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  Issue No 45 Official Organ of LaborNet 10 March 2000  

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Interview

Working Women

Interview with Peter Lewis

Nareen Young talks about how services are being delivered to our most vulnerable workers - and what unions need to do to make them their own.

 
 

What is the Working Women's Centre and what does it do?

It's a community legal centre. And it is an organization that is managed by community organizations, NESB organizations, women's organizations, trade unions and the Human Rights Commission. It provides information and advice to women via a call service that operates three days a week on industrial matters and work related matters.

It was set up by activist women, essentially from immigrant women's Speakout and the Womens Electoral Lobby and some trade union women, arising out of the need that Speakout had identified in servicing their clientele, particularly in those unregulated areas of women's employment. Speakout used to have in the early 90s numbers and numbers of enquiries from their constituency about employment matters and they saw a need for a centre other than their own organization to provide advice and information to working women from NESB backgrounds as well as addressing all the cultural barriers we know about that those women have traditionally found in asserting their rights at work.

To what extent are you filling a gap that's left by people who aren't in trade unions?

Most women in NSW aren't in unions, whether unionists like that or not. Sixty seven per cent of women in NSW aren't members or trade unions. So that leaves a big area or number of women who have no where to go for industrial advice. In that context, what we at the Centre deal with are similar matters to what a community legal centre would deal with. We deal with unfair dismissal matters primarily, as a very last resort. Women who are working in un-unionised or under-unionised industries don't know about grievance centres in awards; don't know about grievance procedures in enterprise agreements. All they know about is what they read in the media. And there has been a huge penetration in the public psyche around unfair dismissal matters, and also in particular on maternity leave entitlements and sexual harassment and workplace harassment matters. They don't know the particulars of what they need to do to go about it, so they ring us and we point them in the direction of utilising the user friendly provisions in particular of the NSW Industrial Relations Act.

How well is the system set up to deal with people from non-English speaking backgrounds?

In general the NSW Act is user friendly. But I think that all institutions are inaccessible to people from any NESB backgrounds, by language alone. In the Commission at the moment it is very difficult because of budgetary constraints on the part of the IRC to get an interpreter. So that in itself is the start of it. And at the Centre we have for example, a Chinese speaking worker who is able to assist women from her community in accessing remedies under the NSW Act and the Anti Discrimination Acts that are available to them.

There isn't much information out there in NESB communities about industrial or employment rights and the Centre is almost the first point of information for people and we usually get referrals from Speakout or other ethnic community organizations like the Vietnamese Welfare Association or the Australian Chinese Community Association fFrom people who have absolutely no idea what they should do. And they mostly work in unregulated or under-unionised industries.

So the system itself isn't accessible in the sense that the language barriers alone provide inaccessibility, but the information about exactly what to do isn't out there either. Now, that worries me because while I think that DIR has done a really job of promoting access to award information, it's scary just how much people don't know about their employment situation.

What about the broader group issues, particularly around working women from non-English speaking backgrounds. What can an organization like yours do to promote their collective interests?

Well, one of the objects of the Centre from its inception was to encourage women to join and be active in their trade union to achieve their rights at work, and of course the Centre is consistent with this object. We would of course, see as an ideal situation women joining and being active in their trade unions. But for one reason or another that has simply not always been the case.

And why do you think that isn't the case?

Lack of information, without a doubt. The women who contact us have absolutely no idea about what their rights are by and large. And lack of visibility of the trade union movement, it would seem to me anecdotally again, is a really big issue. And I think if you surveyed community legal centres; if you surveyed more of the organizations that provide this sort of advice, they would all tell you the same thing. That what you get mostl find is you are halfway into your interview and you say, "have you contacted the union about this? Are you a member of the union? Have you contacted them?" They say, "there's no union here".

Have you found the demand for your services increasing over recent years as there has been a push to deregulation and more precarious employment?

Yes. We are pushed to capacity, We take 70 calls a week. We are open three days. We take 20 to 25 calls a day and if we were open another two days we would take another 50 calls. So we have noticed an increase, and certainly in the early days of the Centre it was promoted as a place where women could come for information. And so we are out there with community organizations; in the neighbourhood centres and community centres which deal with people's day to day lives at time of shrinking resources across the community.

Working within those constraints, what community development work is going on?

NSW DIR has funded us over the last three years for community development and information projects, which has largely gone to rural and regional areas. We are also targetting the Chinese and Vietnamese communities and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women. We are also working with community legal centres to ensure that they have access to information about employment rights and law. We have held workshops in numerous communities, including Lismore, for example, at the end of last year, where I went up and ran workshops over two days with women from mainstream and aboriginal communities. And again, it was confirmed for me just how much of a need for this kind of information there is. Women were completely ignorant about employment rights and we were able to provide them with information.

So, this is a bit of a community legal model to industrial information. How do you see that concept expanding throughout the community over time?

I think that the NSW Industrial Relations Act really does lend to that kind of acceptability. Many legal centres have been successful, as we know, over the last 25 years, providing a point where people who can't afford legal advice to go and find out information about problems that they have. That's no different to finding information about work. And the Act stresses the need for accessibility to the industrial relations system. ,

And having come from an union background yourself, what do you think the union movement can learn about the operation - the experience of something like the Working Women's Centre?

Well, it really does need to tailor its organising activity to get information to people who don't have it. To organising non- and under-unionised sisters. I understand the constraints in the sense of what's viable and the lack of resources in the trade union movement. There does need to be consideration given to those emerging groups of workers.

But I think there has to be some thought about the Organising Model and the Servicing Model. And essentially what community legal centres and Working Women's do is provide a servicing model. You ring up and you get the information you need. And it is a real challenge for the trade union movement to combine the organising model with the old servicing model. - to tailor its organising activity to what is most needed in that particular group of workers or community, and it might be the case that a particular group of workers wants to be serviced. That is how they will be retained - included and retained.

It's been an interesting debate and I have certainly been active in the debate over a long period, and being at Working Women's has taught me that there is still a need for a servicing office mentality among certain groups of workers.

When people walk away from your service after having been looked after, do you get the sense that if the unions were looking after them they would become committed members, and maybe even activists?

Absolutely. You know, as a union official I used to get thank you cards and what have you. We get tokens, we get cards, we get all kinds of things. People are really grateful for the service that's provided. Now, that's not to say that's ideal. But we are able to provide an advice, information and advocacy service that goes to the direct needs of the individual at the time.


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*   View entire issue - print all of the articles!

*   Issue 45 contents

In this issue
Features
*  Interview: Working Women
Nareen Young talks about how services are being delivered to our most vulnerable workers - and what unions need to do to make them their own.
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*  Unions: Into the New Frontier
IT professionals are part of the new workforce that unions need to win over - and while they are often contractors, they're workers too.
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*  History: Handling The Ladies
1943 - women were filling the gap in the workforce left by the diggers abroad and Australian managers needed some advice on how to deal with these strange creatures.
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*  Technology: Building The Hypermacho Man
In a stinging critque of the �Wired� culture, Melanie Stewart Miller argues digital cultural is creating a new super-Man.
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*  International: The Long March Home
Trade union women round the world used International Women�s Day to launch the World March of Women Against Poverty and Violence.
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*  Satire: Kerosene Dilution Racket
The nursing home industry has been rocked by a new scandal with the revelation that some unscrupulous proprietors have been diluting their patients� kerosene baths with illicit liquids.
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*  Review: Power and the Back Bar
In an upcoming book, Julia Gillard argues the ALP retains a male culture that is fast losing step with contemporary society.
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News
»  Services Threatened Over Olympic Bonus
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»  Games Edict: Dance for Free
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»  Revealed: Secret State Transit Corporatisation Plans
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»  Women Demand Better Pay from Faye
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»  Telstra, Banks Whack Rural Australia
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»  Casuals Inquiry Still On Union Agenda
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»  Shaw, Sams Pay Tribute to John Whelan
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»  Teachers� Website Mysteriously Blocked
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»  Cash Bonus for Bilingual Workers
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»  Women Demand Better Pay from Faye
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»  Shareholders Push Global Action
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»  Fair Wear Conquers Schools
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»  TWU Calls on Workers to Steer Clear of Woolworths
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»  Push to Strike Out Parrish Directors
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Columns
»  The Soapbox
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»  Sport
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»  Trades Hall
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»  Tool Shed
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Letters to the editor
»  TV Show Seeks Bankrupt Worker
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»  Crosby Spot On
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»  Confused About Workplace Rights
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»  Global Campaign Against Yahoo!
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»  Teachers Row
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