Outworkers: the Forgotten Workforce
The following piece from the \/Vorking Women's Centre in Melbourne, Australia, was written specially for ISIS in November 1979. Broadly defined, an outworker {sometimes called homeworker) is a person who is employed directly by a firm or intermediary agent or firm to carry out work in his or her own home. They are frequently migrant women. Further information and documentation concerning outworking is included in the Resource section of this Bulletin.
The Working Women's Centre carries out a number of services for women, including migrant women, and for this reason we include an explanatory piece about the Centre at the end of the article.
Exploitation among outworkers and homeworkers - known as 'sweating' - was a vicious scourge in the latter half of the last century. Many women with invalid husbands or ailing relatives were forced to take low-paid piece-work to support their families. They worked up to sixteen hours a day and often children worked alongside their mothers to earn a few more pence.The women had to wait in long queues to collect payment and more work - if the work was available.
According to recent media and other reports in Australia, it would appear that, apart from the employment of children, little has changed since the last century.
One of the major problems is the lack of information as to how many outworkers there are and where they are located. However certain assumptions can be made as to who they are - the overwhelming majority are migrant women (particularly Greeks, Turks, Italians) with young children, the disabled and the handicapped. They tend to be concentrated in certain industries such as clothing and textiles or in certain jobs such as packing and envelope addressing which are low-paid even in factories or offices.
"She is Turkish, 57 years old and has five children. She works in a garage at the back of her Melbourne home, she is paid $2.70 an item for making up women's evening gowns. If she had the time to get away from her one-woman factory where she works from 6am. to 8.30pm. sewing pre-cut material, she would see the same dress selling in a city shop for at least $100".
(Centre for Urban Research and Action Report, 1978)
Although faced with poverty-line wages, insecurity and the lack of any government or trade union protection, women outworkers have little option. Because of inadequate community-based childcare centres, lack of community support facilities and society's attitude that "women's place is in the home raising children", mothers with young children have the choice of earning nothing, farming out their children to unregistered, ill-equipped child-minders at approximately $25 per week in order to take a full time job, or of doing work at home.
Migrant women are faced with the added hurdles of language and cultural constraints which make full time work difficult in factories and impossible in offices. Child care centres are seldom adapted to migrants' needs; nor do they employ multi-lingual workers. For many migrant women the only practical choice is to stay at home. In many cases cultural expectations effectively prevent them from seeking work outside the home anyway.
Homework solves their childcare problems and provides flexible working hours. However, they must work very long hours because they are poorly paid and denied all conditions and benefits regarded as standard by other workers. Factory bosses - and sometimes their own husbands - urge them to work harder. Because they are not unionised they cannot complain for fear of losing their jobs. One woman gave up factory work because of the long hours but it was later calculated that she was working 68 hours a week as an outworker for a net amount of $130 a week.
The use of outworkers has enormous advantages to employers: they avoid costs related to capital, machinery and running costs, power and cleaning, insurance, payroll tax, superannuation, holiday and sick pay, administrative paperwork and strict observance of awards.
Employers also use the outwork scheme to pit migrant workers against each other. A Greek woman was told she had to produce more than her eight or nine garments a day because her employers knew an Italian woman who could sew 50 garments a day. Many of the women use their husbands and children to help with packing, delivering and collecting work from the factory and with the less skilled work such as turning collars and cuffs.
Recent reports conclude that, while many of the women are aware of some of the injustices done to them, the pressing need for income prevents them from risking their jobs by complaining. Because of their relative invisibility in the workforce, their isolation and inability to change their situation, the extent of their oppression has not been recognised.
Reports concluded that the use of outworkers threatens the viability of law-abiding factories who employ unionists, pay award wages and observe the requirements of the Shop and Factories Act.
The existing regulations are meaningless since none of the regulatory bodies pays more than lip-service to ensuring that they are applied and the majority of outworkers are not aware of their existence nor the avenues of redress available to them. So, although unregistered outworkers are illegal, most are not even aware of the necessity to register. Those who do ask employers about registration, rates of pay and other conditions, risk losing their jobs. So they rarely complain.
Working Women's Centre,
Majorca Building, 1st Floor,
258 Flinders Lane,
Melbourne 3000, Victoria,
Australia.
What is the Working Women's Centre? It's a place where women can get infamation about their rights as workers and how to achieve those rights. It was opened in September 1975 as an initiative, backed by the Australian Council of Salaried and Professional Associations (ACSPA), for International Women's Year.
Services
The WWC is open to all women seeking information and support concerning work — related problems, whether they be union members or not, recognizing that assistance
should be provided to women seeking to enter or re-enter the workforce.
should be provided to women seeking to enter or re-enter the workforce.
The resources of the WWC are also available to all unions, whether they be affiliated to ACSPA or not. The Centre sends monthly reports and discussion papers on issues of particular concern to women in the workforce to all federal and Victorian unions and invites comments and enquiries from all who are interested in solving those "overwhelming problems facing women in the workforce".
The Co-ordinators of the Centre provide articles for a number of union journals and resource material for union officials writing their own articles.
Migrants
The WWC established a multi-lingual newspaper, "Women at Work", which is distributed through unions to workers on the job. The paper contains information about unions, occupational health, child care and other matters which particularly concern women who work outside their homes.
Information
Since it opened the Centre has received thousands of telephone and personal calls from women and men seeking information, help and advice on a wide range of problems. The most prevalent relate to discrimination in pay, superannuation, promotion etc., reclassification resulting from"equal" pay, training and retraining, child care, workers' compensation, health, safety, exploitative piecework conditions (particularly among migrant women) and, of course, inquiries for employment.
A steady stream of students visits the Centre seeking information for assignments on women's studies, women in the workforce etc. The Co-ordinators of the Centre receive
more invitations than they can cope with to speak at seminars, conferences, schools, technical colleges, union meetings and on radio and T V .
more invitations than they can cope with to speak at seminars, conferences, schools, technical colleges, union meetings and on radio and T V .
Schools
The Co-ordinators have organized a roster of women to share the load of speaking to students about the realities of work, the role of unions and the need for girls to seek a wider range of employment opportunities. They have assisted the three Victorian teacher unions to prepare a "women at work" kit for schools which aims at eliminating sex role stereotypes and provides information about jobs and unions.
Apart from funding for special projects, the Centre depended for nearly three years almost entirely on donations from some70 unions and ACSPA. In March 1979 the Federal Government promised a grant of $25,000 per year for three years.