Sewing machinists’ strike at Ford was not about equal pay

Striking female machinists from the Ford plant in Dagenham attend a women’s conference on equal rights in industry, 1968.As I have noted previously (Letters, 14 February 2017), the Ford sewing machinists went on strike in May 1968 not over the issue of equal pay as a principle of “justice” but over the company’s refusal to upgrade them to the skilled grade C. Nor was Ford’s position one of political reaction per se, but rather a money-saving exercise – the com