"This National Conference recognises that low pay for women, sex discrimination and inequality in industry cannot be resolved by legislation alone. The AUEW will campaign for 'men's pay for women': that is paid the wage a man would receive if he were doing the job. This will only be achieved by improved organisation of women and industrial activity. National Conference therefore calls on all members to intensify the campaign for total equality for women in industry and urges all our female members to play a fuller part in the organisation and running of the union at factory, branch, divisional and national level."
That is the policy of the Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers on equal pay and sex discrimination.
That commitment is now being put to the test at the Trico factory in West London, where the women, in their tourth month on strike for equal pay, have certainly 'intensified the campaign'. The problem is, will the AUEW nationally intensify the campaign in their suooort?
The AUEW has had a policy in favour of equal pay for years. Year after year the demand for equal pay was suomiuted to the Engineering Employers Federation within the national pay claim. Year after year it was the first demand to be dropped in negotiations. A similar attitude is now being displayed towards the Trico strike - a vital test case in the battle to enforce equal pay.
In an article on Trico in the union's journal "for women and youth', Way, nothing is said as to what AUEW members should do in support of the strike. Yet effective blacking is ential to winning the strike. Whilst blacking has been taken up, particularly in the car industry, as a result of SIriKe committee appeals to shop stewards, no effective national blacking has been declared by the union.
- women should be that the Trico workers could well be told that the rise is now subject to the pay limit - as equal pay rises are not subject to the pay limit.
If that should happen, Hugh ScanIon - fresh from belting the seamen into line - will be quite prepared to sacrifice equal pay for Trico women on the altar of the social contract. Even now in the car industry, where the union leaders are doing everything in their power to limit the power of the shop stewards and prevent disputes, the blacking of Trico wipers is an embarrassment to bureaucrats like Scanlon.
Faced with Scanlon's policing of the social contract, the Communist Party is attempting ISTO avoid any Last year the Labour Government introduced legislation aiscrimination acalnst, women. How effective has been? Has it implemented? Are recent equal pay strikes an exception or a rule in the fight for equal pay? What is happening to nursery provision, rights to confrontation with the national union leaders over Trico by trying to pass off a national ban as being unnecessary. At a meeting organised by the Working Women's Charter at the TUC, CP member Kevin Halpin (formerly promCIVE US For the same reasons the CP, which dominates the Southall District Committee of the AUEW, is back-tracking on decisions to build a demonstration of support for the strike on an all London scale. Despite the decision or a meeting caled Dy the Greater London Association of Trades Councils to organise a demonstration with the District Committée and the strike committee, no date has yet been set Yet such a demonstration is more urgent than ever in building support for the strike. A date should be set meolatery, and organisatons suci ERE VwOrKine yvomens onane Campaign asked to help to build the This should be accompanied by actions such as public meetings on the same day in towns in the Midlands and North.
RICH PALSER Efforts to aid the Trico strike must now be redoubled. Red Weekly urges its readers to:
* Mount a campaign on the AUEW and other unions in the car industry for national blacking of Trico goods, as well as for shop stewards committees to continue and extend present blacking * Fight for local labour movement meetings, in conjunction with Charter and other women's groups, to invite Trico speakers and raise money urg ently needed for the strikers.
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RALLY FOR WOMEN'S RIGHTS.