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

1976年夏天，一群受雇于伦敦Grunwick照片处理实验室的南亚男女举行了罢工，抗议恶劣的工作条件、强制性的超时工作和高压的管理。他们的行动升级为一场更广泛的罢工，集中在加入工会的权利上，最终被击败，但格伦威克被英国工会运动庆祝为反种族主义和反歧视的胜利。然而，人们对这些女性在与工会擦肩而过之前或之后的生活和观点知之甚少。在工会运动之外，在‘亚裔’社区内，特别是在我们社会中的年轻‘亚裔’群体中(Sayyid 2006；Zavos 2006)，这段斗争和工业好战的历史基本上是不为人知的。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。20世纪90年代，英国航空公司将机上餐饮的准备工作外包给Gate Gourmet，导致工人的条款和条件恶化。2005年8月，管理层请来了代理公司的工人，以取代在茶歇时间工作的工人，在茶歇期间，工人们离开生产线，在工会车间管理人员的在场情况下，在食堂集合。管理层认为这是非官方的罢工行动，并将其解雇。与格伦威克工人的案件不同，这起纠纷在很大程度上被更广泛的媒体、工会运动和妇女运动忽视了。最初的研究项目由参与其中的女性对她们移民前后的生活、她们的工作历史以及为追求尊严和正义而进行的斗争进行了有趣的描述，其中一些正在发表在学术期刊文章上。研究结果挑战了媒体中关于南亚女性被动和家庭生活的主导结构，因此，重要的是，非学术受众能够了解这些女性对英国工党政治的贡献。我们从最初的项目创建了一个网站(www.strikingWomen/leeds.ac.uk)，其中捕捉了我们在妇女图书馆举办的为期六个月的展览(2009-10)中使用的材料。后续项目旨在通过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、儿童图画书，讲述有关妇女的故事，并参与社区活动。这个项目将使我们能够庆祝和保存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人--以及所有妇女--必须如何平衡她们的工作和家庭生活，这些主题在今天关于工作、生活平衡和人权的讨论中引起共鸣。这个后续项目还将响应伦敦市长2005年委托进行的一项研究，该研究敦促“BME社区更充分地参与博物馆活动，使遗产收藏与BME社区相关、充满活力，并为BME社区提供便利，抵消目前英国BME社区历史的不完整图景，以及对英国经济、智力、艺术和科学史的贡献。”提供访问--无论是实体访问还是通过网站的电子访问--将对构建当代英国国家身份作为一种多文化和多信仰的身份做出重要贡献。还有其他一些旨在加强少数群体，特别是南亚社区获得自己的文化产品的倡议(Holt，2002年)，但这仅限于侨民身份的文化层面。我们的项目将把这一点扩展到政治和劳资关系领域。

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.