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### NURSER 171MN6 BE
NURSERI LESS NURSERIE AILa A WOMAN'S 500 NURSERY RIGHT PLACES = MISERY TO WORK 4700 KIDS -700 NURSER PLACES = JOY Islington Council Socia/ Services Committee Meeting being picketed against the cuts.
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DAY NURSERIES ions which correspond to the traditional caring, responsive role which capitalist society has foisted upon them. For instance, women form a large proportion of the workforce in social services, their highest concentr ation being found in the lower grades where face to face contact with clients is required. Meanwhile, the more highly graded administrative posts within social services are predominantly a male preserve. The low proportion of women occupying such posts demonstrates how the maintenance of a traditional conception of women's role is society creates unequal opportunity where nominally it is supposed to exist. It also reinforces the maintenance of areas of work for women only Within Nalgo services and explains such facts as the high concentration of women as nursery workers and their extremely low pay and conditions.
Andrew Wiard (Report/ WOMEN'S GROUPS Women in Nalgo have become increasingly aware both of the anomalous situation and the need for them to organise within the union. Women's groups have been formed in a number of areas. In London, the local groups are linked
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John Sturrock (Report)
to an all-London organisation: Women in Naigo.
Within branches of Nalgo, women have taken up the fight for the adoption of the Working Women's Charter. It has gone through a number of local branches, and has now been adopted nationally by Nalgo. The fight for abortion on demand has also been mounted within various branches and at the national demonstration earlier this year in favour of abortion and against the James White Bill. a significant number of Nalgo branch banners were present.
As a result of the growing organisation of women within local branches a motion was passed at the 1974 Natr ional Conference of the union-for an investigation to be launched into the development of equal rights and opportunities for women with special reference to Nalgo.
The resulting report is unambiguous in pointing out where discrimination is occurring and in making concrete proposals to combat them. Some of the proposals are very far-reaching NALGO PAPER (and in fact imply social revolution) like the idea that education, in its content and structure, is an important influence in determining sex roles in society. Others are immediate reforms to be carried out like equality in pension schemes, adequate nursery facilities, NHS abortions on demand, etc.
The proposals made for maternity leave are in fact more advanced than those contained wtihin the Working Women's Charter. Also included in the report are appendices, that give the result of a survey taken of Nalgo members. These reveal that discrimination exists in the union itself: meetings at times single aprents and most women cannot attend, predominarice of men in union posts, women on executives doing 'secretarial work. port and the adoption of the Working Women's Charter nationally-alNaigo has been won. A number of events have occurred which point ed to take action which will implement the proposals of the Equal for the implementation of the demands contained within the Working Women's Charter. ust when most branches don't even gates were therefore self-appointed or picked from minority groupings and supported by branch members. of its program, a stripper.
leadership off the hook or cease to struggle within their branches on questions affecting women. This is particularly important at the presHowever, the existence of this rethough important steps by no means imply that the struggle of women in out that the union is neither preparRights Report or conduct a campaign CONFERENCE This summer the national leadership of Nalgo took the excellent step of calling a conference on Equal Rights The Conference had no power to make recommendations to the NEE however. It was, organised during July and Aughave Executive Committee meetings let alone full branch meetings. Deleand could not come to the Conference with motions that had been discussed With regard to the Charter, despite its adoption as Union policy, Audrey Prime, who is a Nalgo member on the TUC General Council, spoke aginst the Charter's clause in favour of abortion at the TUC Congress. This lack of unified support for women's rights is by no means restricted to the upper echelons of the union, but permeates all levels of the membership. At the national conference of the union this year, in the evening following the debate on equal rights, a stag party was organised for men only which included as pari Women must not let the Nalgo ent time as the Crosland nil growth' proposals on public expenditure will mean reductions in services and staffing which will reinforce existing discrimination. These cut-backs will not only affect women in Nalgo in their capacity as employees in services where public expenditure is cut back, but also as women in a general sense.
As employees, redundancy poses as much greater threat to women as men are traditionally seen as the breadwinner in the family. Also as a woman, the cut-backs in services will thrust an increasing pressure-within the family situation to take on more and more tasks which in the past have formed part of the services provided by the For instance, care of the sick and aged as a result of cuts in the NHS will thrust increasing burdens upon women in the family to care for them Women in Nalgo therefore have a dual responsibility to fight agrinst the cut-backs in public expenditure. An exemplary stuggle on this basis has already taken place within Tower Hamlets social services, where women forced the majority of social workers taking strike action against the Council's policy of non-filling of vacant posts in the department. The strike, organised democratically within mass meetings of those taking part was successful in gaining its objective. Struggles like this with women at the forefront are likely to increase in the future as the cut-backs begin to bite.
Women in Nalgo must therefore go onto the offensive if the gains made within the union over the past few years are to exist in reality and not just on paper. Not only must a fight be conducted within the union for equality and adequate representation but also against the cuts in public spending with their accompanying threat of increased discrimination.
This must be linked to a struggle for the implementation of the demands of the Charter which imply an increase in public services and spending-both to improve women's conditions of service and to provide the social facilities of nurseries, free abortion on request, etc.
Without these, equality in real terms cannot be gained. The forthcoming London conference of the Working Women's Charter against the cuts in public expenditure, planned for the end of February 1975, should have the full support of Women in Nalgo. They are strategically placed to fight back as both employees employees within the public services and as women who require the extension of such services in the fight for more than formal equality at work.