LABOR On the line at Eaton’s: changing history By ANGELA KENYON If for years Eaton’s management had ignored the International Women’s Day march that made its way past the com- pany’s Pacific Centre store in Vancouver, it couldn’t have the same indifference in 1985. As more than 1,000 people stopped outside the store for a rally during this year’s Inter- national Women’s Day event, two women who had been leading the parade took the platform to urge shoppers to boycott the retail chain. They were Eaton’s strikers Linda McFawn and Claudia Giovannetti. And hundreds cheered as McFawn took Eaton’s account cards handed up to her through the crowd — and ceremonially cut them in half. It was the same story at International Women’s Day celebrations in cities all across the country as the women’s move- ment came out in strong support of the Eaton’s boycott campaign launched by the Canadian Labor Congress in December 1984 on behalf of the 1,500 Eaton’s workers, members of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, on strike for a first contract. Some 80 per cent of the strikers are women and from the day the strike began Nov. 30, both the union and the strike have been focused on issues which highlight the discrimination and exploitation women face in the work force. And those issues add up quickly: seniority rights — Eaton’s has insisted that hiring and firing decisions be based on “appearance and customer profile” — low wages, poor benefits, abuse of part-time workers, poor pensions. Women now make up 40 per cent of the labor force in Canada but seven out of ten working women are still unorganized. Faced with job insecurity, inadequate pay and benefits, and frequently intolerable working conditions, increasing numbers of women are turning to union organizations to win dignity in the work place. Women now make up 40 per cent of the labor force in Canada but seven out of 10 working women are still unorganized. Faced with job insecurity, inadequate pay and benefits, and frequently intolerable working conditions, increasing numbers of women are turning to union organizations to win dignity in the work place. What began as a fight for basic union rights among largely unorganized retail workers has also become a fight for women’s equality in the workplace. The women’s movement has joined the organ- ized labor movement in putting its weight behind the strikers to ensure a victory in this historic battle. But it wasn’t that way in 1934 when 38 women working for Eaton’s in Toronto formed a local of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union to begin the struggle to organize the retail giant. The day after they made their first demand for better piece work rates on the dresses they made Eaton’s locked them out and that was the end of the local. And in 1948 when the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union launched an intensive campaign to organize the 10,000 Eaton’s employees in Toronto, the role of women in the campaign was a vastly differ- ent one. The myth of women as secondary income earners and therefore secondary members of the labor force was more pre- valent then both in the trade union move- ment and in women’s view of themselves as workers. 24 e PACIFIC TRIBUNE, MAY 1, 1985 (f SUPPORT FOR EATON’S STRIKERS. . .(top photo) support rally in Toronto; gigs? WORKERS poYcOoTT a, (bottom) Toronto striker Linda McFawn (I) cuts Eaton’s charge cards handed her by B.C. Federation of Labor vice-president Anne Harvey, at International Women’s Day march in Vancouver in early March. Despite the fact that a woman, Eileen Tallman Sufrin, headed up the organizing campaign and some women workers did play leading roles in the local, the vast majority of the women at Eaton’s, working for the most part as sales or office clerks, were not attracted to the union. They were aware that they were treated as second-class employees by the company which gave more pay and promotional opportunities to men but few viewed the union as the answer. The discrimination against women at Eaton’s has not changed over the last 36 years. The highest paid management and sales positions are still almost exclusively male. “Very few women make it even to section head,” said McFawn, a part-time employee at Eaton’s Shopper’s World store in Toronto. Some things have changed over the last three decades. The quick sign-up of Eaton’s workers at the six Ontario stores signalled that more people see union organization as a solution. McFawn herself was part of that sign-up drive and is now active in the strike to improve the conditions of work. “It’s not very nice knowing that you'll only get pro- moted if the manager likes you. It’s a key issue — a union contract will change this kind of thing,” she said. In her book The Eaton Drive, Eileen Sufrin noted another problem that dogged the organizers in 1948 — the lack of inter- est among part-time workers. “Less dependent on their earnings, they were more apathetic about doing anything to improve them. We had to rely on full-time members to approach the part-timers to join the union, and they, in turn, often regarded the part-time staff as too transient to bother with,” she wrote. McFawn’s understanding of the increased exploitation of part-time workers represents the change since the earlier attempt to organize Eaton’s. “The company would rather have me working at lower pay than my sisters who make full-time wages. I know that I’m depriving my sisters every time I go in and work those extra hours,” she said. Recently the Canadian Council of Catholic Bishops issued a statement con- demning Canada’s retail giants, with par- ticular attention to the T. Eaton Company, for their abuse of part-time workers and called on Canadians to support the Eaton’s strikers by participating in the boycott campaign. The organizing campaign that began in 1948 lasted four years and Eaton’s used every tactic available to delay the certifica- tion vote. When the vote finally did take place, in December 1951, the union lost bya narrow margin. Eaton’s is again attempting the same tac- tic in delaying the negotiations and stone- walling on demands in an effort to wait — or starve — the union out. That makes support all the more critical. “Our lines are strong,” said McFawn, crediting women’s rights activists in Toronto for their daily attendance on picket lines. “We're getting a lot of support from women’s groups all across the country. We’ve received copies of resolutions from organizations where they state support ol the boycott and in many cities there a committees established solely to promote the boycott campaign,” she said. “It’s great to know that we’re not alone We know that we’re fighting for the ri that women have been fighting for for # hundred years.” Unorganized workers across the count) the majority of whom are women, watching the outcome of the Eaton’s st! closely knowing that their rights to orga? are also on the line. “If Canada’s 180,000 department stot employees are to be assisted in organizing: cannot be accomplished by ad hoc cam paigns here and there. It will require the efforts of the Canadian Labor Con and its affiliates to mount careful planned, adequately funded, well-co-OF inated organizational drives,” Sufrin wrote in the epilogue to her book. “Will uniot leaders have the vision and the initiative © meet the challenge?” With the country-wide strike support and boycott campaign, the CLC has shown thi it does have the vision and initiative. But | actions of women in initiating the ee drive — and the women’s movement I". which has taken up the Eaton’s campaig?. its own — were vital in creating that 1P tive. ih Their continuing support, together W that of the labor movement across the coUy try, will also be vital to ensure that this un" Eaton’s workers get the trade union CO! tract they’ve been denied for over half ® century.