Symposium: Women and Industrial Relations: Introduction: Women and Industrial Relations: A Neglected Area of Research

Abstract

In October 1982, after I had agreed to edit this symposium, I wrote to 22 women I knew to be either active or interested in the industrial relations system in New Zealand, asking them to consider submitting an article. Notice of the symposium also appeared in the December 1982 issue of the journal. Eighteen months later we print 3 of the 6 articles submitted for the symposium. Helen Cook adopts a Marxist perspective on the development of political consciousness among childcare workers and the establishment of the Early Childhood Workers Union. Cathy Wylie's article is an anthropologist's view of shop floor industrial relations at the Gear freezing works, Petone, in 1975 when women had begun to take on jobs which had hitherto been male preserves. Gerard Griffin and John Benson take a statistical look at the attitudes of women insurance workers in the Australian Insurance Employees Union.