Fair Play Or Fair Pay? Gender Relations, Class Consciousness, And Union Solidarity in the Canadian UE (United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers)‪.‬

UNION SOLIDARITY was a topic of heated debate at the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers' (UE) District Council meeting of June 1954, held in Peterborough, Ontario. One after another, the women delegates rose, in a carefully orchestrated display of gender solidarity, to demand that the union take immediate action on its long-standing promise to fight for equality in the workplace. The women who comprised almost a quarter of the UE's membership would not be mobilized, the women council members warned their fellow delegates, unless there was a significant improvement in the men's support for women's rights. "Women's rights is one of our biggest fights in the union today," Theresa Murray stated. Ivy Harris concurred: Our union has an obligation -- far greater today than ever before to ... [take] up the problems of women's right[s] ... and bring ... our women members closer to the union and ... into the fight on all fronts ... The struggle against injustice and inequality as they immediately affect women ... cannot be regarded as being for the special benefit of women but must be understood for what it is --a struggle to strengthen the position of the workers as a whole.