What is the Anna Stewart Memorial Project (ASMP)?
The aim of the Anna Stewart Memorial Project is to increase women's involvement in the union movement through training. The project has been in existence since 1984. During the two week project women trade union members from diverse workplaces and occupations are placed with their own, and sometimes with another union. They experience the full range of union work, including mass meetings, enterprise bargaining negotiations and hearings in the Industrial relations Commission.
Who are the participants?
Meegan Maguire is an English, Geography, SOSE, Drama, Tourism and ICT teacher at Coolum State High School. Meegan's 14 years of QTU activism includes branch president, Central Queensland and Sunshine Coast Area Councils, State Council, WTGEC and PD committees and Executive. She is looking forward to exploring the internal structures, roles and responsibilities of the QTU through a hands on approach and comparing with the experiences CFMEU Construction can provide in terms of workplaces, issues, activism and advocacy.
Who was Anna Stewart?
Anna Stewart, a former journalist and active Victorian union official from 1974 to 1983, died tragically in 1983, aged 35. Her involvement with the union movement began at a time when women workers comprised one-third of the paid workforce, but the few industries in which women were employed, offered jobs that were poorly paid, lacked job security and skills recognition.
A prime consideration motivating Anna was the need to develop strategies to address the issues confronting working women and to highlight the important contribution that women make to the trade union movement. With the Federated Furnishing Trades Society of Australia, Anna Stewart successfully spear-headed the first blue collar union campaign for maternity leave award provisions. At the time Anna was in the late stages of pregnancy with her third child.
After moving to the Victorian Vehicle Builders Federation in 1975, Anna fought for childcare facilities in car plants, researched and argued work value cases, initiated campaigns against sexual harassment causing employers to recognise sexual harassment as an industrial issue, and assisted with the ACTU Maternity Leave Test Case.Anna was a foundation member of the ACTU Women's Committee, established in 1977, and worked tirelessly on programs to be incorporated into the Working Women's Charter. Anna emphasised the key demand made by the ACTU Working Women's Charter for increased involvement of women within the structures of the union movement. As Senior Federal Industrial Officer with the Municipal Officers Association, Anna initiated women's committees in most state branches of the union and developed strong policies in relation to women workers.
After her death, the MOA adopted the Affirmative Action Policy that Anna developed. The influence of Anna's work is difficult to measure. Many women gained strength and confidence from her example of combining motherhood and a career. During Commission hearings Anna Stewart would either breast feed her young son or seek adjournments to do so, exposing the Commission, employers and the union to the needs of women workers. In addition, Anna secured many conditions for the members she represented and indirectly for all working women, by setting these precedents. Women unionists are fortunate to have Anna's example to assist and support them in the struggles that continue today.
