The Media Archive for Central England is the public screen archive for the East and West Midlands. An independent charity and company based at the University of Lincoln, MACE acquires, catalogues, preserves and makes widely available moving image materials that inform our understanding of the diverse cultures and histories of communities between the Lincolnshire coast and the Welsh border.
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Female Bus Conductors
Walsall Corporation judge men to be more important at work.
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Overview
More than a decade before the Sex Discrimination Act and the Equal Opportunities Commission, Walsall Corporation Transport Department could make the sort of decision that would be illegal today. Councillor L. B. Parkes explains the ludicrous decision to prevent women from working on the buses to reporter Reg Harcourt. In the second section, where he tries to talk to some of the women involved, it appears that the powers that be are not at all happy.
If the women were expecting their local Transport and General Workers Union branch to stand up for them they were mistaken. Press reports at the time said that the TGWU went along with the ruling as it was "consistent with present day trends in the industry". Later in May 1963 the TGWU also refused to step in when the transport department in Walsall decided to further narrow their recruitment criteria by only offering jobs to white workers!
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