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A recent issue of Free long Kong quoted an interesting article which appeared in the long Kong Standard resulting from a series of investigations by the Christian Industrial Conmittee into cases of grossly exploitative practices on the part of employers, in particular the enforcient of excessive overtime upon employees, Five such cases concerned wig manufacturers, involving a total of some 400 employees, according to the Director of the C.I. Conmittee, Mr. R. Fung, who stressed that these were only the cases which had been reported to the Comnittee. It may well be only the tip of the iceberg. The article goes on:
*One of the most recent reports..... involved a factory where 41 female workers were locked into one floor of a wig factory and made to work 11, hours a day. "They were made to work like this for about a month", Mr. Fung said.
Under present working hours legislation, women and young people employed in industry are only supposed to work 8 hours and 20 minutes a day with a maximum permissible overtime of 270 hours a year. (between 5 and 6 hours a week).
The wig industry employees were also given very short notice about working overtime. This was probably because the proprietors received sudden orders for more wigs."
ready to support the cleaners again.
The cleaners' action has been important in showing the very cleareut difference of interests between management and workers. This has been particularly clear to the cleaners themselves whose militancy has increased with the prevarication and hostility of the management. Students also saw that there was a change from a liberal attitude by the university when their actions were in support of workers. The Vice-Chancellor went to the length, unprecedented at this university, of taking out injunctions naming three students involved in the occupation.
The cleaners' action has also been important in showing to other university workers, many of whom are not unionised, that workers must use unions effectively by actively participating in them.
Women have traditionally been a passive section of the working class. The Lancaster cleaners are making a fine start in establishing a new tradition.
Cathy Ryde, Lancaster Socialist Woman Group Thus the imposition of overtime, presumably accompanied by a threat of dimissal if the order was not complied which was dictated by the immediate productivity (and profit) requirements of the firm.
Clearly then the last people whose needs and welfare are considered by the directors and managers are the women who sweat to produce the goods. They have no say or control over how many wigs they will make and at what time they will knock off. Such decisions are dictated by the needs and whims of those who stand to take the lions share of the profits; the men and women who own the capital that is invested in this highly profitable enterprise.
Here we see yet another example of how girls and women through a lifetime of psychological and social conditioning, are forced into accepting working conditions that men are now generally in a position to refuse, thanks to trade union organisation and militancy, and thanks to the fact that wives, sisters and mothers are still willing to provide (at their own expense) the small comforts (regular meals, clean clothes, tidy home, sexual gratification, sympathy and companionship, kids who embody their unfulfilled potential) which enable them to remain in good working order and fighting condition while maintaining a sense (albeit false) of personal dignity and worth.
But it is not only in Hong Kong, as the Free Hong Kong report suggests, that such practices occur - they are in fact a feature BIG PROFIT WIG FACTORy STOP PRESS The administration finally offered £1.20 rise for transport (for those who work 30 hours per week or less). In addition the agreement which was signed involved recognition of the union and the establishment of procedures for dealing with disputes and negotiations. The University has promised to work towards the institution of a check off system for collection of union dues in the autumn.
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of every capitalist economy which is underrecurrent inflationary crises and the need to going severe structural erisis, faced with rationalise and modernise the means of production to compete with other national competitors on the international market. The article is especially interesting in view of the light it throws on the way the capitalist system will use women in conditione of rapidly rising unemployment - a situation which inmediately threatens British workers right now, By making jobs scarce, i.e. creating a high demand for each one, employers can force a small (often reduced) female work force to work very long hours for a pittance, denying them any righte that male workers have won through strugge and treading rough-shod over any protective legislation. Women workers, especially the unskilled can be used in this way as a source of cheap labour, especially in a context of high unemployment, as part of the capitalists strateg of squeezing the maximum productivity and bence profit out of the workers at the lowest possible expense. Such a strategy also serves to disunite the working class, setting one sector (women) against another (men) - the same applies to imnigrant workers and nationals - and to disorientate and confuse people, to undermine their growing class awareness and replace this with jealous rivalry and competitiveness within the working class at its own expense, and at the expense of the elass struggle.
The lessons that Socialist Women should be putting across are clear, Toe only protection women workera can have against such exploitation and denial of basic rights is in their own. militancy, through organisation. Tais may in the short term be at the expense of domestic peace, it may mean strained family relationships: but husbands, boyfrieds, fat ers and to learn that their liberation, sons will have of the working class as a whole, requires an the liberation alternative socialisation process of a new kind of woman worker a class conscious woman, ready and able to act in strugglę alongside the men who at present determine the pace and direction of the elass struggle, Women have a lot to learn and a lot to give. But we must take the initiative which means being aggressive and forceful -at work and at bome.
Linda Fryd WOMEN'S INDUSTRIAL SCHOOL "Socialist Woman" was asked at the 26th-27th June meeting of the Women's National Coordinating Committee to hold an Industrial School for the movement, as convenor of the WNCO's Industrial Campaign. We hope to hold this school in the first half of September, in London; proposed subjects so far include: Why an Industrial Campaign?-the present context; How will the Industrial Relations Bill, the Immigration Bill, the Equal Pay Bill affect women?; Strategy for Industrial Campaigns; Women & Unemployment: Women, the family and capitalist society; Women & the unions action on childcare. We plan to centre the next issue of Socialist Woman around this school. Ring 01-837 6954 for further details.
EDITORIAL STATEMENT We publish here extracts from a statement from the IMG Women's Caucus printed in the June 1971 issue of Women's Struggle in reply to a statement distributed at the Leeds WNCC by the Nottingham Women's Liberation Group. The gist of the latter statement was that:
1. The London Socialist Woman Group was not justified in regarding Socialist Woman as the journal of the Socialist Woman Groups set up under IMG initiative, as the IMG had taken little interest in the founding or development of the paper.
2. London Socialist Woman Group had not communicated with the non-IMG members of the Nottingham Women's Liberation Group (then Nottingham Socialist Women's Committee) about the enlarging of the editorial board to a national one, and had ignored letters sent.
3. Socialist Woman was mistaken in claiming that "it is impossible to unite all women"; Nottingham Women's Liberation Group believes that all women can be united against this social system.
Nottingham Women's Liberation Group believed that Socialist Woman, concentrating on the needs of working class women, and the Notting ham Women's Liberation Group's paper, aimed at women outside the movement and new members, could coexist.
'STATEMENT ON SOCIALIST WOMAN BY IMG WOMEN'S CAUCUS: "[IMG Women's Caucus had proposed a meeting with the Nottingham Socialist Women's Committee long before the Leeds statement was issued, and had received a letter rejecting this. Further attempts had been made at the Leeds WNCC to arrange a meeting. IMG Women's Caucus had therefore made several efforts to resolve the situation in a friendly manner. A more detailed reply had been sent to Nottingham. which the present statement summarises; copies of the original letter and the letter from the Nottingham Group rejecting a meeting are available to those who want them.] Socialis. Woman and the Nottingham Socialist Women's Committee were established through the initiative of IMG; the first publi city, appeals for materials and funds, etc. were in the IMG's theoretical *2. Our journals have consistently advertised Socialist Woman, our comrades have always sold the paper, written for it, and regarded it as their journal in the Women's field "A Programme for Women's Liberation' was published (Feb 1970) in Socialist Woman in the name of the IMG Women's Caucus. *4. The comrades on the editorial board (who were all IMG members in recent months, having been recruited) accepted the right of the IMG to discuss their work on SW and accepted majority decisions in regard to (e.g. to freeze the membership of the editorial board). They were present at and voted for a resolution declaring that democratic centralism-whereby all comrades participate in, vote upon and then accept. decisions-should include their work in SW "Two other points should be made clear, First, our concern was only with the IMG comrades in Nottingham SWC and with their work on the editorial board. Second, any perusal of early numbers of the journal will show that it was always the intention to promote the formation of many Socialist Woman groups and to use the paper as the unifying organising force.
We believe that there is room for many journals including a socialist oriented one. But with the growth in the women's liberation movement and especially in Socialist Woman groups, it was not, in our opinion, possible for the paper to continue to grow and develop politically without taking this national growth into account and becoming a national paper as we had always envisaged, drawing on the experience of all the Socialist Woman groups and with a nationally elected editorial board. We now have a national editorial board and will be consolidating our experience and electing a more permanent board at our national conference in October. We understand that for some time now the Nottingham group had in any case been considering changing the name of their group and the character of the paper; we wish them well in this new venture and hope that we can both be part of an ever-growing movement working towards a common cause-a socialist society and women's liberation.
—IMG Women's Caucus, 1971"