dagenham women's strike 1968 (ford factory in UK-led to equal pay act)
(watch the movie about this: "made in dagenham"
Ford sewing machinists strike of 1968
The Ford sewing machinists strike of 1968 was a landmark labour-relations dispute in the United Kingdom. It ultimately led to the passing of the Equal Pay Act 1970, the first legislation in the UK aimed at ending pay discrimination between men and women, and the first such legislation in the world. Other industrialised countries soon followed Britain's example.
The strike began on 7 June, 1968, when women sewing machinists at Ford Motor Company Limited's Dagenham plant in Essex walked out, followed later by the machinists at Ford's Halewood Body & Assembly plant. The women made car seat covers and as stock ran out the strike eventually resulted in a halt to all car production.
The Dagenham sewing machinists walked out when, as part of a regrading exercise, they were informed that their jobs were graded in Category B (less skilled production jobs), instead of Category C (more skilled production jobs), and that they would be paid 15% less than the full B rate received by men.[1][2][3] At the time it was common practice for companies to pay women less than men, irrespective of the skills involved.[4]
Following the intervention of Barbara Castle, the Secretary of State for Employment and Productivity in Harold Wilson's government, the strike ended three weeks after it began, as a result of a deal that immediately increased their rate of pay to 8% below that of men, rising to the full category B rate the following year. A court of inquiry (under the Industrial Courts Act 1919) was also set up to consider their regrading, although this failed to find in their favour.[5] The women were only regraded into Category C following a further six-week strike in 1976 (source BBC documentary broadcast 9th March 2013).[6]
Impact
The strike was, however, to have an enduring legacy. Spurred on by their example, women trades unionists founded the National Joint Action Campaign Committee for Women’s Equal Rights (NJACCWER), which held an 'equal pay demonstration' attended by 1,000 people in Trafalgar Square on 18 May, 1969.[7]
The ultimate result was the passing of the Equal Pay Act 1970, which came into force in 1975 and which did, for the first time, aim to prohibit inequality of treatment between men and women in terms of pay and conditions of employment.[8][2][4][9][10] In the second reading debate of the bill, the machinists were cited by MP Shirley Summerskill as playing a "very significant part in the history of the struggle for equal pay".[11] Once the UK joined the European Union in 1973, it also became subject to Article 119 of the 1957 Treaty of Rome, which specified that men and women should receive equal pay for equal work.[12]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_sewing_machinists_strike_of_1968
Dagenham sewing machinists recall strike that changed women's lives
45 years after their dispute with Ford which led to the Equal Pay Act, strikers remember the making of modern industrial history
For Vera Sime, a former sewing machinist at Ford's Dagenham plant in the 1960s, one of the epochal days in modern industrial history started like any other. "It was like a normal work day in that I got the children ready and gave them to my sister. Then we all met at the factory and got on the coach."
Along with scores of female colleagues infuriated by a pay structure that blatantly favoured male workers, Vera travelled to the streets of Whitehall on 28 June 1968 where employees brandished a famous banner. It read: "We want sex".
Twenty-first century prejudices make it tempting to jump to conclusions about that image, but these were hardly women playing up to some hackneyed Essex stereotype.
A mammoth meeting that day between eight strike leaders and Barbara Castle, who was then employment secretary, brokered a deal to end their three-week strike, which resulted in the women agreeing to return to work and the conception of the 1970 Equal Pay Act.
. . . .
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2013/jun/06/dagenham-sewing-machinists-strike
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