The swell of workplace equalities activity continued into 1976, with several notable industrial disputes including at Trico-Folberth and Grunwick Laboratories, the establishment of the Equal Opportunity Commission, a further iteration of the Race Relations Act and the formation of the Commission for Racial Equality, adoption of the Equal Treatment Directive, and the passing of the Sex Discrimination (Northern Ireland) Order.
Equal Pay
1976 Trico-Folberth Equal Pay Strike, Brentford
The 21-week-long strike at the Trico-Folberth windscreen wiper factory in 1976 was Britain’s longest equal pay strike. Situated on the ‘Golden Mile’ – a section of Brentford’s Great West Road characterised by a concentration of industry – Trico had not negotiated equal pay following the implementation of the Equal Pay Act in 1975. In September 1975 Trico decided to phase out the night shift over the course of six months, with five men from the night shift transferring to day shift on the washer assembly line. In a highly gender segregated workforce, this move meant that men and women were working directly alongside each other, rendering unequal pay more visible. The women on the washer assembly line were at the forefront of calling for action, with spontaneous stoppages in February 1976. At a mass meeting in Boston Manor Park on 24 May 1976 women demanded strike action in response to slow progress on equal pay negotiations.
A small number of men, including the five ex-night shift workers, joined the strike from the start. The strike was made official by the Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers’ (AUEW) Executive Council on 15 June. This gave the women strikers access to strike pay and other union resources and prompted a further 150 men to join the strike. Trico strikers received considerable support from the AUEW’s Southall District Committee, which was integral to keeping the strike official throughout the dispute – this was attributed to the ‘left wing’ and ‘progressive’ outlook of the District Committee compared to the ‘right wing’ character of the Executive Council (Groves and Merritt, 2018). The strike received widespread support from trade unions and the women’s liberation movement, as well as local trades councils and the Brent Law Centre, though the Trades Union Congress and Labour Party were reluctant to voice support.
Women picketed the factory gates throughout the strike, with the picket line dubbed Costa Del Trico because of summer’s particularly warm weather. Throughout July Trico management made a number of attempts to break the picket with convoys of lorries arriving in the middle of the night to transport raw materials, scab labour and finished products in and out of the factory. The convoys were accompanied by the police, who established roadblocks to facilitate their movement and roughly dispersed picketers. Some of Trico’s male workforce and shop stewards inside the factory also worked with management to break the strike. The Trico strikers mobilised their support networkers to picket the factory and in one showdown on 27 July a convoy of lorries was met by over 70 picketers.
Trico was the first employer to have an equal pay case taken to industrial tribunal. The Trico strikers and AUEW Southall District Committee decided to boycott the tribunal – based on their track record, the industrial tribunals were seen to undermine the Equal Pay Act with a pro-employer bias. The Trico strike was positioned as a test case for the Equal Pay Act by the strikers and their union, feminist and left-wing media, and the mainstream press. The tribunal took place on 17-18 August and concluded that ‘material difference’ justified unequal pay, as the ex-night shift workers were considered to be more flexible.
However, on 18 October 1976, the Trico strikers returned to work victorious, having successfully negotiated equal pay.
Grunwick dispute, London
Grunwick Film Processing Laboratories was a photographic process and finishing company founded in 1965 in Willesden, London. A small number of workers walked out in August 1976, in response to management behaviour, working conditions, and a resistance to accepting unionisation of the workforce. The largely South-Asian women workforce were paid less than workers at similar factories, and despite the Equal Pay Act being passed six years previous, were paid significantly less than male colleagues. The number of strikers swelled over time, with multiple union involvement.
The limited existing literature on Black and South Asian women’s workplace activisms in the 1960s-1980s has focused on particular industrial disputes involving predominantly Asian women including the well-known Grunwick dispute (Wilson 1978). More recent research found that, in spite of this dispute subsequently being constructed as a turning point for trade union engagement with race/gender, trade unions continue to construct these workers as ‘difficult to organise’, thereby alleviating themselves of the need for a radical structural overhaul to engage the challenge of intersectionality, which remains largely unrecognised by unions since race and gender have been addressed separately (Anitha, Pearson, and McDowell 2018). Moreover, while Asian women’s workplace activism remains relatively underexplored, in fact waged work is central to their identity and subjectivity construction (Anitha, Pearson, and McDowell 2012). Some histories of women of colour and waged work have viewed this history primarily through the lens of migration, with limited analysis of race, racism and white supremacy as fundamental organising logics of work (McDowell 2016).
Grunwick famously galvanised the UK trade union movement, yet activists at the time and in the years following were sceptical that the support was directed toward the intersection of race and gender positioning the strikers: ‘The only basis on which the trade union …supported the struggle at Grunwick was on the condition that the main issue of racism be subordinated to the issue of trade union recognition…the strikes show how the trade union movement sells us out because of its short-sightedness which allows it to ignore the issue of racism and sexism but which is a vital part of our struggles’ (OWAAD 1979b; underline in original).
Grunwick is one of the few disputes led by Asian women workers which has been afforded prominence in commentary. Jayaben Desai (pictured below, front right) has been documented as leading the industrial action, which continued until July 1978, with trade union support being withdrawn and the workers’ demands remaining unmet.
Image – TUC Library at London Metropolitan University, www.unionhistory.info.
Further resources:
https://www.bl.uk/womens-rights/articles/remembering-the-grunwick-dispute
https://www.striking-women.org/module/striking-out/grunwick-dispute
https://www.ourmigrationstory.org.uk/oms/from-east-africa-to-grunwick-jayaben-desai