Australian Letter Drive For Equal Pay For N.S.W. Women

Press, Volume C, Issue 29497, 26 April 1961, Page 13

Australian Letter Drive For Equal Pay For N.S.W. Women

(Special Correspondent N.Z.P.A.)

SYDNEY, April 23. More than 20,008 nurses in New South Wales will spearhead a drive for equal pay for women. The State Labour Council decided this week to ask the New South Wales Labour Government to grant equal pay to women. - The decision was made at ; an "equal pay seminar” at the Sydney Trades Hall < attended by men and women delegates from 100 unions. I The seminar agreed that 1 the State Government’s pre- 1 sent equal-pay legislation, 1 which did not grant equal 1 pay for all women, needed ‘ urgent amendment. The State Government last i year amended the Industrial 1 Arbitration Act to give equal ■ pay to women doing the same work as men. It provided that by 1965, : women doing the same work 1 as men would receive the * same pay. The women would have their wages increased this year from 75 per cent, of the ’ male basic rate to 80 per 1 cent. For eadh of the next ■ four years their wages would rise by another 5 per cent. 1 This legislation, which : affects mainly women schoolteachers and women employees in department stores with the same duties as men, is not satisfactory to the 1 State Labour Council. It wants equal pay for all women—and it wants it now. Officials of many New South Wales unions with large groups of women workers criticised the present law because women in professions, such as nursing, which is predominantly female work, are excluded. Some women who do work equal to men have awards and pay rates fixed by different authorities. Nurses are at present excluded from the provisions of the legislation. During the seminar on equal pay, women delegates attacked in very strong terms “odious and detestable” discrimination against working wives in Australia. One delegate, a single woman, trenchantly criticised discrimination against working wives in the Commonwealth Public Service and the Queensland Education Department. The woman, Miss B. Colville. president of the Women's Equal Pay Committee, said that she could not see why getting married should cause a woman to be discriminated against industrially. “But marriage is looked upon as something in the nature of stealing the petty cash, or hitting a foreman on the head," she said. Miss Collins pointed out that in Queensland a woman in the Public. Service could get married and go back to work in the same room on a lower wage. "When she marries she loses her automatic incremental increases, no matter how long she has been in a job." Miss Collins said. She said the only reason she could find for this was that a new file bad to be started because the woman had changed her name. * * • Import Restriction* Federal, Liberal and Country Party members are said to be alarmed at a highpressure campaign launched by the Victorian Chamber of Manufacturers to force the Commonwealth Government to impose import restrictions and ease credit clamps. The campaign opened with open Letters to all members

of the Federal Parliament, full-page advertisements in Melbourne newspapers, and radio and television advertising. Government members, particularly those in marginal seats, are worried at the intensity of the campaign—and its tone. The members have been told that the Victorian Chamber of Manufacturers is prepared to spend many thousands of pounds on its drive. ’ • Many were shocked when they read the letter from the chamber. It said (in part) that industry had consistently criticised the Government on its policy of credit restrictions as a means of limiting imports, claiming that widespread and substantial damage would occur in both industry and commerce. It said: “Our forecasts have, unfortunately, proved correct, and have come into evidence much sooner and on a much more damaging scale than anticipated. “Today, we have the spectacle of large commercial undertakings being forced to deeper deliveries, asking for a release from contracts, and genuinely unable to meet current financial commitments. “We speak with knowledge and authority when we say that concern in many quarters has developed into alarm. "Unless the Government moves immediately, a situation which was obviously never intended could develop to a state where substantial unemployment will extend far beyond the manufacturing industry, which to date has felt the greatest impact." The letter claimed that unemployment in Victorian factories had grown from 5.1 per cent, to 7.7 per cent, in the last four weeks, compared with the figures of November last. Political observers in Canberra say that it is thought that some Government members will ask the treasurer, Mr H. Holt, for reassurances that employment will not get out of hand. Several members are urging the Government to restore import restrictions. A pronounced fall in the demand for labour occurred in March, in continuance of the trend since October of last year. The Federal Government is accused of having “superimposed its measures of disinflation” on the seasonal decline that usually runs until January. Since then, instead of the normal recovery, unemployment has increased, and vacancies decreased considerably. This was especially so In March in New South Wales and Victoria. Government bodies added 12,400 people ; to their payrolls, while 15,600 were displaced from private employment between November and February. This net decline of 3200 in . civilian employment does not give the full measure of the displacement, because jobs have not been provided dur- . ing the period equivalent to , the newcomers to the Labour ’ market, which include boys and girls leaving school, and migrants coming to work In Australia. * * * Sensation Seeker* Sensation-seeking Sydney i housewives have rushed a ' second-hand shop in the : suburb of Dee Why, seeking : souvenirs of the convicted I murderer, Stephen Leslie Bradley. i The shop bought household i goods from Bradley before he

left Australia for Europe. Bradley was arrested in Ceylon and extradited to Australia to stand trial for the murder of the schoolboy, Graeme Thorne. He was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment, but has appealed against the conviction. The proprietors of the sec-ond-hand shop said people sought to buy any article that had belonged to Brade They had asked for sheets, pillow cases, and books with Bradley’s signature on the flyleaf. Most of the souvenir hunters were middle-aged housewives, said one proprietor, but they also Included older women, schoolgirls, and businessmen. # * ★ Publication Withheld For the flrst time under the new Coroner’s Act, Sydney newspapers were directed last week not to publish certain details of an inquest. The City Coroner (Mr C. S. Rodgers) ruled that names, addresses, and contents of exhibits dealing with the inquiry be withheld from publication. Mr Rodgers was inquiring into the death of a 18-year-old bank clerk who shot himself in the strongroom of a suburban bank. The dead boy’s father asked the Coroner to instruct the press not to report the inquest. ♦' # * Census By TV Television will be used extensively to impress on the public the importance of the coming New South Wales census and instruct them on how to All in the forms. An estimated 5400 census takers will deliver l}m forms to households during the week ending June 29, and collect them the following week.