AROUND 40 women and men picketed BT's London headquarters in Newgate Street, EC1, last week to protest in the latest protest against the 'dial a pornographic phonecall service.
London North Central Internal NCU • Support for the regular pickets IS growing BT's own employees. Last week's picket included several branches of the BT unions.
The "service, which costs per minute, allows pitiable men to fantasise that the tape recording they hear is a real woman talking only to them. The connection between the Petline and the encouragement obscene phone calls to real women probably • hasn't escaped BT management, but they also make profit by charging women f20 a week to intercept obscene phone calls.
Union members fight outlaw this pornography has nothing to do with the campaigns against Petline which national newspapers such as the Mail and the Mirror have run. In these papers, moralism sits side-by-side with their own, page-three variety of pornography. The campaign based on uniting the whole membership to combatting all forms discrimination and sexual disadvantage.
The Petline pickets. first taken up by Women against Violence Against Women, also being organised within BT by th NČU' women's support Women Telecom. cross-union organisation of women BI employees. should Letters of protests etc be copied to the NCU Advisory Greystoke House, Brunswick Road, London W5. Details about future pickets are available from Women In Telecoms, Room, Newgat Street, London ECIA 7A. the NUR adopted the same charter. and subsequently has agreed to look at structures similar to women's advisory committees in the The British Rail Board themselves have been criticised TOI discrimination within the WOrKIOIC by the Equal Opportunities CommisBR, through SOR LUll sultation with women in the workforce has now issued guidelines to for imhallac cal plementing their equal opportunities policy.
whole range of issues are being discussed, and we have to ensure that the rail unions put forward policy proposals.
Policy statements alone won't change things But for the women in the industry, gives us something to work for