Discrimination and harassment are a plague on the workplace, says Tracey Spicer.
When Tracey Spicer was at the height of her television newsreading career, she attended a workshop led by a Channel 10 executive on workplace policies, including on sexual harassment.
At the Channel 10 Christmas party that night, “he got up on stage and said to Angela Bishop ‘nice tits Ange’,” Tracey told an audience of nurses and midwives at the NSWNMA’s professional day.
Later that night, Tracey felt someone groping her bottom. When she turned around to slap the offender she realised it was the man who’d led the workshop earlier that day.
“I realised it was one of the big bosses and slowly lowered my hand.”
The executive was nicknamed “The Groper”, Tracey says, and that evening she contemplated whether to risk her job by raising it, or to “walk away”.
She ended up approaching her union delegate, Jason Thompson.
“I said, ‘You’re never going to believe what’s happened’, and Jason responded, ‘I know, it’s bloody dreadful; let’s do something about it’. So we joined together to try to change the culture at Channel 10.”
Tracey had already experienced the power of unions when, as a young journalist, she went to work in Traralgon in the 1990s, and covered news about a “plague of white asbestos at the power station”.
Tracey recalls interviewing “a guy called Dave, who said when he was a kid he used to go and sit on his father’s knee as he worked on the lathe. Dave’s dad died of mesothelioma, and then Dave died a couple of years later of asbestosis.”
Tracey worked in conjunction with the unions in the area to make a documentary that helped the workers to agitate for a payout, which they got some years later.
Fight the good fight!
Back at Channel 10, Tracey and Jason not only fought against sexism at Channel 10, they fell in love and married. Then, after 14 years with the network, Tracey’s contract was terminated weeks after she returned from maternity leave after the birth of her second child, Grace. Jason again backed her when she sued for unfair dismissal.
Previously the station had tried to sideline her after the birth of her first child, Taj. Six months into the pregnancy she was diagnosed with the life-threatening condition placenta previa, and doctors ordered her to stay on her back for the last three months of pregnancy.
Thanks to the “incredible midwives and nurses at the North Shore Hospital”, Taj survived despite being born at 36 weeks, but he was tiny and suffered two life-threatening lung complications.
While Taj was fighting for his life, her producer called offering her a “lower paid, lower profile role”. Tracey, who describes herself as a “bogan from Brisbane”, met with her bosses and said, “What you are suggesting is illegal and immoral and I will take you to court”. With the help of the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance she was “invited back to my old job, while he was sidelined”, Tracey said.
She learned the lesson that it’s “always worth fighting the good fight”.
It is never easy, though, she warned. “We know in one of two cases you will get a black mark against your name.”
Tracey was asked to return to work early after Gracie was born too, but she later realised it was a ruse to create a “technical separation from the maternity leave”.
Sacked for being a mum
Tracey was famously sacked when she returned after Gracie’s birth. Rather than “sign a press release saying I’d chosen to leave for family reasons”, Tracey decided to speak out about an industry notorious for judging women on their age and appearance and for discriminating against mothers.
“I have had hundreds upon hundreds of emails from people saying ‘this had happened to my wife, my aunt, my daughter, my mother’. It is a plague on workplaces, and I take my hat off to anyone who takes action because it is incredibly difficult.”
Sky News soon contacted Tracey and offered her family-friendly shifts, but she didn’t stop agitating for equality.
“I was putting on make-up and my daughter said, ‘Why do women wear make-up and men don’t?’ I said there is a long history of women being judged on their appearances and not what is in their hearts.”
In a recent TedX talk that has had more than 5 million views, Tracey, who has been told to lose weight and “stick out her tits” at work, stripped away her newsreader’s clothes, wiped off her make-up and took off her high heels. “Women spend a third of their income on their appearance in customer-facing professions,” she said. “That is an industrial issue for me.”
More recently, Tracey has become the figurehead of the Australian arm of the #MeToo movement, initially helping expose men such as Don Burke, host of Burke’s Backyard.
“We are in a tremendous time of change at the moment,” she said. “We will look back on this period and it will be equivalent to the civil rights movement of the 1960s.”
To date, Tracey has received 2000 disclosures from women of sexual harassment and abuse at work, but Australia’s defamation laws prevent the vast majority of them from becoming public.
She has founded the organisation NOW, a non-profit that connects people with legal and counselling help. While the focus of the #MeToo movement has been on famous and wealthy women, Tracey grew up in a poor working-class family and says she is particularly concerned about the most powerless workers, such as cleaners and hospitality workers.
“Unions are doing incredible work in this area. Unions are an incredible port of call for anyone experiencing discrimination and harassment. In fact, they are the best.”
Her final message was for women to keep speaking out. “How bloody good does it feel when you do it? It really is very cathartic.”
WATCH
Tracey Spicer on TEDx Talks:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PENkzh0tWJs
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