Made in Dagenham:The History Behind the Musical

The Walk Out…

In 1968, it was commonplace for women to be paid less than men irrespective of the skills involved in the work. This was the case for sewing machinists working for Ford Motor Company, who were regraded within the company’s pay structure from Category C -- meaning skilled production jobs --  to Category B, meaning less skilled production jobs.

When this happened, the women discovered that they would be paid 15% less than men in Category B jobs. Outraged that they were being paid less than male workers, on the 7th June 1968 one hundred and eighty-seven machinists at the Ford Dagenham plant walked out on strike. They were led by a group of five women: Rosa Boland, Eileen Pullen, Vera Sime, Gwen Davis, and Shelia Douglass.

It wasn’t long before other machinists at Ford's Halewood Body & Assembly plant followed, causing car production to come to a complete halt.

A Day at Whitehall….

With large amounts of the production at a standstill, the UK managing director of Ford laid off 9,000 workers at Dagenham who were eventually reinstated, with a further 40,000 jobs at risk. It is estimated that the strike cost the company export orders worth around £117 million today. The strike had to end so on the 28 June 1968, several of the machinists travelled to Whitehall to try and fight for equal pay. It was on this day that eight of the strike leaders met with Barbara Castle, the Secretary of State for Employment and Productivity in Harold Wilson's government, and forged a deal that would end the three-week strike. The machinists pay was instantly increased to 8% below that of the men and was raised to full Category B pay rate the following year. Unfortunately, it took a further six-week strike in 1984 to be regarded as Category C workers.

A Big Impact…

The 1964 Labour manifesto pledge ‘the right to equal pay for equal work’ had amounted to nothing and the issue had been forgotten. The Dagenham strikers inspired further strikes by women trade unionists and the National Joint Action Campaign Committee for Women's Equal Rights (NJACCWER). On the 18th May 1969, an equal pay demonstration was attended by over one thousand people in Trafalgar Square. To prevent further protesting, Barbara Castle then decided to put in force the Equal Pay Act (1970): An Act to prevent discrimination, as regards terms and conditions of employment, between men and women. The actions of the Dagenham machinists that summer triggered a nationwide debate about equal pay that is still going on today.

The Equal Pay Act that the Dagenham machinists triggered is a landmark in the fight for women’s rights in politics. It is also an example of how protest movements can lead to changes in the law and policy of a country.

Take this further: 

Here are some of Olivia's suggestions for further thinking and research:

History: How important was the Dagenham strike in gaining equal pay for women?

• Research and place the strike in the context of wider changes in the period such as feminism and other rights movements
• Make a timeline of the events at Dagenham alongside the Labour pledge and the National Joint Action Campaign Committee for Women's Equal Rights (NJACCWER) action
• These websites might help:
http://www.striking-women.org/module/workplace-issues-past-and-present/gender-pay-gap-and-struggle-equal-pay

https://wageindicator.co.uk/

Politics: Do we have equal pay?

• Think about different careers and whether these are equal such as in the film and television industry, sports, engineering etc.
• Research equal pay around the world, does every country have the same type of legislation that we do?
• These websites might help:
http://uk.businessinsider.com/countries-with-the-biggest-gender-pay-gaps-2017-10

https://www.forbes.com/sites/karstenstrauss/2018/01/22/the-countries-with-the-best-andworst-gender-pay-gap-expectations-and-how-the-u-s-stacks-up/

You might also be interested in another Oxplore Big Question: Should Footballers Earn More Than Nurses?

Bonus:
Have a look at what some of the actual Dagenham strikers had to say about their experience: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/jun/06/dagenham-sewing-machinists-strike

Companies that do business across multiple time zones have a greater gap in pay between men and women than companies that don’t.

The gender wage gap persists across the globe, even if the latest news from the UK Office for National Statistics is uplifting. The most commonly cited reasons include differences in working hours, life-time labour-force experience, occupational choices, college majors, and fewer women receiving promotions to higher level (and therefore higher paying) positions.

While the glass ceiling, the salaries for the types of jobs men and women typically hold, and differences in hours worked are all significant contributors to the gender wage gap, there are less obvious factors that also play a part. Whether or not a business works across multiple time zones is one.

My recently published research, undertaken alongside my colleagues Beata Javorcik from the University of Oxford and Karen Helene Ulltveit-Moe from the University of Oslo, examines differences in the gender wage gap between companies that do business with international partners, and those that don’t.

Women are perceived as being more family orientated than men, and are subsequently less reliable and less committed to their job

Our research specifically looked at the manufacturing sector in Norway, a country with a large amount of information available regarding a person’s pay, and a relatively narrow gender wage gap. Norway’s high ranking in terms of labour market efficiency by the World Economic Forum also makes it an excellent research candidate.

Our research ultimately found that, among college graduates, exporting firms have about a three percentage point larger gender wage gap than non-exporters. While women tend to earn a greater income at a business that operates across borders, they are ultimately being undervalued in comparison to their male colleagues.

Never out of the office

We can attribute this greater gender wage gap to the demands of the modern, international workplace and the challenges that go with working across time zones. Employees doing business internationally have far greater demands made of their time: a manager might need to take a telephone call at two am from a client in Australia, fly to their US partner’s office at a moment’s notice, or work weekends in order to overcome a customs delay for an important delivery.

The less time zone overlap a company has with the destination of its exports, the greater the gender wage gap

Technology has also increased the pressure on an employee’s schedule: laptops, smartphones and tablets have transformed anywhere with a power plug and an internet connection into a remote office, and employees are expected to make full use of these tools to respond to issues immediately.

In a globally competitive market, this has all made employee flexibility extremely valuable to companies doing business with global partners.

This accelerated pace of work and the increased value placed on being flexible has ultimately meant that if someone is inflexible, or is perceived as such, they lose out in terms of wages. Employer surveys frequently report women are perceived as being more family orientated than men, and are subsequently less reliable and less committed to their job. While this perception may or may not be correct, it is having a very real effect on women’s earnings.

For non-exporters, being available around the clock is far less important. Workers might have to work late or early on occasion, but if the majority of their business is conducted locally, their business partners are operating on the same schedule they are. Flexibility is far less valuable, and subsequently women are penalised less at these types of companies.

Time and tide wait for no woman

We have confirmed this by breaking down the salary data in several different ways.

Our research found that working across multiple time zones has a greater effect on the gender wage gap for people aged under 45. Women in this age group are more likely to have young children, potentially limiting their ability to work flexibly.

The gender wage gap is also affected by the number of time zones a company operates across. The less time zone overlap a company has with the destination of its exports, the greater the gender wage gap. As the percentage of a company’s output that it exports increases, so does the gender wage gap. The gap is also larger at companies that export to a greater number of markets, and also at companies that export a greater variety of products.

Exporting firms have about a three percentage point larger gender wage gap than non-exporters

Ultimately, all these results can be explained by export companies valuing the flexibility needed to do business across multiple time zones, and those companies placing less trust in women’s ability to do this type of work.

The gender wage gap surfaces in unexpected and complex ways, and closing the gap should not completely come down to broad measures to address inequality – in particular across whole sectors or industries. Companies will have to take a careful look at their particular operations in order to address their own specific inequalities.

This article was originally posted on the Imperial College London Business School blog. Click here to read the original post. 

In 2017, the UK introduced mandatory gender pay gap reporting, meaning that all employers with more than 250 staff members are now required by law to publish information about gender disparities in rates of pay and bonuses.

The results are collected and published on a website run by the UK government, which has allowed people to get a better idea of where pay gaps are and which companies need to improve.

But what about pay gaps between workers from BAME (Black and minority ethnic) backgrounds and white workers?

In 2018, an audit of pay rates for public sector workers in the City of London found varying pay gaps – for example, while London Fire Brigade employees of all races were paid the same, BAME employees at the Metropolitan Police were paid 16.7% less than white officers, while the Old Oak and Park Royal development corporation (a development group working in West London) had a 37.5% pay gap. Read more

Meanwhile in the university sector, a 2018 report found that black and Asian staff are significantly more likely to work in lower pay grades and less likely to be appointed to more senior roles. Read more

Why is this?

As with the gender pay gap, there are lots of complex interacting factors: people might have different qualifications, apply for different jobs, or take different career paths as well as coming from different ethnic backgrounds. It’s difficult to get a really complete picture at the moment, as various reports have been compiled for different employers and industries. Broad details about household incomes and participation in the labour force were gathered in the UK Government’s 2017 Race Disparity Audit, but there isn’t a complete overall set of statistics on pay gaps by ethnicity.

At the time this Big Question was written, the government was considering whether there should be mandatory reporting on pay gaps by ethnicity in the same way that there is now compulsory gender pay gap reporting.

For and against

Some people have raised concerns about this – for example, Len Shackleton of the Institute of Economic Affairs, a right-wing lobbying group, argues that small numbers of individuals in small firms will lead to statistically insignificant results, while Jim Pickard, writing for The Financial Times, points out that the Office for National Statistics uses 18 standardised ethnic classifications, which will be a lot of detail to manage and report. Read more

On the other hand, commenters such as Shafi Musaddique, writing for The Independent, argue that mandatory reporting will increase incentives for employers to ensure fairness and commit to diversity in the workplace. Read more

What do you think – should there be mandatory reporting for ethnicity pay gaps?

Broadly speaking, “the 1%” tends to refer to the top 1% of the population in terms of either income or ownership of assets. The amount of wealth and property controlled by “the 1%” is often seen as a measure of how equal, or unequal, a society tends to be.

Researchers at the University of Oxford’s Oxford Martin Programme on Global Development used tax records from throughout the twentieth century to look at the income of “the 1%” and compare it to the total national income over time.

View the original graph on the Our World in Data website

In the left-hand graph, check out income distribution in the USA (the purple line). In the early twentieth century, around 20% of the nation’s income was controlled by the richest 1%. This dropped to between around 10% and 15% from the early 1950s until the mid-1980s (with a low point of around 11-12% in the 1970s). From the 1980s, the richest 1%’s share began to climb again, and by 2014 it was back to the same level that it had been in 1920.

This income distribution pattern follows a U-shape. It starts with a relatively large share going to “the 1%” in the early twentieth century, then moves to a more even distribution of income in the late twentieth century. It then goes back to a more unequal distribution of income in the twenty-first century. Similar patterns are followed in the UK, Canada, Ireland and Australia.

What do you think: Can you think of any major historical events or political movements that took effect in the 1940s and the 1980s? How might these have impacted the distribution of income in English-speaking countries?

Meanwhile, in the right-hand graph we can see the income distribution of several European countries plus Japan. They all follow an L-shape: starting out with a high share of income going to the 1%, falling abruptly and then stabilising over time.

Let’s focus on the Netherlands (the dark blue line) as an example. In 1920, its richest 1% received an even greater share of the income than the USA’s: over 25% of the total national income. Similarly to the USA, the Netherlands 1%’s share dropped in the 1940s and 1950s – but unlike the USA, it did not rise in the 1980s but continued to fall: in 2014 the richest 1% of the Netherlands were getting just over 5% of the national income.

What do you think: What do you know about life in the Netherlands and Denmark? What differences are there between these countries and the USA, and how might these account for differences in the share of income going to “the 1%”?

Professor Max Roser comments:

“A lesson that that we can take away from this empirical research is that political forces at work on the national level are likely important for how incomes are distributed. A universal trend of increasing inequality would be in line with the notion that inequality is determined by global market forces and technological progress. The reality of different inequality trends within countries suggests that the institutional and political frameworks in different countries also play a role in shaping inequality of incomes. This means that rising inequality is most likely not inevitable.”

This article was adapted from an article written by Professor Max Roser. You can read the full article, with more graphs and information, on the Our World in Data website.

Max Roser and Esteban Ortiz-Ospina (2018) - "Income Inequality". Published online at OurWorldInData.org. Retrieved from: 'https://ourworldindata.org/income-inequality' [Online Resource]

Free trade and globalization spread opportunities to do business around the world. However, one result of this is that work tends to move to areas where labour costs are lower and regulations on the way workers can be treated are looser. This can lead to job losses in some parts of the world, and opportunities for exploitation and unsafe working conditions in others. In this video, the team from Crash Course Economics explain the effects that global free trade has had on people's ability to work and earn money. 

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Five years ago, on April 24, 2013, the Rana Plaza building in Bangladesh collapsed killing 1,134 garment factory workers inside. Just five months before this accident, a fire at the Tazreen Fashion factory killed 112 people.

The disasters left many Americans wondering how to respond to prevent such tragedies from happening again. The companies whose brands were manufactured at these factories and other global garment retailers wondered how to keep their customers in the face of worldwide condemnation of Bangaldesh factory working conditions.

Almost immediately, even with no known association with Rana Plaza factories, the clothing company PVH (maker of Calvin Klein, Tommy Hilfiger and other brands) signed the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh, a five-year, legally binding agreement among international brands and retailers, Bangladeshi trade unions, and international trade unions to work together to improve factory conditions, created in May 2013.

The Walt Disney Company took another approach; it pulled its production from Bangladesh, effectively boycotting the country.

Which strategy is better for Bangladeshi workers? And which strategy should consumers support?

To answer these questions, we must ask two more. What approach would empower the more than 4.2 million Bangladeshi garment workers? And what approach would hold brands accountable? These are the keys to better working conditions long-term.

Studying the lived experience of labor activism

In 1993 a group of village women in Bangladesh introduced me [Professor Brooke Ackerly] to their strategies for social criticism.

In my view, political theory about ethics and responsibility should be informed by the lived experience of those in the struggle.

Since 2010, I have been studying  labor, environment, and gender justice as these have been pursued by activist organizations. The argument below draws on the insights from the grass roots of the global labor movement.

A simple boycott of Bangladeshi manufacturing is not accountable to the workers.

A boycott is not a just approach to labor injustice because, if successful, it would leave the workers without their source of livelihood. To understand what justice requires and what it means to respect the human rights of workers in struggle for their rights, we need to understand what they mean by their “rights,” for example by listening as Kalpona Akter, an activist and a former child worker in the Bangladesh garment industry, addressing the 2013 Wal-Mart shareholder meeting in the video below.

‘Boycotting is suicide for my country’

Boycotting, whether by brands or consumers, may indeed send a message to clothing companies, the Bangladeshi garment industry, and to the government of Bangladesh that poor working conditions are unacceptable.

But that message may cost workers their livelihood. As Kalpona Akter, who is with the Bangladesh Center for Worker Solidarity, once said to my Vanderbilt University students, “a boycott is suicide for my country.”

Instead, consumers may be more effective by giving political support to Bangladeshi workers who are trying to change the practices of garment factories and retailers. They may use social media to organize and to protest at stores. In each example they are not merely consumers. They are acting politically and ethically to support workers.

US consumers have been encouraging corporations to sign the Accord on Fire and Building Safety.

Students from universities across the US, including Rutgers and NYU, have urged their schools not to source school spirit garments from VF Corporation, owner of the Jansport brand, until VF signs the Accord. Two hundred brands have done so, including Abercrombie & Fitch, American Eagle Outfitters and Fruit of the Loom.

So why did a company like PVH know how to respond with accountability? Because company representatives had already been talking with workers.

After the That’s It Sportswear factory fire killed 29 workers in Bangladesh on December 14, 2010, labor groups, PVH and other US brands began negotiating on factory safety. Then, in March 2012, after ABC News confronted Tommy Hilfiger at Fashion Week with news that workers had died sewing his clothing, PVH signed an agreement on factory safety. After Rana Plaza, that agreement was modified, updated, and went into effect under its current name, the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh. In other words, PVH management had been listening to workers and understood that accountability to workers was the key to an effective solution.

Another way companies can be accountable to workers is by contributing to the Rana Plaza Donors Trust that helps compensate the over 5,000 survivors and victims’ families, many of whom were orphaned.

To encourage corporations to pay their share to the Rana Plaza Donors Trust, students and consumers have been delivering letters to store managers of clothing retailers including The Children’s Place and the Italian company Benetton. On Friday, April 24, a press release from Workers United-SEIU, announced that an agreement had been reached in which The Children’s Place would contribute an additional $2 million to the Rana Plaza Donors Fund.

These students and consumers are working in partnership with labor rights groups, unions, anti-sweatshop groups, and Bangladeshi activists to bring political attention to worker rights.

Two of these activists are Kalpona Akter from the Bangladesh Center for Worker Solidarity(BCWS) and Mahinur Begum, who was 16 when Rana Plaza collapsed around her. Ms Akter founded BCWS in 2001 with two other former garment workers who had been part of an earlier effort in the 1990s to form a trade union in a garment factory in Bangladesh. The AFL-CIO’s Solidarity Center conducted the training: “The Solidarity Center supports a mission to help build a global labor movement by strengthening the economic and political power of workers around the world through effective, independent, and democratic unions.”

The BCWS was originally founded as a non-government organization promoting worker organizing in sectors other than the garment sector. However, the needs of organizing workers for legal defense and the need for workers in non-union factories for arbitration with their management has kept BCWS focused on the garment industry.

Through their work in legal awareness training for workers, code of conduct training for workers and factory managers, leadership training for worker leaders, and advocacy, BCWS activists have earned the respect of both workers and managers for their skills in conflict resolution.

Yet organizing in Bangladesh can be dangerous.

Even in the US activism is not without some risk. On March 12 this year, Kalpona Akter, Mahinur Begum and two dozen others were arrested at the Secaucus, NJ, headquarters of Children’s Place for trespassing when they tried to deliver a written request for increased compensation to the Rana Plaza Trust. The charges against the Bangladeshi activists and the students in the group were later dismissed.

Trust fund lacks support from key players

Today the trust still has not received adequate donations to meet its obligations.

Although some companies whose clothing was produced at Rana Plaza – like Cato Fashions and JC Penney – have given nothing at all, others companies such as Benetton have contributed, though less than advocates have called on them to give.

Three companies (H&M, Gap and N Brown Group) have donated to the trust even though they have no known association with Rana Plaza factories. Like those who have signed the Accord, they want their consumers to perceive that they are on the right side of this issue.

Both the Rana Plaza Trust and the Accord on Fire and Building Safety are important ways to be accountable to workers. Even with these achievements, however, long-term improvement in working conditions will require effective advocacy within Bangladesh.

For that to happen it has to be safe to speak up. “Bangladesh has a history of corruption, of political turbulence,” Ellen O. Tauscher, a Californian politician who is chairwoman of the of the Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety, told the New York Times.

Non-boycott consumer activism has helped on this front, too.

For instance, in 2010 an international letter-writing campaign coordinated with local organizations secured the release of worker rights activists who had been arrested and heldon false charges.

Non-boycott activism has also helped secure better working conditions in many factories as well as the payment of back wages for many workers.

Though workers still experience retaliation for speaking out about factory conditions and for organizing, they have been able to form unions recognized by the government and their work places. And the minimum wage has increased.

The work environment in Bangladesh is being transformed.

Taking steps to accountability

Taking responsibility for worker rights means being accountable to the workers who make the clothes brands sell and consumers wear.

Through basic economics of supply and demand, our choices as consumers affect others. Raising awareness of this fact can be done in small steps – by asking the managers at the stores where we shop about the working conditions under which the clothes we can afford and choose to wear are made.

The consumer today is not alone. There are many ways to nudge brands to support humane working conditions and accountability.

Social media connections with organizations like Clean Clothes Campaign and the International Labor Rights Forum can help consumers identify brands that are concerned with labor rights. Social media also enables consumers to signal to each other and to brands that they care about social responsibility. The power to change work places is not merely a purchasing power.

Our greatest contribution would be to ensure that another Rana Plaza collapse doesn’t happen and that working conditions continue to improve for all workers.

April 24, is the Global Day of Action: Remembering Rana Plaza. We must not let this disaster be forgotten.

This article originally appeared on The Conversation. Click here to read it in the original. 

What do you think: Is it enough simply to donate money to support victims? For example, fashion company Benetton gave $US1.1 million to the Rana Plaza Trust under pressure from consumers -- but this represented less than 0.07% of their annual turnover of $US1.6 billion. Will this discourage future companies from using unsafe factories, or could a similar tragedy happen again?