What do we want? Equal Pay! When do we want it? Now!

Somewhat surprisingly, one of the most exciting campaigns for equal pay came in the insurance industry, where the union had had the commitment to equal pay for women on its books since 1927, but had done little about it. The highlight of the union's action came towards the end in November 1973. There was a demonstration outside the National Mutual building in Melbourne while the employers group and the AISF leadership met inside it. Between two and three thousand insurance workers (at a time when their Victorian branch had around 5,000 members) made their anger known.

The demonstrators voted to stay out for the rest of the afternoon, and to have another stop work a week later. Union activist Phil Griffiths recalled: "The sense of anger was tremendous ... I remember racing around the office saying 'That's it! We're on strike. Come on, let's get going.' Some came out, we all had these furious debates." It took a little longer, but they did win.

Every decade of the 1900s and now into the 2000s with the Australian Services Union claim (1980s – nurses' comparable worth; 1999 – NSW pay equity hearing), we've had a fight for equal pay and the only way it's been won, where it has, is by determined industrial action and political leadership, not reliance on courts, the employers' good will or the peak union bodies. And that is the only way it will be won in the twenty first century.

http://home.vicnet.net.au/~women/12.%201970's%20on%20...Protests%20-%20Women%20Together%20Again.html

Zelda D'Aprano, Zelda Spinifex Press 1995

Kath Williams, The unions and the fight for equal paySpinifex 2001

http://www.anu.edu.au/polsci/marx/interventions/ - see articles by Diane Fieldes on Equal Pay. Second updated article in Rebel Women at this url.