How Ford’s striking women drove the Equal Pay Act
On 7 June, 1968 after a pay regrade that saw sewing machinists classed as “unskilled labour”, 187 of those machinists – all women – decided to walk out. Why? Because they’d been unfairly graded as a ‘B’, when men doing a similar job elsewhere in the factory were given a higher grade of ‘C’ – skilled labour.
