Metalworkers: Advancing the Interests of 6 Million Women in the Industry

Women trade unionists in the international metal industry met recently in Geneva, calling on "all women in the metal industries around the world to unite in the struggle for equal rights and a better status for women."

Attended by 90 delegates from 44 affiliated unions in 34 Western countries, the fifth International Metalworker Women's World Conference also discussed problems that confront women workers, both within the industry and in the unions. It adopted resolutions concerning the following four issues:

• The vulnerability of women workers to the development of new labor-saving technologies because of their relative lack of training and their concentration in a narrow range of industrial sectors, such as light industry.

• "Widespread, long established sex segregation of jobs" which makes it impossible for women's work to be equivalent to that of men and which the conference cited as the greatest barrier to equal pay.

• The need for equality of women in trade unions. Although the number of women in metalworkers' unions have greatly increased over the past decade, the conference's resolution stated, there has not yet been a corresponding increase in the number of women in decision-making positions within the trade unions.

• The responsibility of trade unions to work toward achieving equal rights for women workers and equality of access to education, vocational training, skilled jobs, better working conditions and equal pay.

As of 1979, nearly 20% of metalworkers in countries outside the Soviet bloc-or more than 6 million-were women; nearly one-third of these were Americans.

"The recommendations we adopted this time were stronger than any we've ever adopted before" at an international conference on women workers, said Dorothy Haener, who attended as a representative of the United Auto Workers. "At the top level there is a greater understanding of the real need for attention to the problems of women metalworkers. I think it will have an impact on the future by the sheer numbers [of unions represented] that were there," she said.

- Cynthia Abramson