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Marion Price
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Women: Ker participaurs in the class struggle Women workers experience the attack on the working class? wing standards in a partiadarly acute way: they are paid as if hey belong to a family unit, receiving 50% of the male rate on average. Yet one out of five households in Britain are headed by one-parent families - mainly women! The cconomic crisis faced by women workers has forced them on several recent occasions to take notice of the discrepuncies in pay between themselves and male workers. At the Lentheric/Morly factory for example, the shop steward told Socialur Women that they decided to strike in the first place because they found it impossible to cope on their wages, with the rising prices However, increasing numbers of strikes to keep up with infation are neither realistic nor adequate. A sliding scale of wages - so that any increase in the cost of living is matched with un automatic increase in wages - is a demand discussed by several organising committees of the nurses" struggle and one which workers are increasingly realising the importance of - especially as struggles over threshold agreements are spreading. (Sce the Nottingham Prices campaign article.)
Because all of the major wage clains have heen settled and won't be re-negotiated until the autumn. struggles crupting within the next few months will be on a local level. Women will be important participants in these struggles - they will often be spurred into action first simply hecause their situation becomes intolerable or else because they are forced to defend their jobs in the next wave of redundancies. In the past, women have always been the first to he laid off where they do jobs similar to mens* The International Marxist Group recognises the importance of any actions taken by women in the next few month». Because women are the weak link in the bureaucracy" hold over the working class, they will be one important group to levy the first challenge to the Social Compact - to challenge the idea that demands to maintain the working class living standards should be shelved while the Labour government is in office Any struggles crupting will set the pace for the upsurges when the big battalions of the labour movement put in their claus. However. the capacity of women to play a full role in these struggles will he limited due to specific probelms they confront. The organsiations of the working class must begin to tackle the oppression of women in an immediate way. For example, the women workers who participated in the occupation at MacLarens" in Glasgow could only play a limited role in the strugele owing to a lack of child care facilities. The Working Womeas" Charter Campaign One of the most important things about the Charter is that it raises issues such as child-care and contraception and ahortion on the understanding that a fight at the place of work will never be adequate or successfui unless a whole series of other problems confronting women are tackled The campaign can be developed in two ways - first, it can open a debate within the trade union movement on questions such as child - care which are not normally tackled by trade unions. but have been fully debated within the women's movement. Secondly, it can group together women (and men! I trade unomists, those not yet unionised, women's liberation groups, enc. so that any struggle that breaks out involving women workers will have ready support. In addition, any gains won aring disputes will make a qualizative impact on the mules coming in the winter and spring months. These pains and experiences must be shared by the working class Despite concession made by the Labour government.
cic ate not adequate to solve the economic needs of woas not will they tempt women to call of their struggles On the contrary, hecause of the particularly acute opp restion women workers face, it will be women who will often he in the forefront of struggles in the coming months. Women workers will provide a lesson for other workors - that all workers must rely on their own.capacity to struggle. rather than on promises and the initiatives of the Government Some women in the women's liheration movement no doubt heaved a sigh of relief with the election of the Labour government. Gone were the tax-credit and anti-discrimination proposals - and instead, an anti-discrimination board, increased married women's student grants, food subsidies and the inplementation of the Equal Pay Act were all immediate prospects!
Certainly the election of the Labour government was a victory for the working class- the determination of the miners to continue their struggle in the face of an escalating oftensive was a decisive step in kicking out the Tories But what is the Labour government up to now? Since its election, the Government has been frantically working out • Social Compact with the bureaucracy of the trade unions. This is Labour's answer to the continuing economic problems.
With a rate of inflation that is one of the highest in Europe, and with the balance of payments deficit now estimated to be ES000 million, the ruling class cannot afford to make any major concessions. Neither wage claims necessary to keep up with the galloping inflation or increases in social expend sture to meet the growing crisis in education. housing, and the health services are on the agenda Under the Tories, the ruling class first tried to meet the working class head on- conspiracy charges were land against 24 Shrewsbury building workers, and the Industrial Relations Act and the pay laws were enacted. The Labour government - which claims to have the interests of the working class at heart - is using its influence in the ranks of the working class to dampen any frade union militancy Women and the Trade Union Barcatcracy The trade union bureaucracy has never showed mach concern for the interests of its female members. Now, the one thing they are concerned with - the Social Compact - will make them even less willing to lake up demands made by weaker sections of workers, unless they are ahsolutely forced to do so On the other hand, the ruling class will have no hesitation to move agginst these weaker sections of the working class - students, women and blacks are all the potential subjects of vicious attacks. These groups will be used to teach the working class that industrial action won't he tolerated. The arrests and harrassment of the black workers on strike at Imperial Typewri ters are clear examples of this tactic. (Sce the interview with women workers on strike at this Leicester firm).
So the waker sections of the working class - an imporlant group being working class women - will be hit from two sides: the ruling class and the trade union hureaucracy.
However, the majority of women are not in trade unions anyway. And although women are joining unions presenily at twice the rate of men, they are rarely integrated into the life and structures of the union in the same way as are men Asa result, they are often not as responsive to directives given by the trade union leadership and are potentially open to new. highly militant forms of struggle.
The nurses' struggle is an excellent example of this militancy: the leadership of COHSE, NUPE, and to a lesser extent the RCN, are being pushed along in an attempt to keep up with the activities and demands of the rank and file. Many initiatives taken by nurses are almost unheard of amongst the more strongly organised sections of the trade union movement For cxample, it would be a rare occasion if the engincers told their leadership to get lost and organised a sit-down in the street to protest against bureaucratic manoeuvring. Yel this is what happened with the Manchester nurses!
But there are also dangers arising from the lack of trade union experience among women - they are also open to individual rather than collective forms of struggle, for instance, Once again, in the case of the nurses, on of the first tasties announ ed on a national scale by the Royal College of Nursing was the call to withdraw from the NHS and join agencies.