Striking Women: South Asian workers' struggles in the UK labour market - From Grunwick to Gate Gourmet

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In the summer of 1976, a group of South Asian women and men employed at the Grunwick photo-processing laboratories in London walked out in protest against poor working conditions, compulsory over-time and heavy-handed management. Their action escalated into a wider strike that focused on the right to join a trade union and was eventually defeated, but Grunwick is celebrated by the UK union movement as a victory for anti racism and anti discrimination. However, little is known about the lives and perspectives of the women either before or after their brush with trade unionism. And outside of the union movement, within the 'Asian' community, particularly among the young 'BrAsians' in our society (Sayyid 2006; Zavos 2006), this history of struggle and industrial militancy is largely unknown.In 2005, another group of South Asian women found themselves the centre of an industrial dispute at Heathrow airport. In the 1990s, British Airways outsourced the preparation of in-flight meals to Gate Gourmet, resulting in deterioration in the workers' terms and conditions. In August 2005 the management brought in agency workers to replace workers who had been on their tea break, at which the workforce left the production line and assembled in the canteen in the presence of union shop stewards. Management designated this as unofficial strike action and dismissed them. Unlike the case of the Grunwick workers this dispute has been largely ignored by the wider media, the trade union movement, and the women's movement.The original research project produced interesting accounts by the women involved of their lives, both before and after migration, of their work histories and struggles in pursuance of dignity and justice, some of which is being published in academic journal articles. The research findings challenge dominant constructions within media about South Asian women's passivity and domesticity, hence it is important that non-academic audiences are able to access accounts of these women's contributions to British labour politics. We have produced a website (www.strikingwomen/leeds.ac.uk) from the original project which captures the materials utilised in a six-month exhibition we mounted at the Women's Library (2009-10). The follow-on project aims to build on this by collaborating with South Asian women's groups to produce the following resources - a mobile exhibition, an interactive website for children, a learning resource for teachers, an illustrated book for children telling the story of the women involved and by participating in community events.This project will allow us to celebrate and conserve the voices of these women of South Asian origin who have contributed to our industrial and political life. It will also contribute to the majority community a better understanding of the ways in which these - and all women - have to balance their working and domestic life, themes that resonate today in discussions of work life balance and human rights. The Follow-on project will also respond to the study commissioned by the Mayor of London in 2005 that urged "fuller engagement of BME communities in museums by making heritage collections relevant, vibrant and accessible to BME communities, by countering the present incomplete picture of Britain's BME communities' histories and contributions to Britain's economic, intellectual, artistic and scientific histories." Providing access - both physically, and through the website, electronically - would make an important contribution to the construction of contemporary British national identity as a multi-cultural and multi-faith identity. There have been other initiatives which have sought to enhance minority, and specifically South Asian communities' access to their own cultural production (Holt 2002) but this has been limited to the cultural dimensions of diasporic identities. Our project would extend this into the political and industrial relations sphere.