Ford strike of 1968: From the sewing machine to parliament

Instead of going to work, on June 7, 1968, 187 workers got off the Ford factory in the London suburb of Dagenham and boarded a bus to Westminster, the London government district. “We want recognition for our skill” is written on one of the banners with which they line up, in wool coats and against the British wind with their sixties quiffs cemented in place by hairspray, determination on their faces.

Because these women of the so-called “Petticoat Revolt” were outraged: their employer, the car manufacturer Ford, had reformed the wage structure. The work of the women who made seat covers for the cars produced at the Dagenham site had been relegated to the unskilled category. This meant they earned 15 percent less than their equally qualified male colleagues, approved by the unions.

The seamstresses' protest set things in motion in British politics. Just two years later, in 1970, the Equal Pay Act was passed in Parliament. From then on, the law in Great Britain stipulated what should always have been self-evident: equal pay for men and women with the same qualifications.

First of all, the women were ridiculed. They only earned pocket money anyway, that's what they had to say. “We want sex” is also the German title of the film that brought the events of June 1968 to the screen and was shown in German cinemas in 2011. An incompletely unrolled poster with the inscription “We Want Sex Equality” caused offensive comments. “Men leaned out of their taxis and shouted: ‘We’ll be there at six,’” Eileen Pullen, one of the striking seamstresses, recalled to the Guardian some 45 years later.

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The cocky laughter would soon be over. Because no cars can be sold without seat covers. Production of the then very popular Ford Cortina and Anglia models came to a standstill; after a two-week strike, 9,000 workers were put on short-time work and the assembly lines were stopped.

Barbara Castle, then Labor minister, supported the Ford women in their industrial action. She managed to negotiate a compromise: a wage increase of at least 8 percent. It took another 16 years – and another strike – for their qualifications to be recognized.

Nevertheless, the seamstresses' strike of 1968 was a turning point for the feminist movement in Britain - and worldwide. After the USA, which passed its Equal Pay Act in 1963, the UK was the second country with such legislation.

Germany took until 1980 to pass the law on equal treatment in the workplace, and the federal government has not yet implemented the EU Pay Transparency Directive. The gender pay gap in Germany is currently 15.6 percent - putting the country in 22nd place out of 28 EU member states.