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The government's incomes policy weathered successfully the attempts of the low-paid hospital and gas workers — both new to militant struggle - to gain a worthwhile increase during the first part of this year. Although vague exhortations about support were heard coming from the direction of Congress House, the union movement failed to organise any real solidarity; and neither the miners nor the Ford workers were prepared, in thir turn, to do battle with the Tories. The next challenge to the government looks to be coming from the At the National Committee of the AUEW's Engineering Section - the union's policy-making body which met early in April - delegates voted to lodge a claim for a £35 National Minimum Rate for a 35-hour week, this to take effect from the end of the current agreement (which runs out in August). These decisions represent an important step forward in the resistance of the working class movement to the government's constant and increasing attacks on its living standards. The British working class is famous for its economic militancy, and the AUEW, traditionally one of Britain's strongest and most self-confident unions, is promising to take on the employers and government in the way it knows best.
However, we have to recognise the fact that this traditional strength of trade-union consciousness is also in another way a weakness. The £35 minimum applies to skilled - almost invariably male - workers; the demand is for "pro rata increases for other grades" — semi-skilled, unskilled, apprentices and... females. And last year's agreement - on the basis of which the present rise is demanded - was certainly nothing to boast about. The original demand for equal pay somehow got lost along the line and women ended up with 90% of the unskilled rate - lower in money terms than three years previously.
The National Committee did indeed reiterate the resolution from the 1973 AUEW Women's Conference that it was "perturbed at the lack of activity and progress on the Equal Pay question" - but then went on to water down a resolution from North London District instructing "Executive Council to launch an intensive campaign on the question of Equal Pay" to one advising them to do so.
HEAD-ON COLLISION Since the current minimum rate for skilled workers - operative from 25th August under last year's agreement — is f25, and usually for a 40-hour week or more ai that, the conference's resolution reflects a decision by the militants in the union to take on the government and its El + 4% (or whatever Phase 3 may bring) in a head-on collision. By way of an additional safeguard, the delegates voted for "national industrial action if necessary" - following last year's fiasco of plant bargaining - and that the National Committee should be recalled before any agreement is signed.
The June meeting of the AUEW National Conference - which lays down policy for all four sections of the Amalgamated Union - backed up the wage demand by reaffirming the union's opposition to any form of wage restraint and opposing pay and prices negotiations with the government (leading to Scanion's withdrawal from the talks). "THE INIQUITOUS SYSTEM OF FEMALE LABOUR"
The Engineers' Union has not exactly got a record of fraternally welcoming women into the trade on equal terms as fellow workers. Women have worked in the metal trades since the 14th century, and after the Industrial Revolution were employed in large numbers in the Black Country in such trades as chain-making and stamping of brass nails. The reaction of the organised male engineers was to attempt to exclude women from the trade altogether, on the argument that they lowered the rates (as, without unionisation, they were bound to). Such enlightened statements are on record as, from the Birmingham Brass Workers, the slogan "To organise is to recognise** — a refusal on principle even to cooperate with other bodies attempting to organise the women; from the Nut & Bolt Makers a resolution to the TUC in 1884 to "stamp out the iniquitous system of female labour"; and from the Nailmakers, a petition to Parliament, asking it to restrict women to "their own size of nail"
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Between 1884 and 1911, the number of women working in the trade increased from 14,000 to 128,000, and the demands of the First World War, combined with the call-up of large numbers of male engineers into the armed forces, boosted the number of women and girls employed in engineering and munitions to nearly half a million. The Amalgamated Society of Engineers' main preoccupation was as far as possible to maintain existing practices and rates until such time as the rightful occupiers of the jobs could return to them, and to get the women out at the end of the war as quickly as possible. While the ASE cooperated with the National Federation of Women Workers (a women's general union) in organising women in some places, its own doors remained closed to women. The employment of women in the trade fell after the war to 200.000.
Finally, when the Second World War had brought a second influx of women to the industry, the AEU began to pay attention to the rates the women were getting, and belatedly admitted women to membership (of the Women's Section) in 1943. With the post-war economic boom and phased demobilisation of the armed forces, there was not the large-scale dismissal of women from the industry which had followed the previous war, and the permanent employment of significant numbers of women in engineering began to be recognised, albeit reluctantly, as a fact of life.
At the present day, nearly 10% of the nine million women in employment work in engineering, making up one quarter of engineering workers; and the increase in the women membership of the AUEW over the last 20 years (90,000) is the second largest of that of any union.
TODAY'S PROBLEMS - EQUAL PAY The central question in most discussions concerning women in the AUEW is that of equal pay. The union's attitude can be. summed up as stressing organisation and militancy in achieving equal pay for women, rather than the reliance of the Equal Pay Act and job evaluation advocated by more right-wing unions such as the BEPTU. The fact that this approach, though not "wrong", is clearly inadequate in practical terms (equal pay for what? how to achieve "militancy") is illustrated by attempts within the union to develop the position along the lines of the demand for "Equal Pay for work of equal value" - rather than accepting the limitations of the Equal Pay Act which confines itself to "Equal Pay for the same or broadly similar work" (which the union claims has applied to women in engineering since 1940) Over two-thirds of the women employed in the engineering industry are concentrated within the Mechanical and they make up 39% of the workforce - followed by Instrument Engineering (36%). Of the latter two categories (both of which require a high degree of the manual dexterity attributed to women), between half and two-thirds of the women employed are in semi-skilled occupations, the bulk of the remainder being in office jobs of various kinds related to the industries. (The largest proportions of men in these categories are in skilled jobs; and in semi-skilled occupations, only a little over half the numbers of women so employed.) In a situation of this kind, the obvious question is "equal pay to what?" The 1973 AUEW Women's Conference clearly had in mind these problems of distribution in "equating" jobs when it drew attention in its resolution to the fact that "many employers are using the time limit of the 1975 Equal Pay Act to make some jobs, particularly some electronic work, as women's work. This. is a manoeuvre to get around the Act." Nevertheless, the danger remains in the "Equal Pay for work of equal value" formula that this will mean in practice job evaluation - with all its drawbacks of associated work-study and increased management control, the subjective element in the evaluation so that traditional values (e.g. rating women's dexterity low) are merely reproduced in a "scientific" guise, and the fact that almost inevitably in a capitalist system, the only value that can be assessed is value to the employer. (The Women's Conference went on to oppose "job evaluation for women only" and this was endorsed by the National Committee.)
The AUEW in a recent paper Women's Rights - Employment in Engineering" suggests "some form of carefully controlled assessment... which would include joint consultation at plant level and involve the women concerned." Such safeguards are obviously necessary and desirable, and must be fought for wherever the question can be raised. But the problem remains one which is likely to occupy for some considerable time those in the union movement and women's liberation movement who are concerned with the practical interpretation of their principled positions.
THE ENGINEERS PAY CLAIM The immediate question meanwhile is the implementation of the engineers' pay claim. This is likely to be complicated by the uneven position within the industry left over from last year's claim and the intervening freeze - with some small employers having been forced, by the common interpretation of the "El + 4%" formula as a norm rather than a ceiling, to give larger rises than usual, while other firms have used Phase 2 as an excuse not to implement the second half of last year's agreement. We can only wait and see how this will be resolved in practice.
However the importance of the declared intention of waging a national struggle to raise minimum rates, and in particular to achieve a shorter working week, lies in its recognition of the need for some kind of unity in confronting the government's offensive. We must support in every way possible the suceess of the pay claim as a vital step in defeating the government at this time. But at the same time we must recognise the limitations of its terms of reference, and that such unity can only be short-lived until we can find practical ways of breaking down the deep-rooted social and psychological divisions between those sections of the working calss in positions of economic strength and the less well-placed Marilyn Scotcher
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Electrical Sectors"; and within these the highest concen- tration of women workers is in Electrical Engineering - where