Lyn Marie O’Hara of UNISON City of Glasgow has won the TUC Organising Award for the work done by her and her sisters in the branch organising the Equal Pay strike. See the TUC video here.
8,500 Glasgow City workers, predominantly low paid women, took part in the Glasgow Women’s Strike on 23 and 24 October last year demanding equal pay – and won.
The victory followed 11 years of campaigning with 14 disputes.
The Court of Session in Edinburgh had ruled in the workers’ favour in December 2017 and the Council agreed to settle out of court. But talks stalled and dragged on with little progress and finally the members’ patience ran out.
Lyn Marie told the STUC Congress in April about the themed demonstrations, wearing moustaches or dressed as suffragettes, about the members’ meetings and the phonebanks to reach out to all members and make them feel valued.
“We were the invisible workers became the visible workers who shut down the Council”, she said.