Women workers in the Six Counties

Scan page 3

Catholic women in the occupied six counties of Ireland stand in the forefront of the struggle against imperialism.

They fight as workers, anti-imperialist militants and women.

In 1969 when the mass of the Catholic working class came onto the streets, their demands were around jots, decent housing, wages and control over the decisions affecting their daily lives.

Over the past 11 years unemployment has shot up even further; already abysmal housing conditions have deteriorated and wages have been cut while prices have risen sharply.

While the official overall unemployment figure for December 1980 is a massive 16.3% the level for Catholic workers is 2½ times that.of Protestant workers.

This fact is demonstrated in the unemployment statistics for Catholic majority towns such as Strabane-with 42.1% official male unemployment and 18.2% female unemployment.

The overall rates for other Catholic majority towns are Cookstown 30.3%, Dungannan 30.1%, Newry 26.9% and Derry 23.1%.

While the overal rate for female unemployment is given as 11.7%, this is again a gross underestimate as it takes no account of all the married women workers who do not register as unemployed, and obscures the much higher rate of unemployment among Catholic working class women.

In the six counties, 43% of the registered workforce are women. Of the 200,000 women in employment in 1977, an estimated 66,000 were in part-time work.

About 40% of those working are unionised, the vast majority of these being the full time women workers.

By far the most exploited section of the female workforce is the part-time non-unionised women workers, many of whom work at home doing stitching, packing and piecework for the clothing industry.

However, even the most powerful sections of the female workforce-the unionised full time factory workers-earn less than their class sisters in the British Isles and receive only two-thirds of the wages of their class brothers in the six counties.

Conditions in the factories are usually appalling, with health and safety regulations, where they exist, for the most part ignored.

The willingness the MOONE 21500 PIK MICK women workers to fight on wages and for an improvement in their working conditions, even in the face of the blatant sexism and open class collaboration of the trade union bureaucracy, is demonstrated in two important strikes over the last two years.

In November 1978 30 women workers at Keenfoods frozen food factory in Kennedy Way Industrial Estate in Belfast went on strike.

The workers struck over conditions in the factory, wages and victimisations.

Working conditions in the factory were barbaric. The entire factory was extremely cold-the thermometer being •removed by management. Gallaher women strikers march in 1979 The sewage system was such that the sewage, seeped onto the factory floor.

No protective clothing was provided for the prawn shellers who required continual hospital treat sheis lodgedi on from hands.

The prawns were full of maggots and when the women complained they were told to kill them.

Canteen workers were not allowed on the factory floor after 3.00 pm., thus prohibiting them trom going to the toilet.

Packers were forced to lift 56 lb skips of herrings from the floor to the table.

If conditions were bad, wages were even worse. The basic wage of the prawn shellers was £12.75 per week. The productivity bonus onty came into effect when the workers had completed a near-impossible daily quota of 56 pounds of prawns.

If they failed to reach their daily quota their names were put up on the wall. The packers, whose basic wage was £35.75, had not received a bonus they had won 11 months previously.

• Victimisations were commonplace with management physically assaulting workers, singling out any shop steward who complained about dismissals and working conditions.

Harassment

While the women, members of the ITGWU, stood on the picket line and faced harassment from management and the police who tried to smuggle in blacklegs, Paddy Devlin, General Secretary of the ITGWU, negotiated a sell-out deal with the employers.

The women were subsequently forced back to work with a minimal pay increase. promise oi talks on improving conditions and a promise of no victimisations.

Four leading militants in the strike twere subsequently dismissed. These workers, in reaction to a sell-out by the ITGWU in a previous dispute, had resigned from the union.

In this strike they rejoined the ITGWU and succeeded in getting the strike made official, only to be betrayed yet again by that same union leadership.

In May 1979 4,200 workers in the Belfast and Ballymena Gallacher tobacco factories went on strike.

A 5% pay increase paid to the craft workers had been denied to the shopfloor workers, the vast majority of whom were low-paid women. While the bulk of the workforce was comprised of these badly paid women workers, the union leadership in the factory: was drawn exclusively from the higher paid male workers.

While the women workers initiated the strike, carried on for four weeks without strike and stood with their children on the picket line, an. entirely male strike committee carried on negotiations with the management.

The women were allowed no role in the running of the dispute and were forced back to work with a 3% pay increaseless than the management offer of 32% during the dispute.

While those women workers who are fortunate enough to have a job face appalling working conditions, Irish working class women as a whole face miserable living conditions fór themselves and their families.

In central areas of Belfast, by the Northern Ireland Housing Executive's own statistics, 50% of its existing housing stock is unfit for human habitation.

Overcrowding in Belfast affects four times as many workers as in Greater London (for Catholic households the ratio would be even higher).

There are seven times as many houses with no inside flushing toilet and twice: as many without the exclusive use of a bath or shower. This excludes the thousands of families forced to move into houses that have already been condemned.

Once condemned, the Housing Executive refuses to accept any responsibility for repairs and discriminates against the occupants regarding rehousing.

These appalling housing conditions are reflected in the large numbers of families burned to death each year as a result of faulty wiring.

They are reflected in the 5% infant mortality rate and the fact that 30% of deaths are recorded as being due to bronchitis-both even in bourgeois circles regarded as indicators of extreme poverty.