Women's Jobs Under

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The Scottish Women's TUC. met last week in Stirling. 153 delegates representing 28 unions and 16 trades councils gathered to discuss in the main the effects of Tory policies on women's jobs.

Mr Jimmy Morrell, President struggle to oust the Tories. of the Scots TUC said, "reversal of women's rights is one U-turn sce government is prepared to The conference showed clearly that Tory policies were especially hitting those sectors and industries where most women workers had been traditionally employed.

The statistics on job loss

Mary-Ar Todd

UC ›men' were appalling in areas like sales and distribution where 24,000 jobs were lost last year.

- In textiles, seven out of ten women have lost their jobsjobs are disappearing at the rate of 10,000 a month!

By 1984 half a million jobs in textiles will be lost.

In local government, some 180,000 jobs are expected to go over the next four years.

Faced with such decimation of women's right to work, what measures did this so-called "radical', angry conference come up with to defeat the Tories?

Did they consider they themselves should adopt a U-turn in pölicies-bearing in mind that previous policies adopted hadn't stopped a single factory from closing or saved a single job?

Was there a concerted call for all-out strike action to bring down the Tories so that by 1984 half a million jobs will not be lost in the textile industry and our public services will be maintained and extended to provide the necessary facilities to enable women to play a full and equal role?

No! That wasn't the "fighting call" that came from this supposedly radical and militant conference!

Though it resolved to resist any offensive which asserts that a woman's place is in the home, the Tory government can rest assured that the resistance coming. from the Scottish Women's TUC will be so much hot air. laced with divisive, nationalist calls for import controls.

Women's unemployment in Scotland has topped 11% in the West of Scotland, a so-called *Special Development Area':

Well over 77,000 women are now registered unemployed in And that figure does not include some 8,000 young women school leavers, nor the thousands of married women who have lost their jobs and see no point in signing on.

The situation needs a firm, clear lead and dirction both on how to defend existing jobs and on how to organise the unemployed to demand jobs.

It needs policies such as occupation linked to national strike action as soon as redundancies are announced.

The Liverpool. dockers successfully defended jobs with the threat of this tactic.

Factories, hospitals, schools threatened with closure should be occupied like Meccano, Gardners, St. Benedicts and the workers should be given unqualified support from • the unions.

This means not only full strike pay but also full supporting strike action-so that occupations are not left isolated to defend themselves but their struggle is linked to the fight to defend ali jobs in the industry or service involved.

Workers control

Workers should also demand the opening of the company accounts to elected trade union committees to see for themselves how firms take and misuse the profits from their labour and if they see it is bankrupt, they should place it under workers'. . control and demand its full nationalisation without compensation.

Women workers should demand work sharing on full pay for all workers and fight anyone who argues for positive discrimination on redundancies.

We don't want any worker to lose their job-male or female. ' Nor do we want workers in other countries to lose their jobs-as the Scots Women's TUC would like to see as they call for import controls to help British employers sort out their problems.

There is undoubted hatred from Scotland's 400,000 women trade unionists to Tory policies.

This hostility is especially bitter as Scotland universally swung to the left in the last election.

Their anger should have been channelled by the Scots Women's TUC towards a fight for mass action to bring down the Tories this winter.

But, unfortunately -like their bureaucratic counterparts in the rest of Britain-for all their rhetoric, that is the last thing they want.

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