Kath Williams: The Unions and the Fight for Equal Pay

Sydney.

Other books by Zelda D’Aprano Zelda (1995)

KATH WILLIAMS: THE UNIONS AND THE FIGHT FOR EQUAL PAY

Zelda D’Aprano

Spinifex Press Pty Ltd

504 Queensberry Street

North Melbourne, Vic. 3051

Australia

women@spinifexpress.com.au

http://www.spinifexpress.com.au

First published 2001 by Spinifex Press

Copyright © Zelda D’Aprano 2001

Copyright © on layout Spinifex Press 2001

This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealings for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, this book may not be reproduced in whole or in part by any process, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without prior written permission of the copyright owner and the above publisher of the book.

Cover design by Deb Snibson

Typeset in Garamond by Palmer Higgs Pty Ltd

Printed and bound by Australian Print Group

National Library of Australia

Cataloguing-in-publication data:

D’Aprano, Zelda, 1928–.

Kath Williams: The Unions and the Fight for Equal Pay.

Bibliography.

ISBN 978-1-74219-103-4 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 978-1-74219-431-8 (ePub Format)

ISBN 1 86756 02 0.

1. Williams, Kath. 2. Women labor union members—Australia—Biography. 3. Women labor union members—Australia—History. 4. Equal pay for equal work—Australia—History. 5. Labor unions—Australia—History.

I. Title

331.478092

This publication is assisted by the Australia Council, the Australian Government’s arts funding and advisory body.

For my mother Rachel Leah Orloff who always dreamt of a more caring and sharing world

The dead need history for the voice it gives them; the living need history disturbing enough to change the present.

Greg Dening, Australian Book Review,

June 1998, p. 17.

People who have been real movers and exciters got left out of histories… Often, reading histories, there are events which stick out, do not make enough sense, and one may deduce the existence of some lunatic, male or female, who was equipped with the fiery stuff of inspiration—but was quickly forgotten, since always and at all times the past gets tidied up and made safer…

Women often get dropped from memory and then history.

Doris Lessing, Under My Skin, 1994, p. 12.

Contents

Acknowledgements

I wish to give a special thanks to the late Kath Williams’ son and granddaughter, Ray and Lynda Clarey, for their co-operation and use of interview tapes and transcripts.

Special thanks are also due to the following people for their help in giving interviews, supplying documents and answering miscellaneous questions: Pauline Armstrong, the late John Arrowsmith, the late Fred Benbow, the late Iris Benbow, the late Harry Bocquet, Marge Broadbent, Peg Cregan, the late Ruth Crow, Joan Crump, Kath Dimitrin, the late Agnes and Wattie Doig, Jenny Doran, George Edson, Bradon Ellem, Jane Farrell, Joe Godard, Kath Golding, Jack Hutson, Grace Jane, Emma Jolley, Geysler Kaplan, Marilyn Lake, Vic and Vida Little, Frances Eodelyn Loeber, Mrs E MacSween, Marion Miller, the late George Mitchell, Maggie O’Sullivan, Vera Perry, the late Eric Pipgrass, Bill Richardson, Flo Russell, Linda Rubenstein, Lyndall Ryan, Jocelynne Scutt, Sylvie Shaw, John Shields, Hilda Smith, Naomi Steer, Anne Summers, Bernie Taft, Lois Williams.

I also wish to express my appreciation of the assistance given by staff and/or officers of the Alexander Library, West Australia; Australian National Archives: Australian Security Intelligence Organisation; Australian Council of Trade Unions; Sarah Brown, Archivist, Victorian Trades Hall Council; Camden Haven Adult and Community Education; Federated Liquor and Allied Industries Employees Union, Victorian Branch; Geelong Historical Records Centre; Katherine Herrick, Education History Unit, Department of Education, Victoria; Jessie Street National Women’s Library; Labor Council of New South Wales; Laurieton Branch of Hastings Library, New South Wales; Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales; National Library of Australia; Noel Butlin Archives, Australian National University; Queensland Teachers’ Union Library; School of Industrial Relations and Organisational Behaviour, University of New South Wales; Union of Australian Women; University of Melbourne Archives; Western Australian Museum; Brendan Wood, Textile, Clothing and Footwear Union.

Many thanks to the following for permission to use material: New South Wales University Press; Harper Collins; Penguin Books; University of Queensland Press; Australian Liquor, Hospitality & Miscellaneous Workers Union; Margo Oliver; Jeni Thornley and Megan McMurchy (For Love or Money); Stella Lees and June Senyard (The 1950s); Belinda Probert and Ray Juriendini for permission to cite Bradon Ellem. 1996. ‘Hell for Leather’. Labour and Industry, 7 (1)); Heather Radi (200 Australian Women).

I also wish to acknowledge just a small sample of women whose involvement in the campaign for equal pay during the 1940s to 1960s to the best of my knowledge remains unrecorded:

Clothing Trades Union: Dot Castles, Stella Cooper, Grace Taylor (Gale)

Metal Trades Union: Thelma Pryor, Aileen Beaver

Iron Workers Union: Evelyn Taylor, Sally Bowen

Postal Workers Union: Janne Ellen (Reed), Doreen Burrows

Clerks Union: Irene Arrowsmith, Monica Chalmers, Dela Nicholas

Hospital Employees Union: Jessie Davies

also, Olive Howe, Peggy Erry, Jillian Hopkins, Ruth McDougal

Thanks go to the writers of many books and articles whose research I have used.

Many thanks go to Mavis Barnes and Elaine van Kempen for your assistance, corrections and positive criticism. You were both a constant source of encouragement.

And to Susan Hawthorne of Spinifex Press who, in publishing this book, validates the grassroots campaigns of women in history.

Finally, I would like to thank Ron, whose support, patience and assistance over the years helped to make this book possible.

Zelda D’Aprano

Laurieton, New South Wales

April 2001

Foreword

I have long been skeptical about the conventional image of women in 1950s Australia, which sees them passively adhering to their prescribed roles as mothers and wives, acquiescent in their subordination. Now Zelda D’Aprano, in this exciting study of left-wing activist Kath Williams and the fight for equal pay in the 1950s and 1960s, sets the record straight. Australian women, she notes, have shown great spirit in their activism and the 1950s was no exception. Based on extensive original research, Zelda’s account documents the significance of the political campaigns led by women in the trade unions, notably Kath Williams, a member of the Communist Party and paid official of the Liquor Trades Union, who was elected secretary of the newly-formed Trades Hall Council Equal Pay Committee in Melbourne in 1955. Angered by ‘the rank injustice of paying women less for their labour than men’, Williams organised demonstrations and seminars, rallies and deputations, for some twelve years. In 1957 she presented the Equal Pay Petition, with 62000 signatures, to the Commonwealth government. In 1960 she organised an Equal Pay Rally outside the Victorian Parliament. In 1967, the year in which she retired, aged seventy-two, the ACTU finally decided to pursue an equal pay claim with the Arbitration Commission. Zelda was, of course, involved in the struggle herself and she writes about it with passion and commitment. History, she believes, should engage the heart as well as the head—this is such a history.

Marilyn Lake

Melbourne, 2001

Abbreviations

* MTHC, THC and VTHC are the same organisation with name changes occurring over the years. It is now known as the Victorian Trades Hall Council (VTHC). Equal Pay Committees operated during the period which covers these name changes. The documents drawn on therefore variously refer to these committees as the Melbourne Trades Hall Equal Pay Committee (MTHC EP Committee), the Victorian Trades Council Equal Pay Committee (VTHC EP Committee), the Trades Hall Council Equal Pay Committee (THC EP Committee)). To prevent confusion, all references in the text are to the Victorian Equal Pay Committee (VTHC EP) or to the Equal Pay Committee (EP Committee).

Preface

For some years there has been serious concern for the rapid decline in interest young people have in History. Could it be that the usual historical depiction of static one-dimensional beings whose heads have been separated from their hearts is an underlying reason for this lost interest? All people have strengths and weaknesses and, depending on circumstances, are capable of performing heroic or cowardly deeds, but men wished to preserve an untarnished image and remain immortal for posterity, so they created history: a record of their deeds only.

Because there is more to life and living than is recorded in history books, the novel provided the place in literature where human experiences could be portrayed. In the anonymity of the novel men were safe, and all emotions, human frailties, weaknesses, illnesses and hang-ups could be recorded. History’s splitting of the human so as to preserve egos may be partly responsible for the present dilemma.

The recording of history, apart from being a collection of known facts, should, where possible, embrace a combined record of the hearts and heads of those involved. However, when adhering to this theory, difficulties arise in attempting to write a record of motivations, thoughts, feelings and pain experienced by people—important factors which may have given rise to decisions influencing the course of history.

There is always the inherent danger, when writing history, of the writer being sympathetic or unsympathetic to an individual and presenting them with a halo or demonising them or, failing that, portraying them as flat, disembodied cardboard cutouts. In the main, this has been the method of portraying history and in recent years when referring to the history of the Equal Pay Campaign, there has been a tendency to concentrate on the decisions made by wage tribunals and the Arbitration Court. Although recognition has been given to a small number of women involved in the campaign over the many years, one could be forgiven for thinking that all it required was several learned people placing well-researched arguments before male judges or wage tribunals to obtain wage justice. Little has been recorded about the efforts made by the trade union movement and the women who carried out the struggle within their workplaces and the unions.

Without diminishing the vital efforts made by women from all sections of society, it would be denying reality to assume equal pay could have been achieved without involvement by the trade union movement. Kath Williams made an outstanding contribution to the trade union movement and to the achievement of equal pay.

When writing the history of working-class experience in or around any period of time, authenticity requires language to adequately reflect industry, the institutions, the organisations and the culture of that era. Having a working-class identity meant being part of a society which developed a jargon widely used to depict the current situation in industry, and the trade unions often adopted many of these expressions. Sweated labour refers to employees being overworked and underpaid, the sweat shop was commonly used to describe a workplace where conditions were often substandard and where employees were overworked and underpaid, the speed up described a situation where pressure was applied for employees to produce more.

Part of the disciplining of the workforce commences at school and continues to inculcate its reverence for authority throughout almost all of our institutions and organisations. The trade unions are no different, and while members attending meetings may be addressed as brother, comrade, member or formally, as Mr, Mrs and Miss, all the research of written union records for this book revealed almost all members were addressed formally. This usage has been retained in this book.

It is not now politically correct to use the infantilising word girls when applied to women, but this was the common term widely used in the workplace and culture until the late 1900s, and it appears once in the book.

Women who played an outstanding role in the equal pay campaign over the years were almost always known by their given name as well as surname and are recorded as such in this book.

Writing this book on the late Kath Williams has given me insight into the problems confronted in trying to record all aspects of her life, her family, her children—and all that entails—plus her commitment to the equal pay campaign, politics and the trade union movement.

In times prior to electronic communication, letters often gave a lasting record of people’s lives. Telephone conversations leave no such record to assist a writer in accessing the feelings and thoughts of individuals long dead. Kath, being a very busy woman, did most of her communication by phone.

The ontological combination of heart and head, intuitive understanding and broad, honest intellectual analysis is essential for history to come to life. I was faced with many frustrations when attempting to record the life of Kath Williams, a very private person. Interviews with family, comrades, friends and work associates provided testament to her involvement with politics and trade unions but showed very little of Kath the woman.

When conducting research for this book, it became patently clear that, like almost all history, women’s history too has minimised the involvement of grass roots activism. It was not until 1991 that an adequate record of Emma Miller and Leontine Cooper’s major contribution to women and the trade union movement during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, was finally recorded.

The need to write this book arose from the necessity to recognise Kath’s contribution in the struggle for equal pay and place her among other great campaigners.

While there is more material available, such as leaflets, posters and general campaign documents resulting from Kath’s work over the years on the VTHC Equal Pay Committee, the key aspects of all the material have been included in this book.

I have listed a great deal of detail and my analysis of it in the hope that in reading this book, people will be inspired to be more thinking, studious and active about wage structures and how the entire system works, and about the confusion that can be created to impede justice. The fight for equal pay has been a lengthy political campaign, involving the political structures of government, employers and the trade union movement, all embroiled in what at times resulted in incomprehensible outcomes. It was in this environment that Kath Williams operated.

To deny recognition of a radical woman’s contribution to the cause of equal pay is to distort history.

Editorial note

The sources for this book are varied and variations in spelling between sources—as they appear in legislation, newspaper reports, union material and academic research—have been retained: for example: Fruit Pickers, fruit-pickers and fruitpickers; woolen, as have the changing titles for unions.

1

Cath the housewife/mother becomes Kath the activist

Catherine Mary Isabel Chambers (Cath) commenced her teacher training for the Domestic Arts in 1913.¹ We do not know what dreams or ambitions she may have had during adolescence but, with the pervading culture inculcating domesticity for girls and opposing participation of women in the workforce, the demand for teachers qualified in Domestic Arts created opportunities for young women to obtain a profession. Choices for women were few, and perhaps Cath recognised the potential this training would give her for a career, the means of a livelihood as well as providing skills and knowledge befitting her for marriage.

Cath was born on April 23 1895 at Lara, a tiny settlement south-west of Melbourne, in StoneLea Cottage, the home of her maternal grandparents, built by her stonemason grandfather William Harding. By the 1890s Lara, with its population of 250, had developed the charming air of an English village. Even its railway station, according to the Werribee Express, had the rural cottage home cosiness which might be seen on country branch lines in England.

Cath was the second-born of five children, four daughters and the youngest being a son. While little is known of Cath’s parents or about her childhood, her father, Edward, was the foundation Secretary of the Victorian Clerks Union.² Her parents were able to live a comfortable existence and had the financial means to provide their children with advanced education. Lois Williams, an early pupil of Melbourne University High School, recalls seeing Cath’s name heading the list on the old school’s Honour Roll.³

Early in the twentieth century tertiary education was a luxury few could afford, and, of the five Chambers’ children, Cath attended The College of Domestic Economy situated in Lonsdale Street, the precursor to Emily McPherson College, and obtained her Diploma to teach Domestic Arts in December 1915.⁴

Eileen, the eldest daughter, was said to have been a Magistrate in the Children’s Court; Bobbie was a librarian; and Connie came down with tuberculosis, a disease rampant at the time, especially among young women. Ted, unlike his sisters, found schooling difficult, worked in numerous unskilled and semi-skilled jobs and spent several years humping his swag during the depression years.

Having obtained her qualifications to teach, Cath being classified as a temporary assistant, was placed by the Education Department in various schools from Collingwood to Daylesford.⁵ World War 1 was in progress and what money was available went for the war effort, not education. Cath’s teaching report after completing her first year of teaching, described her as ‘A teacher, bright in appearance, prepares and presents a good lesson, demonstrates and questions well, but needs experience in methods. Is an energetic and willing worker and should with experience become a very good teacher. Good 84.’⁶

It was through her father’s involvement with the trade union movement that Cath first met her husband-to-be, Percy James Clarey. When visiting the Chambers’ home to see Edward on union business, Percy met Cath, and expressed words of interest to Edward about his attractive daughter. At a later visit to the Chambers’ home, Percy and Cath spent some time conversing and Cath accepted his invitation to visit him at his union office at Unity Hall at the Spencer Street end of Bourke Street. This was the beginning of their relationship.

‘This morning, girls, we are going to make spotted dick.’

So wrote Kathy Skelton in her account of her experiences as a student in Form two at a domestic school during the 1950s. She describes how the girls were allowed to clean the flat at the end of the Domestic arts wing, make pasties, lemon sago, Irish stew, baked custard, rice pudding and jam roly-poly. They never made spotted dick and nor were they ever asked to open their Education Department Recipe Book at page forty-two, although longing for the teacher to direct them there and pronounce the forbidden words.

Cath Chambers during her teaching career was responsible for adhering to the curriculum established by the Education Department and, as a domestic arts teacher, was responsible for preparing girls for their housewife/mother role.

The curriculum Kathy Skelton describes was the sort Cath was required to teach.

Drawn from Michele Lonsdale, Liberating Women:

The Changing Lives of Australian Women since the 1950s, p. 19

Percy was born in 1890 at Bairnsdale, Victoria. When he was a child, the family moved to Melbourne where he was educated at South Yarra State School and later at the Working Men’s College. Crippled in his youth by rheumatoid arthritis, he was dependent on crutches all his life. Percy spent some years in hospital because of his affliction and, with plenty of time on his hands, he was able to use this period of incapacitation to continue his education and indulge himself in reading, a pastime he loved. On leaving hospital, he attended the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology where he studied gold and assaying.

Cath in her early twenties

Percy was employed as a clerk at George Pizzey and Son, leather merchants, Percy became involved in trade unionism and politics. He was an ambitious young man and at the early age of twenty-four became the Victorian President of the Federated Clerks’ Union of Australia and Federal President three years later. He was to become an organiser of the Amalgamated Food Preservers’ Union of Australia and of the Federated Storemen and Packers’ Union of Australia. He served as Federal President of both organisations and maintained a close relationship with them throughout his long industrial career.⁷

At a time when most young men were away at the war, it is easy to understand the impression Percy, a successful young man who had already attained a position of power and respect, made upon Cath. Shortly after their relationship began, Cath spoke to her mother of her love for Percy and of his proposal of marriage.

In 1990, when interviewed by Cath’s granddaughter Lynda, Agnes Doig, long-time friend and comrade of Cath’s, said ‘[Cath’s] mother disapproved of the relationship on the grounds that "she would be foolish