National Equal Pay Day - September 12 - was a disappointing affair. It had originally been planned by NJACWER (National Joint Action Campaign for Women's Equal Rights) as a nationwide day of meetings and demonstrations, but ended up as one meeting in London with the emphasis on the nurses' situation.
In the context of the equal pay struggle, this choice of subject was somewhat out of place. NJACWER demands equal pay for equal work: industrial figures in April this year show that the average increase in a woman's wage was 6.15d per hour as against men's 10.35d per hour, about 60% of the men's increase. It is certainly true that nurses are exploited, but they are exploited as women in a traditionally female role, that of inferior creatures who can fetch and carry for (men) doctors, an extension of the female domestic. Within the medical professioned nat smashingle is concept of - aimed at smashing the concept "women's work'. Thus the meeting reflected the obvious confusion within NJAWER: what exactly are its priorities - the specific aim of equal pay for equal work, or the struggle for equal rights at all levels?
Sister Pat Veal from the United Nurses Association talked at great length, mostly in anecdotes, and on a purely descriptive level she provided a good insight into the conditions under which nurses have to have to operate. Since 1933, for example, have been searching for a Nurses Union: at present nurses are incorporated into NUPE (National Union of Public Employees) or COHSE (Confederation of Health Service Employees). Since there is a general wage pool in both these unions, nurses tare extremely badly so that a student nurse earns only £5.15.0 per week, a staff nurse E12.10.0. Nursing Agencies, to which a large number of newly qualified nurses are turning for work, take up to 12½% off the girl's salary: the hospital isn't charged. Pat Veal is right when she says, Nurses are their own worst enemies: they don't realise just how much they are being exploited. The official nurses working week is 42 hours, and attempts are being made practically no money; it is a voluntary society and therefore had to depend on donations to survive. If it were legally reconstituted as a could be demanded. Another suggestion is that society then regular subscriptions trade unions should be asked to subscribe to any Newsletter produced. If NJAWER was more democratically organised and activities better co-ordinated, and if there wasn't this chronic shortage of money, National Equal Pay Day could have been far more militant than it All this is not to belittle the importance of NJAWER, but to point out some of the reasons why its activities up till now have been limited. And on the political level, there is some disagreement as to what its role should be. A number of the CP stewards in NJAWER see it as a pressure group on Parliament, a group which should simply make propaganda for equal pay, maybe to persuade Wilson and the TUC to bring in equal pay some time before the promised 1975 Wilson's equal pay programme is rather an insidious one. In order to maintain profits, Wilson and the TUC will have to demand sacrifices from men workers -both in terms of a wage ceiling and speed up in the factory - in order to give a pay rise to women. This will effectively split the working class and pit one section against the other. With the prospect of this distortion of equal pay, it is vital that NJAWER retain its autonomy as a grass roots movement which will, organise women (and men) workers to prevent anything like Wilson's scheme from coming in. Women factory workers have got to realise that the aim is to raise women's wages to the level of men's without any material disadvantage to the latter, and that subsequent pay increases involve the same amount of money for both. In a situation where only 11% of working women are getting equal pay, NJAWER has a vital role to play in the fight for genuine equality of pay, and in the fight for full unionisation of women, both full and part time. To a great extent the result of the struggle will depend on the amount of agitational work they can do. But in order to prepare the ground for this work they are going to have to restructure the organisation and get it running efficiently. For unless they manage this we may be faced with repetitions of National Equal Pay Day 1969.
LUCIA have to take home as their dignity. It's nice for the owners if the myth comes out of the Union structure. Unions, hand in hand with Wilson.
with the owners and with the greed they all have in common. The work people in Port Talbot were set-up as ignorant troublemakers trying to screw up the already screwed economic scene in Britain and elsewhere. The Unions through the T.U.C. and Wilson saw to it that the strike would never become official.
The words ran, 'If you don't work workers then we won't talk to you at all. Your time is to work, Not to talk. Not to think. Certainly not to act.' So the credo goes all the way down Press and Media and servants of the owners in this position and that position.
The workers were being forced out into an exposed position in Wales for the owners were curious to see how effective certain propaganda myths had been. Wales was the mythical kingdom of Charlie boy and the robber barons. A place where the owners had been spinning their divisive tales for years.
Why not a strike in Scotland or in the North East? Why not in the South? Wales was the scene as the Moon had become a bag of useless stones. The workers in Port Talbot, however, did not follow the pattern the owners anticipated. They told their Union leaders and the others to go get fucked. They organised themselves for their people. They refused to be brought out on words by the Press or the Media. They elected their own strike committee and they heir women and the their own Their women their children became involved. The television sets were deserted. The women were on the beaches with their children talking among themselves. The work people went to their pubs and for the first time in many years old and young put their heads together. Port Talbot was united as a community against a common enemy of that community.
In spite of the heads that flew around looking for proof of their particular theory for it all, the workers and the community the lived in moved to organise their people. Local council, housewives, youth, workers all united in support. The heads way out on theory were split among themselves as all angels are with the pin that can't stick nowhere. The people had acted, had organised their own actions, had talked, had thought and they won every one of their demands.
the Russian occupation, this is a good descrip tion of a new mood in trade unionism and socialist political organisations. It sums up spirit of militant democracy, of active opposi tion to arbitrary political and economic powe by one man over another, and of regard for the creative capacities of the working people, which are so fearfully choked back and stifled in our present society.
It is true that workers in Britain enjoy certain democratic rights, which are crucially important to their livelihood and the defence of their conditions and standards of life. It is equally true that many of these fundamental rights are under heavy attack, employers, the State, the Conservative Party, and the predominant groupings within the Labour Government. The trade union victory over attacks on the right to strike, for instance, was only the first round of a battle which will continue to be fought on many fronts for a long time. Unions are learning that they can only maintain their powers by militant vigilance, and that they must be prepared to fight on several fronts at once. But workers are also learning that it is not enough to defend the democratic gains which were made by their fathers and grandfathers. They are also being thrust into new appreciations, which teach them the gross inadequacy of many of the institutions which purport to represent or defend them, and which continually underline the need for an extension of democratic powers at the grass roots of society.
Nowhere has this process of learning been more clearly exemplified than at the Liverpool plants of GEC-English Electric. The fact is that the enthusiastic determination Liverpool Shop Stewards to resist unemployment by actually occupying and continuing to work their factories is a copybook example of "trade unionism with a human face." The new unionism has learnt from the old, and learnt Thoroughly and quickly Before he turned his attention to th Merseyside factories, Arnold Weinstock had already dismissed 12000 workpeople, of all grades and skills, from one end of the country to the other. Many of these dismissals were combatted by every possible "constitutional' means. A perfect example of such resistance is the quite remarkable struggle of the Woolwich workers, totally united and enjoying, as they did, the backing of a whole community. Five