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

1976年夏天，一群在伦敦格伦威克（Grunwick）照片处理实验室工作的南亚男女罢工，抗议恶劣的工作条件、强制加班和严厉的管理。他们的行动升级为一场更广泛的罢工，重点是加入工会的权利，最终被击败，但格伦威克被英国工会运动视为反种族主义和反歧视的胜利。然而，人们对这些妇女在加入工会之前或之后的生活和观点知之甚少。在工会运动之外，在“亚洲人”社区内，特别是在我们社会中年轻的“亚洲人”中（Sayyid 2006; Zavos 2006），这段斗争和工业斗争的历史在很大程度上是未知的。2005年，另一群南亚妇女发现自己成为希思罗机场劳资纠纷的中心。在20世纪90年代，英国航空公司将飞机餐的准备工作外包给Gate Gourmet，导致工人的条件恶化。2005年8月，管理层引进了代理工人来代替正在喝茶休息的工人。在茶歇期间，工人们离开生产线，在工会车间代表在场的情况下在食堂集合。资方认为这是非正式的罢工，并解雇了他们。与格伦威克工人的情况不同，这场争议在很大程度上被更广泛的媒体、工会运动和妇女运动所忽视。最初的研究项目提供了有关妇女关于她们移徙前后的生活、她们的工作经历和争取尊严和正义的斗争的有趣叙述，其中一些已在学术期刊文章中发表。研究结果挑战了媒体中关于南亚妇女的被动性和家庭生活的主导结构，因此，非学术观众能够了解这些妇女对英国劳工政治的贡献是很重要的。我们根据最初的项目制作了一个网站（www.strikingwomen/leeds.ac.uk），其中包含了我们在妇女图书馆（2009-10）举办的为期六个月的展览中使用的材料。后续项目旨在以此为基础，与南亚妇女团体合作，制作以下资源：流动展览、儿童互动网站、教师学习资源、儿童绘本，讲述妇女的故事，以及参与社区活动。这个项目将使我们能够庆祝和保护这些南亚裔妇女的声音，她们为我们的工业和政治生活做出了贡献。它还将有助于大多数社区更好地了解这些妇女- -以及所有妇女- -必须平衡其工作和家庭生活的方式，这些主题在今天关于工作与生活平衡和人权的讨论中引起共鸣。后续项目还将响应2005年伦敦市长委托进行的一项研究，该研究敦促“通过使遗产收藏与BME社区相关、充满活力和可访问性，通过对抗目前英国BME社区历史和对英国经济、知识、艺术和科学历史的贡献的不完整图景，使BME社区更充分地参与博物馆。”提供访问——无论是实体的，还是通过网站的，电子的——将对构建当代英国作为一个多元文化和多元信仰的国家身份做出重要贡献。也有其他的倡议，试图加强少数民族，特别是南亚社区获得自己的文化产品（Holt 2002），但这仅限于流散身份的文化维度。我们的项目将把它扩展到政治和工业关系领域。

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.