‘We Were the Ones Really Doing Something About It’: Gender and Mobilisation against Factory Closure

Current understandings of worker mobilisation against factory closure and capital migration in Britain are dominated by the perspectives of male industrial workers. The narratives of displaced miners, shipbuilders and steel workers are prominent in the historiography and collective memories of deindustrialisation. There is considerably less understanding of the response of female manufacturing workers to these processes and the ways in which women mobilised in opposition to the free movement of capital. This article presents the testimony of Margaret Robertson, shop steward at the Lee Jeans factory in Greenock, Scotland, where the predominantly female workforce conducted a successful seven-month occupation in opposition to proposed closure beginning in February 1981. The contribution highlights the specific gendered challenges encountered by women workers. The occupation occurred in a period of accelerated factory closure in Britain, yet supporting female unionists resisting job loss was not a priority for the male-dominated union executive.

‘The merits of Brother Worth’

Between 1968 and 1975, members of the Trotskyist Socialist Labour League, the International Socialists and the Militant Tendency held senior positions in factory union organisations at British Leyland factories in Birmingham, Solihull, and at Chrysler in Linwood and Coventry. This chapter consists of a detailed study of shop steward documents at Chrysler's engine factory in Stoke Aldermoor (Coventry), where the IS had a few dozen members, including Deputy Works Convenor John Worth. It looks at how politics affected IS members’ participation in everyday workplace life. Crucially, rather than looking at their contribution to shop-floor activism as an attempt to “import” ideas from outside the factory, I will show how radical militants were often politicised in ways that reflected feelings with wider resonance amongst their co-workers. The presence of an IS fraction within the plant contributed to the changing politics and social practices of the wider trade union movement within the factory, but was ultimately constrained by the constraints of working solely within the issues which the workforce defined as legitimately “industrial”.

Bargaining for equal pay and work–life balance in Danish companies – Does gender matter?

This article adds new insights into how equal pay and work–life balance issues are negotiated in male- and female-dominated companies, based on a survey of 3275 shop stewards, conducted in 2010. Inspired by Gregory and Milner’s concept of opportunity structures, we argue that the gender composition of the workforce affects the equal pay and work–life balance discussions and actions in Danish companies, but in a slightly different way from expected. It is often the male shop steward who exploits the opportunity structure created by more women among the staff to develop equal pay and work–life balance actions.

Køns betydning for lokalaftaler om ligeløn og familie-arbejdsliv

This paper explores to what extent the government and social partners’ recent work-life balance and equal pay initiatives are discussed and negotiated in Danish workplaces. It argues that whilst work-life balance issues often are at the top of social partners’ bargaining agenda at company level, equal pay typically figures at the very bottom. In addition, these issues are more likely to be up for local bargaining in companies where women constitute one in two or more of the employees – and in such companies it is interestingly often the male shop steward who takes the lead.