Muzzing the Nk and File

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TUC will wig::

workers themselves.

And the unions are equally vague about what the government's training schemes mean. On the one hand the EETPU looks to the Tory Youth Training Scheme as a way of providing "opportunities for girls to gain experience of non-traditional jobs". A nice idea, but if the Tories view of the scheme is that it's a good way of artificially keeping down unemployment figures, why should they train women when they've thought of a much "better" way of keeping women out of the statistics?

The EETPU misses the point that the scheme has very little to do with training other than being named after it. And what's the point of training people for iobs that don't exist?

NHS dispute

The most striking omission from the agenda is that of any mention of the NHS dispute, which must have directly affected more working class women than any other single factor in the whole of last year. It's missing from the long list of motions on the Health Service, which call for improved maternity care and rights, governmental responsibility for vaccine damage, more cancer screening, non-discriminatory invalidity benefits, and the banning of clitoridectomy.

There are a few passing references to 'this government's underfunding of the NHS", but no indication of how we're going to reverse this. And there's absolutely no reference to the Tory drive to privatise the NHS and what that will mean for NHS workers and users.

The only mention of privatisation is where the ISTC encourages all unions to try and preserve women's "negotiated rights at work" following "contracting out of services in industry to private contractors"!

Miser 8:px:20003 Other points in the agenda worth mentioning are:

*An encouragingly good resolution from the TGWU, linking sexist portrayals of women in the media with violence against women and calling for an end to sexist material in union journals;

*UCATT and the TGWU bring Greenham oro the agenda: they use the peace camps as the basis for calling for opposition to Cruise and Trident, and UCATT calls for unilateral nuclear disarmament. they also call for support for Greenham from unions (TGWU) and all women unionists (UCATT), and one wonders whether these motions would have been included had Greenham not made the issue topical *Condemnation from the IPCS of sexual discrimination in nationality and immigration laws. Unfortunately, it doesn't call for abolition of these laws, but merely "equality l. . .) in this and other spheres"!

Other striking omissions are any mention of gay rights (in or out of work) and fighting racism (in or out of work).

Corrie

So, is there any point? Especially when the Women's TUC can't do anything in its own right: it has to be approved by the TUC General Council.

At least the Women's TUC Conference is a forum for women's interests to be brought into the TUC. Several of the resolutions, although not going far enough,, do take certain aspects of women's rights for granted in a way which the TUC, if left to itself, would never do.

Women trade unionists I have spoken to all pointed to the days of the Corrie Bill when the pressure coming from the Women's TUC was vital in pushing the TUC to call its anti-Corrie demonstration. Reg vom WOI anı It's significant that there's hardly any mention in the agenda of the position of women in the unions themselves. The nearest thing is the motions from the AUT and SCPS, calling for the Women's TUC Conference to submit five resolutions to the TUC Annual Congress as of right: "Although many trade unions have adopted equal opportunities policies they rarely give them sufficient priority to put forward to the TUC motions which are of particular interest to women members." (AUT).

It also seems that the most controversial issue at this year's conference could well be the motions calling for a bookstall to be provided to allow women delegates access to literature on trade union and women's issues.

Full time officials in the TUC and in unions are blowing veritable volcanic eruptions on this. It seems that they are determined to prevent at all costs any women unionists from having access to material which might encourage them to think for themselves - it might, after all, threaten their control. • It's this very force of rank and file militant trade union women which the bureaucrats fear which has the possibility to change the conference. But it can't all be done in Scarborough: women in each union have got to organise to win the right to send motions decided at and delegates elected from their own union women's conference.