Whilst the Tories squeal and bicker over one working woman’s pay-packet, let’s talk about some practical feminism happening in London right now.
The cleaners of the London underground work through the night to keep the city’s vascular system pumping and sanitary. Most of them are women with families. Many of them face abuse and sexual harassment every day from loutish travellers as a part of their work.
On top of wiping up our vomit and newspapers and taking crap from our scum, they have to struggle with shockingly low pay, on-the-spot third party sackings, little to no sick pay and a measly 12 days’ annual leave. And they’ve had enough.
RMT, the tube workers’ union, will be striking on the 26th-27th July, and again on the 1st-2nd July 2008.
‘The tube cleaners are an inspiring example of women fighting for their rights,’ said Laura Schwartz, a representative of Feminist Fightback. ‘London Transport must stop under-valuing so-called women’s work such as cleaning and recognise that it is crucial to the smooth running of the Underground.’
These people are us. These are the people who clean up our muck. They have feelings, and they have families, and they have a level of baseline leverage that the Old Firm trembles to contemplate, and they’re sick of being fucked with. This is feminism.
Let’s make one thing crystal clear right now: we’re not talking about the caring face of service privatisation here. Much of the abuse faced by these workers, most of whom are migrant women, does not just come from commuters.
Clara Osagiede, a representative of the tube workers’ union RMT, told me that it is extremely common for women to come to her complaining about serious sexual harasment from their male bosses- agency supervisors- but too afraid to make formal complaints. Male bosses take advantage of immigrant workers by threatening to expose them if they don’t keep their mouths shut. This is the type of insidious patriarchal fist squeezing the breath out of the vulnerable women of this country every day.
Because, for the benefit of the uninitiated, London isn’t all fashion and finance, Kate Moss and cocaine. There are millions of people here living on the poverty line, doing hard, thankless jobs that they hate just to keep themselves and their families together. Most of those people are women. Feminism happens on the ground, it’s not traded in bitumen between snarling academics, and it’s a central and inextricable part of anti-capitalism.
Eat the rich. Demand decent pay and support those working to do so. We are entering a new strike economy and you, too, are likely to be inconvenienced in your daily habits at some point over the next few months. But not half as inconvenienced as we’ll all be if we allow the Old Firm to kick workers’ rights and women’s rights to the bottom of the agenda.
I’d probably care a lot more if this wasn’t presented as being exclusively a matter of women’s rights.
The problem, basically, is this: I can just about see past the vocabulary of feminism to get at the underlying issues, but only just, and with some considerable effort on my part. And I’m probably more exposed than the average white male to political language of all kinds and therefore have something of a head start.
Fundamentally, I think feminism has failed to make a case for itself to the population at large, with the end result being that those who identify strongly with feminism and use its vocabulary to address social issues are basically speaking a language that the rest of us don’t readily understand. Yes, I do know what you mean by ‘patriarchy’, and I can join the dots and see how this relates to the fairly considerable number of sexist men that I know to exist, and further to a set of social assumptions which reinforce and promote that behaviour,
But not half as inconvenienced as we’ll all be if we allow the Old Firm to kick workers’ rights and women’s rights to the bottom of the agenda.
Strictly speaking, this isn’t quite true. I probably won’t be terribly inconvenienced at all, which makes this a weak argument. For my sins, I work in a job where to be treated in the way that you describe is utterly unthinkable, though I’ve probably spent longer working at minimum wage and making ends meet with housing benefit than some people too. Appealing to my sense of fear (if we don’t do something, you’ll be next!) isn’t going to work. In some people, it probably provokes an entirely negative response, as veiled threat-making often does. Better would be to appeal to my sense of justice and fairness, which does seem to be very much on the side of those who are being mis-treated.
Other than the tenuous links provided by the author of this rant, what does this have to do with feminism? Just sounds like another wage dispute to me.
isn’t it illegal to only give 12 days holiday, anyway? Unless the person is only working a three day week. We’re all entitled to 4 weeks by law…
I do hope there’s more to feminism than “eating the rich” and “anti-capitalism”.
We might certainly be inclined to support these key workers if you had given us more detail on the dispute itself.
I’d probably care a lot more if this wasn’t presented as being exclusively a matter of women’s rights.
Rob I think that as an individual you can decide for yourself whether you are going to care more about factual information or the way it is presented.
isn’t it illegal to only give 12 days holiday, anyway?
As there are 8 bank and public holidays in England, the practical effect is that if bank and public holidays are taken as days off work the legal entitlement to annual holiday can be regarded as being only 12 days. (This information is from http://www.emplaw.co.uk/)
If women going on strike is feminism, is men going on strike masculinism?
Or, as the motives of the strikes are essentially identical (better pay and conditions for the strikers), are both strikes feminist?
But not half as inconvenienced as we’ll all be if we allow the Old Firm to kick workers’ rights and women’s rights to the bottom of the agenda.
agreed! We should be more actively and informationally (ie, blogging about it) supporting this campaign./=
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Rob Knight