West Yorkshire Homeworking Group

The West Yorkshire Homeworking Group was founded in response to the growing number of workers in the region who were precariously employed by businesses and corporations to manufacture products in their home, such as sewing garments or assembling circuit boards. These workers, who were mostly migrant women, were informal employees and therefore not protected by the law. For example, in 1973 the Commission on Industrial Relations conducted the first research on homeworkers and found that some homeworkers earned £8.20 after working a forty-hour week. Moreover, in 1974 the Low Pay Unit published a pamphlet titled ‘Sweated Labour’, which revealed that most women had no choice but to become homeworkers. This was because they had to manage caring responsibilities with the financial needs of their households. Alongside low pay and long working hours, homeworkers were not entitled to sick or holiday pay and were often subject to dangerous working conditions.

The West Yorkshire Homeworking Group was founded to lobby for the legal protection of homeworkers, as well as to support homeworkers in the community. Whilst the West Yorkshire Homeworking Group was one of the bigger organizations campaigning for homeworkers’ rights, there was a significant number of smaller localized organizations across the UK, some of which were funded by local councils.  This type of activity began with the Leicester Outwork group, which was established in the early 1970s in response to the maltreatment of homeworkers in Leicester’s hosiery industry. The Leicester Outwork group pioneered the distribution of fact packs in multiple languages – including Urdu and Hindi – among homeworkers, which covered topics such as how to use their machines safely and the legality of their employment. The West Yorkshire Homeworking Group adopted this model to educate homeworkers in West Yorkshire about their entitlements, since migrant women often hid their work in the belief that they were employed illegally and therefore could be deported.

The West Yorkshire Homeworking Group adopted several strategies to build relations with the region’s large South Asian population, given that significant numbers of South Asian women were employed as homeworkers in the textile industry. Jane Tate, the director of the West Yorkshire Homeworking Group, believed that socialist activism was necessary to meet the needs of homeworkers. Therefore, she employed former homeworkers since their experiences could help refine their campaign activities.

Over time, South Asian women became more actively involved in homeworking organizations and activism. For example, in 1988 the West Yorkshire Homeworking Group organized a two-day conference at a local Pakistani centre in Bradford, where one hundred South Asian women were in attendance. A local Bradford councillor said that the conference had boosted the confidence of homeworkers, who were more likely to negotiate for better pay. Over time, South Asian women became activists within campaign groups, which were often dominated by white, middle-class feminists. They helped shape policies that were targeted to South Asian homeworkers, such as funding English-language education and advocating for workshops and schemes to improve their formal employment prospects.

They also became employed as homeworking officers for local councils, to network with homeworkers in the community and meet their needs using council funding. Examples include Vera Hyare, who worked for Coventry Council and notably supported the sociologists Annie Phizacklea and Carol Wolkowitz to find participants for their survey on homeworkers in Coventry.