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Missed Opportunities: The Failure of Union Solidarity in the Struggle for Control of the Labour Process

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Gender, Class and Power

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Abstract

Women’s employment in printing is analysed. In particular, their late entry to the industry reduced the efficacy of such power resources as they could muster. Exclusion from craft occupations and segregation into jobs designated as unskilled was decisive. Although women often supported men’s battles with employers, it was rarely reciprocated unless the issue potentially affected men, too. Instead women could find themselves caught between their class loyalty and gender interests. Even when they acquired greater power resources, from 1980 onwards, industry restructuring and union weakness undermined them. They lost jobs to a greater extent than men, and union mergers removed the guaranteed proportional representation they had fought for in the Graphical, Paper and Media Union, reducing equality and rendering them largely invisible again.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The Taff Vale case involved the railway company of that name suing the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants for losses the company incurred as the result of a dispute. This decision was a huge blow to trade unions as it made them liable for damages whenever they took industrial action (Gardiner and Wenborn 1995: 731).

  2. 2.

    Dilutees were substitute workers who were seen as reducing or weakening the skill content of a job because they were untrained or had little training in that job. They were seen as a way of undermining the superior rates paid to those who had done a full seven-year apprenticeship.

  3. 3.

    Correspondence between company and branch and branch and FoC (shop steward), March 1975.

  4. 4.

    In interview, national officer 1 recalled that gaining the house rate had previously been a TA policy.

  5. 5.

    Researchers at the Polytechnic of North London compiled this report, based on questionnaires and interviews with officers and women members.

  6. 6.

    The best example is UNISON. Initially their completely self-organised groups were not linked to the decision-making processes of the union, although they received union funding. Discussions with UNISON officials suggest that this may now have been addressed.

  7. 7.

    See GPMU women’s conference Reports—(1991: 1), (1992a: 8, 10, 12, 13, 15, 18, 21), (1994a: 9–10, 12, 17), (1996c: 21), (1998d: 11, 13, 15, 17), (2000c: 9–10).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Keele Management School, Keele University, Keele, UK

    Tricia Dawson

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  1. Tricia Dawson
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Dawson, T. (2018). Missed Opportunities: The Failure of Union Solidarity in the Struggle for Control of the Labour Process. In: Gender, Class and Power. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58594-3_4

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