A couple of months back, PSA union leader Erin Polaczuk told
the Listener magazine she was glad to be operating in a ‘mature era’, where
battles are won in court rather than on testosterone-fuelled picket lines. Okay,
so those weren’t her exact words but that’s pretty much the gist. That thanks
to the ‘feminisation of unions”, that
“stupid oppositional behaviour” – ie strikes – are a little bit, you know, last
century.
She cited the case of the huge settlement last year for care
and support workers, led by the amazing Kristine Bartlett. That it was won in
court. And yes, kudos to Kristine for taking her stand. But, crucially,
Kristine had behind her the mass power of her union, and the real source of
that power? The ability to strike.
Strikes – and I say this as a longtime female unionist – are
not macho, they’re not old-fashioned, they’re not “stupid”. They are, quite
simply, the only real firepower we have. The ultimate expression of the power of
collectivity.
I have been a union member for almost 30 years and in that
time I’ve heard a lot of different reasons why striking, even belonging to a
union, isn’t smart or modern. As a sub-editor on London’s Daily Mirror in the
early 90s, I heard ‘ah but we’re white collar’, ‘we’re part of the new
middle-class’ ‘we’re creatives; we don’t clock on and off… unions are for blue
collar workers’; ‘we should form a staff association; they’re less
confrontational’. Lol. Why not form a book club while you’re at it.
I haven’t heard the ‘it’s not ladylike’ before. But hey.
I haven’t heard the ‘it’s not ladylike’ before. But hey.
So Erin, you
think strikes are macho? Tell that to those American women teachers who,
despite living in a country ruled by an arch-sexist, recently went on strike
for nine days and won a pay rise for all state employees in West Virginia.
Tell it
to the all-female kindergarten workers in New Delhi who last year won a
doubling in their salary after a strike by their, also female, union leader
Shivani.
Closer to home, tell that to Joyce Hawe of Te Arawa, a
machinist at Progress Manufacturing in Porirua who organised a successful
strike for higher pay. Or Bertie Ratu, who
organised a protest when Talleys sacked her for being a unionist. Or any number
of women throughout labour history. The Dagenham machinists whose action in the
70s led to not just pay rises for them, but a pay equality law change. The many
women throughout history at the forefront of revolutionary action, from the
Paris Commune to the Russian Revolution.
Striking is a proud and mighty tradition – for men and
women, side by side. And strikes have often been led by women because in a
world where we suffer discrimination and sexism, we understand that it’s by
withdrawing our labour that we can really be heard. We understand that while
the 1% hold the wealth, it’s us - ordinary men and women - who create it.
Why do I mention this now? Well, we’ve just seen a week of
strong, vocal rallies by nurses from the NZNO union, many of them women. They are on the brink of strike action after
rejecting a paltry 2 per cent pay offer. They feel undervalued. They feel their
work conditions are jeopardising quality of care for patients. They don’t want
to strike. They’re in their profession because they care about sick people, so
of course a vote to withdraw their labour – however minimal the risk to
patients – is not taken lightly. But they know, as I and millions of women
before me have known, that strikes make the bosses sit up and listen.
All power to them.
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