Union Women Setting Standards

On Sunday, March 1, TWU WA women working in transport gathered for the second TWU Women’s Network meeting of the year.

They came from depots, worksites and truck yards, all heavily male dominated. Women who make up just 24 per cent of the transport, postal and warehousing workforce in WA, yet carry an enormous share of its grit, resilience and pride.

The room was filled with stories. Some were powerful. Some were confronting. All of them mattered.

This meeting did not happen in isolation. It is part of a much bigger movement that began last year when Unions WA launched a pilot study into women working in male dominated industries, including transport.

Researchers spoke first with the TWU, then directly with women across the sector, gathering honest accounts about what it is really like to build a career in an industry not designed with you in mind.

From that research, draft model clauses were developed to feed into future enterprise agreements. The goal is clear. To start setting enforceable standards for how women are treated at work across the transport industry.

Not suggestions. Standards.

The study and Sunday’s meeting uncovered familiar issues. A lack of proper amenities and toilets for women on worksites and long freight routes. Limited access to flexible working arrangements. A failure to create genuinely safe and respectful workplaces.

For long-distance drivers, even something as basic as access to a toilet can become a daily battle. Members discussed practical solutions, including providing dry-flush portable toilets in vehicles so women can operate safely and with dignity.

Because access to basic human needs is not a luxury.

But the conversation went deeper.

Working in a male dominated industry still comes with barriers that should have been left behind decades ago. Some women reported being refused training opportunities or having male employees decline to work alongside them simply because they are women.

And then there are the issues that follow women home.

The meeting exposed a troubling lack of trauma-informed training for managers when women need to access domestic violence leave. According to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, one in six women has experienced physical or sexual violence by a current or former partner since the age of 15. Domestic violence has been recognised nationally as a crisis, with significant increases in women killed by their partners in recent years.

Yet too often, women in transport report that when they seek support, the seriousness of the issue is minimised or misunderstood. The stigma remains. The trust erodes.

Leave exists on paper, but without education and empathy from management, it can feel out of reach.

Members discussed appointing dedicated workplace female advocates at each site to ensure issues like domestic violence leave are handled respectfully and properly. Not as an inconvenience. Not as gossip, but as the serious workplace matter it is.

Despite the weight of these conversations, the meeting was not defined by hardship alone.

There was pride in the room.

One concrete truck driver spoke about the satisfaction of arriving on site and being trusted to get the job done right. Another member recalled a sales representative once saying, “Thank God it’s you. I know you’ll do it properly.”

“We take pride in our job,” one woman said. “When you’re appreciated, it goes a long way.”

Another shared how her father used to take her driving in his truck. One day he asked if she wanted to learn. “He trained me and I never looked back,” she said, beaming.

Women do not enter transport by accident. They choose it. They stay because they love the work. The responsibility. The challenge. The sense of achievement when a job is done well.

What they do not choose are the gendered barriers placed in front of them.

The TWU’s position is clear. Women in transport deserve the same level of support, incentives, opportunity and praise as their male counterparts. Not someday. Now.

The research sparked by Unions WA has the potential to reshape enterprise bargaining across the industry. The development of model clauses means issues like amenities, flexible work, respectful behaviour, trauma-informed management training and properly supported domestic violence leave can become enforceable standards in agreements, not afterthoughts.

And the Women’s Network meetings will continue to drive that change.