Salient. Official Newspaper of Victoria University of Wellington Students Association. Vol 40 No. 6. April 4 1977
Women in Unions
Women in Unions
Equal pay, unfair dismissal, voluntary unionism, the problems of a trade union field officer—these were some of the subjects Therese O'Connell discussed with the Women's Study Group at its March 28 meeting.
Therese is the Organiser for the Wellington Clerical Workers' Union. Her job involves looking after the interests of union members. 80% of whom are women; and negotiating with employers on their behalf. She finds that many workers are unaware of their rights, or are uninterested in union affairs. This is scarcely surprising given the limited resources of trade unions. Many unions are not doing nearly as much as they would like for members simply because they have not got the money. For example the Wellington Clerical Workers' Union can only afford one field officer to serve 9,000 union members.
Another handicap that unions like the Clerical Workers' suffer from is getting workers from all offices together for meetings. The C.W.U, wants to see the introduction of paid stop-work meetings, to be held during working hours, for all clerical workers. Women workers in particular find it very difficult to attend Union meetings after work or in evenings given other commitments like their families. In any case, why should workers have to meet outside working hours or in their lunch-times? Management discuss their concerns within working hours.
Given the limited resources of unions it is inevitable that many employees will be ignorant of their rights. For example, part-time clerical workers are now entitled to the same benefits as full-timers. But many older women returning to work part-time will be unaware of this recent advance, and in some cases, if workers don't agitate for the benefits they are legally entitled to, employees don't give them.
In general of course, fear of being sacked acts as a strong deterrent against worker agitation - this applies particularly to part-time women workers they know as does the employer that there are more women wanting work than there are jobs to go around.
Ignorance of the rights of employees can also be attributed to the lack of formal education we receive about industrial relations and trade unionism. And we may doubt the value of any such instruction given the capitalist ideology which underpins the education system.
Some quite shocking cases of exploitation arise out of ignorance of one's rights. Therese cited the case of an employee who agreed to work three days 'on trial' without pay.(It must be said too, that often employers are ignorant of their legal responsibilities to their employees.)
Women workers too are more easily manipulated by amployers because they have been socialised to be passive and deprecatory, particularly towards men, who constitute the majority of employers—hence the cruciality of union support. However, union hierarchies are usually male-dominated and unfortunately it is not hard to find examples which show that union leaders are unaware that women workers play their part in the workers' struggle.
Women are now working in a number of N.Z. freezing works, thanks to the determined efforts of women like Viv Portszold, who is at present working at the Gear Meat Works, Petone.
Viv first worked at Longburn, where women were confined to the jobs of inspecting and packing in the boning room. There was considerable resistance from the boners to women being allowed to do anything else, like knife-work. Boners and chain hands feared that women would move into all departments and thus threaten their jobs. Opposition to women workers was heavily sexist in tone 'women can't handle knives,' 'they won't be able to stand the pace' etc. But by working through union channels, and by "respecting people's prejudices," as Viv put it, women workers eventually won. the concessions they wanted. The Wellington branch of the Meat Workers' Union now has a policy of equal opportunity in the works,(though this has not been endorsed by all the sheds in the Wellington district.)
Viv told us a little about the operation of freezing works—which in some wavs obviously rip off labourers. For example, some workers, like boners, are on incentive rates of pay, (i.e. the more carcasses they bone the more they get paid), while packers for example are on flat labourers' rates. So boners go like hell and get more money for more effort, but packers who have to keep up with the boners, go like hell for no extra remuneration. This goes to show that "worker participation," at least in the form of incentive rates, for some workers is going to benefit the employers rather than the mass of employees.
The next meeting of the Women 's Study Croup will discuss the Domestic Purposes Benefit, including discussion on the hard ship experienced by solo parents, the inadequacy of the benefit, and the Government's spying on people who are receiving the Domestic Purposes Benefit. All welcome in the Lounge, 5p.m. April 13.
— Virginia Branney.