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18 April, 2011Peta Thomson and Stephanie Eastcott attended their first national union conference in February 2011 following a decision by the AWU's national executive to encourage women's participation.
Text / Rob Johnston
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As the world celebrated the 100th anniversary of International Women's Day on March 8, Peta Thomson and Stephanie Eastcott discuss the importance of unions taking steps to encourage greater women's participation in unions.
Peta Thomson and Stephanie Eastcott of the Australian Workers' Union are committed and passionate trade unionists. Although neither feels there are barriers to women becoming union representatives, both are the only women union representatives in their workplaces. Both work for Alcoa in Western Australia, Peta at the Wagerup Refinery and Stephanie at the Kwinana Refinery.
Peta, a single mum and blue collar shift worker for 16 years, has been a shop steward for over 10 years, and Stephanie, a delivery driver for 10 years, has been a shop steward for the last 12 months. They explained that their decision to become active in their union came about as a desire to be more involved in company decisions and also to raise issues with management on behalf of fellow workers.
Peta enjoys being a union representative and although she is the only female representative on a site of 700 workers she feels empowered to raise issues on behalf of her members. "In order to encourage more female representatives it's important to build confidence among women workers," she said. "One way to do this is by encouraging women's participation in meetings beyond local issues," she added. As a long standing representative she also feels that it's important not to have to conform to a male stereo-type of how she approaches her union work. Peta takes great pride in the fact that she is an elected representative in her own right saying, "it shows I'm good enough to do the job and shows confidence in me as an AWU representative."
Stephanie begins by describing how her mum once attended a job interview and was turned away because of her gender, which developed in Stephanie a strong sense of social justice. As a fairly new workplace representative she explains that it's important that women don't only deal with women's issues, but also contribute to the everyday work of the union. "Plenty of women are only represented by men, so it's important as women we feel confident to represent men," she said. Her most recent activities have included concluding an enterprise bargaining agreement. Her role as a delivery driver allows her to move round the site and this helped with the communication among the workforce.
Both Peta and Stephanie attended their first AWU National Conference in February 2011 following a decision by the union's national executive to encourage women's participation. The conference gave the women the opportunity to meet successful women leaders, such as the Australian Prime Minister, and to network with other women representatives in the union. Stephanie believes that exposure to female role models is an important way to build confidence and that it's important to hear about women's victories. Peta adds that the conference has given her confidence that if needed the union has got her back. For both Peta and Stephanie it was not easy to attend the conference as management took a long time before agreeing to their participation.
Alcoa has developed an internal women's network and although originally it was only open to management grades it now involves all workers. The network allows the Peta and Stephanie to use their combined voice to improve women's conditions. One benefit of being female union representative's means that the union now has a voice in the women's network but also that the broader union is aware of the discussions within the network.
In the future both Peta and Stephanie would like to continue to expand their knowledge and participation in the union movement and feel their union is open to this. They are interested in getting involved in issues outside Alcoa. Both feel they have limited knowledge of international work but with the opportunity to participate in the national conference they have confidence to find out more.