Last Updated:
October 18, 2007
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EQUAL PAY
On this page: Jean Taylor Beth Gaze; Yvonne Smith; Zelda D'Aprano;
Eileen Capocchi; Belinda Probert;
See also: Working Conditions
Womens Lib/Feminism
In 1969, by the time that Zelda D'Aprano chained herself to Commonwealth Building and then three weeks later when Zelda D'Aprano, Thelma Solomon and Alva Geike chained themselves to the Arbitration Court I'd already started studying. Not only were women deciding to take radical action like those women did, but there was also news coming from the United States about political actions there.
If the WorkChoices
legislation is upheld by the High Court, then the Commonwealth will be
empowered to take over other areas of workforce regulation of great significance
for working women.
State sex discrimination and equal pay legislation may be taken over in
the same way and, given its policy position in relation to women, we cannot
expect this Federal Government to strengthen or improve protection of
the human right to non-discrimination. Instead, temptation to "deregulate"
in the interests of business could prevail.
See
also Working Conditions; Forced
Labour; Discrimination
-The main campaign for equal pay in 1969 tried to involve a lot of women workers. It wasn't all that easy but when the case was on at the Arbitration Commission the various meatworks bussed in women (and men) workers from all over to the Trades Hall and we all marched up to the Court.
We stood outside calling out slogans, which could be heard in the Court and waving banners and such as:
UNEQUAL PAY IS SEX DISCRIMINATION – MAKE 1969 EQUAL PAY YEAR – EQUAL PAY IS A HUMAN RIGHT – LET'S NOT BUILD ON CHEAP LABOUR – THE TIME IS NOW FOR EQUAL PAY – DELIBERATE DELAY ON EQUAL PAY – MEAT INDUSTRY WOMEN SUPPORT EQUAL PAY. UAW magazine, 'Our Women' June-August 1969
We did not have a successful outcome but it raised awareness of the issue. It also played a big part in arousing the women's movement.
- ... The Meatworkers Union also continued with the struggle to spread the range of coverage but it really wasn't until the 1972 decision that we got equal pay – not until the Labor Party formed government.
The Arbitration Commission had rejected it that year but on taking power in November the Labor government reconvened the Court, and withdrawing government opposition to equal pay was one of the first things they did.
The funny thing was – as I found out much later – the Liberal Party government used the same wording in their submission to the court to oppose equal pay as the Labor Party government later used to support it! It is very interesting, it makes you wonder if the Arbitration Court was as impartial as we were always told it was.
In 1974 the Minimum Wage Case was the final legal obstacle to equal pay, by establishing an equal minimum wage for men and women.
- The time (for the Equal Pay case) was upon us and women from the sausage factories were brought into the court to support their claim. I was asked to go along with them and together we marched up and down the street in front of the court building, holding our placards and chanting slogans.
On entering the court, I immediately felt the oppressiveness of the atmosphere. People only spoke in whispers as they do at funerals and eventually we stopped talking for it is impossible to relate in such an atmosphere.
The door opened at the rear of the court and in walked the judges. All male judges. Everyone stood to attention until the judges were seated and then the proceedings began. All the seats in front of the bench were occupied, the 'fors' and 'againsts'.
The case presented was not equal pay for equal work, but for doing away with the differential in salaries, the claim being that the 25% difference in salaries was discrimination on the grounds of sex.
The evidence given by Bob Hawke, the ACTU advocate of the time, was irrefutable. The women sat there day by day as if we were mute, while the men presented evidence for and against our worth. It was humiliating to have to sit there and not say anything about our own worth. I found the need to sit there silent almost beyond my control, and was incensed with the entire set up.
The equal pay decision came down. Everyone was shocked, for it had nothing to do with the evidence or case presented. … This decision meant that every union would have to establish an individual case of proof in every classification of work performed. To the women in the sausage industry, the result meant only an extra 3% of women obtained equal pay ...
- ... We both agreed that something more than just talking was needed to draw attention to the pay injustice meted out to women and more positive action was required. We began to fantasize women chaining themselves up like the suffragettes did, and jokingly asked ourselves, where could women chain themselves to make their protest effective?
I began to think seriously of the chaining up idea, then decided I would be prepared to chain myself to the Commonwealth Building … Little did I realize the effect this event would have in changing the entire course of my life.
I felt that the Commonwealth Government should set the example by giving equal pay to women in government employment - I felt strongly about the need for women to begin fighting their own battles.
The placards were all ready for the event and I refrained from eating or drinking for several hours prior to the chain up as it would be embarrassing to find that I needed to go to the toilet whilst still being in the chains. Following the meeting at the city square, several of the women accompanied me to the Commonwealth Building where within seconds I was chained across the doors. The other women walked up and down with the placards, which called upon the government to grant women equal pay.
There were campaigns like the one Zelda and Bonny did on the trams. We rode on the trams and refused to pay the full ticket price, saying that as women did not have equal pay, then they shouldn't have to pay the full fare.
When I arrived in Australia in 1976 ... striking to an English migrant was the absence of an immigrant underclass. ... Australia, the nation, was established in a climate of widely shared values about the national purpose, with specific legislation and public institutions that embodied these values. ... this fairness did not extend to Aborigines or other races. Nor did it extend to women. ...
(A)fter the depression and the Second World War (there) was a genuine policy commitment to full employment for men, and financial support for women and dependent wives and children. ... In the sixties the normative framework that underpinned widespread acceptance of the notion of the basic wage was still alive and well. In one of its finer - if belated - moments the arbitration system delivered legislative equal pay for women.