WE WANT IT? NOW!

Well, said one woman on getting the age pension – equal pay at last!

Before the days of the Age Pension, in the early 1900s, some women took somewhat more drastic action – dressing as men to get equal pay. In October 1906, the Victorian Socialist Party's paper The Socialist described the case of Marion (Bill) Edwards, who, they wrote "says she first donned male clothes to enable her to get a living easier than she could as one of the gentler sex."

The Socialistwent on to argue that the moral of the story was "equal pay for equal work and thorough training for both sexes, with economic freedom for all." And they – and the later Communist Party – were strong supporters of women's rights in all spheres.

But the equal pay battle, fortunately, wasn't left to these tactics. The late 1800's saw unions support women members in the fight for equal rights, including equal pay. The Shearers Union, while not having women members, supported equal rights for women, WG Spence writing that the new unionism "makes no distinction of sex."

Women postal workers had equal pay rates and the union resisted attempts to undercut this. Another union to entrench a uniform rate for women and men was the Liquor Trades Union during its amalgamation process in 1910, a gain the Australian Railways Union later tried to copy for its female workers in the railways restaurants, after it won coverage of the work in 1918.

1912 saw a bit more action with the Commercial Clerks' Wages Board granting equal pay (though it was reversed early in 1913 after an appeal by employers), fruit pickers also won a single rate for the job (Mildura decision) and the Labor Women's Convention of that year supported the campaign for Equal Pay led by the Victorian Lady Teachers Association. 1913 saw an Equal Pay Convention in Melbourne.

In the 1920s a Victorian Trades Hall Council report called for equal rates and twice during the decade the Clothing Trades union took cases for uniform minimum pay to the Arbitration Commission (now Fair Work Australia).

One union that I'll make special mention of now, is the Australian Insurance Staffs' Federation (AISF), which was founded in 1920 as part of the growth in white collar unionism following World War I. A special meeting of female members in 1927 affirmed the principle of equal pay for the sexes, which was then adopted by the Federal Executive as AISF policy.

In fact, there was such agitation in the1920s that one employer complained that "much is heard these days of equal pay for equal work," a concept he dismissed as an "abstract principle...which must often yield to considerations of practical convenience."

Between the wars the growing female workforce in teaching and clerical work, in particular, fuelled the push for equal pay.

A renewed push was kicked off at a union-based Equal Pay Conference held in Sydney on 22 May 1937. Convened by the NSW Branch of the Federated Clerks' Union (FCU), there were delegates from 53 trade unions, women's and other organisations. It was effectively the first "conscious equal pay movement in Australia."

John Hughes, the FCU's NSW assistant state secretary opened the conference arguing that equal pay "means the establishment of economic independence for women and...remove[s] the intolerable unfairness to which women have been subjected in working for a rate below the value of the work they perform."

But then came the war. World War II had a contradictory impact on the fight for equal pay. On the one hand the war cut the ground from under workers' campaigns as the ruling class pushed for cross-class nationalism with appeals such as "Winnie the War Winner," encouraging women into volunteer and paid work to support the war effort.

On the other hand, precisely because the war had such a major social impact on Australian society, drawing in another 200,000 women into the workforce and into previously male-only jobs, it meant changes had to be made to pay and conditions. The government and employers were forced to increase women's wages, effectively ending the 54 percent female wage level that had lasted since 1919.

The government then set up the Women's Employment Board (WEB), to manage women's employment during the war. The WEB was instructed by the Curtin Labor government (despite Curtin's earlier promises of equal pay) that it was "not an equal pay board," that it must set a range of wage rates for women between 60-90 percent of the male rate and enforce it.

Nonetheless, 100 percent was won in some cases, especially with the support of the unions in manufacturing, tramways conductors and munitions. Despite the limitations, the WEB rate did raise the benchmark, and expectations, and it meant that after the war, while wages were often cut, there was resistance and in 1950 the female wage level was set at 75 percent.

However it was industrial action that was crucial to winning equal pay, or maintaining the war wage levels. For example, on 10April 1951, women at Rheem in Brisbane went on strike after the management wanted to slash the pay rate to 75 percent for all women workers. After holding out for three months, the dispute was settled and the women were offered 87.5 percent, equivalent to 90 percent of the male rate when the strike started.

During the same year, women employed at Swift Meatworks were also successful in their strike. A court decision awarded them 75 percent of male rates, which the company had tried to cut to 66 percent.

During the 1950s in Victoria there were equal pay rallies in 1955 and1957, plus a petition that collected 40,000 signatures in 1956 and the Roy Morgan Gallop Poll of June 6 1956, which showed that public opinion was in favour of equal pay. Despite this, Liberal Premier Bolte refused point blank to legislate to give women public servants the same salary as men.

The first Australian equal pay legislation which stated that workers, regardless of gender, were to be paid equally for performing work of the same or like nature and of equal value, was the NSW Female Rates (Amendment) Act of 1958.

The 1960s, a decade of protest, saw both the rise of the Women's Liberation Movement and a renewed push for equal pay from the unions. And in June 1969, the Meatworkers Union and the federal public servants, via the ACTU, put a claim into the Arbitration Commission for a national equal pay decision.

Zelda D'Aprano, then with the Meatworkers Union describes what happened:

"The case presented was not equal pay for equal work, but for doing away with the differential in salaries." Sitting in the Commission Zelda writes: "I found the need to sit there silent almost beyond my control, and was incensed with the entire set up. When the decision of this case was presented everyone was shocked, for it had nothing to do with the evidence or case presented."

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.

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).

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.

Somewhat surprisingly, one of the most exciting campaigns for equal pay came in the insurance industry, where the union had had the commitment to equal pay for women on its books since 1927, but had done little about it. The highlight of the union's action came towards the end in November 1973. There was a demonstration outside the National Mutual building in Melbourne while the employers group and the AISF leadership met inside it. Between two and three thousand insurance workers (at a time when their Victorian branch had around 5,000 members) made their anger known.

The demonstrators voted to stay out for the rest of the afternoon, and to have another stop work a week later. Union activist Phil Griffiths recalled: "The sense of anger was tremendous ... I remember racing around the office saying 'That's it! We're on strike. Come on, let's get going.' Some came out, we all had these furious debates." It took a little longer, but they did win.

Every decade of the 1900s and now into the 2000s with the Australian Services Union claim (1980s – nurses' comparable worth; 1999 – NSW pay equity hearing), we've had a fight for equal pay and the only way it's been won, where it has, is by determined industrial action and political leadership, not reliance on courts, the employers' good will or the peak union bodies. And that is the only way it will be won in the twenty first century.

http://home.vicnet.net.au/~women/12.%201970's%20on%20...Protests%20-%20Women%20Together%20Again.html

Zelda D'Aprano, Zelda Spinifex Press 1995

Kath Williams, The unions and the fight for equal paySpinifex 2001

http://www.anu.edu.au/polsci/marx/interventions/ - see articles by Diane Fieldes on Equal Pay. Second updated article in Rebel Women at this url.