When I began work a year and a half ago, I went to see the storeperson to get my clothing allocation. He said to me, "I don't think they make work clothes in women's sizes", so I took my clothing issue in men's cut.
After a safety incident, where a rag in a worker's pocket nearly pulled him into a fan, I decided to do something about my ill-fitting clothes. I approached my shop steward and persuaded him that men's clothes were uncomfortable and unsafe. After seven months in my apprenticeship, I received a pair of trousers that fitted me.
For women in non-traditional areas of work, experiences like this are not uncommon. Recently, I met a woman electrician who had been in the industry for nine years and never worn clothing in women's cut.
In the 1980s, many male-dominated unions were forced by the shift in public opinion against sex discrimination in employment to start recruitment programs for women workers and to create women's officer positions. These recruitment programs not only gave women a chance by lining them up with work before they started pre-apprenticeship courses, but meant that they could get solidarity and support from other women in their group.
Women's officers coordinated and recruited for these courses, publicising them by presenting talks in high schools. They made sure that women apprentices had such things as women-only toilets and correctly fitting clothing, that they were not sexually harassed at work and that shop stewards respected and enforced rules against displays of pornography in the workplace.
The positions were also used to make sure union networks found work for women who were unemployed after their apprenticeships finished. This had the added effect of drawing women into union activity, producing some strong union activists.
Women's officers can, however, play a broader role than just "looking out for women" in predominantly male workplaces. To really understand the role of women in the work force, unionists must first understand that women are oppressed as a sex and that the unequal relations between men and women in society cannot be ignored while dealing with the problems women workers face in paid work. Women must deal with issues of reproductive freedom, child-care, care for the elderly, domestic tasks and so much more.
Women's officers have the time and resources, and, if elected from the shop floor, their fellow workers' respect to strengthen awareness of these issues in the union and thus begin to combat the sexist assumptions that are still too prevalent among male trade union activists.
Australian Manufacturing Workers Union (AMWU) national secretary Doug Cameron recently decided to cut resources to the militant metals division of the union's Victorian branch. As a result, we no longer have a dedicated women's officer in the metals division; the position had to be incorporated into the duties of another full-time woman official.
The radical officials in the Victorian branch already put in more hours than most other officials in the AMWU nationally, so it will be hard to give the duties associated with the women's officer position the same amount of attention as it had previously.
The leadership of the Victorian branch recognises that the loss of this position is a backward step, forced on them by the national leadership.
One of the problems with the women's officer position in many unions is that they have been filled by women recruited directly out of university women's studies courses or through ALP networking.
Unless such a position is filled through election by the union membership and is allocated enough resources to carry out the work expected by the membership, it will always be in danger of being easily sacrificed to the power plays of conservative officials.
A women's officer elected from the shop floor understands better the needs of women in the manufacturing industry and can run more successful campaigns to recruit women workers into the union, and organise them to bring the specific issues facing women to the attention of the rest of the union. This will give a framework for the whole union to take up issues relating to women's oppression.
BY JUSTINE KAMPRAD