austerity threatens to reverse progress of women in workplace and society

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Austerity 'threatens to reverse progress of women in workplace and society'

One the eve the 45th anniversary of the Dagenham sewing machinists' strike, the TUC general secretary Frances O'Grady says women still have plenty to fight for in the workplace



For Frances O'Grady, the first female general secretary of the TUC, the Dagenham sewing machinists deserve a "bloody big statue" outside the Houses of Parliament.
"I think it was massively important, in so many ways. They changed the law and they changed women's lives, and they did it not by using individual rights, or running a campaign. They took industrial action."
The film Made in Dagenham helped turn the strikers into national treasures with right on their side, but for O'Grady it is important to remember that the view at the time was very different.
"They were seen as militant wreckers who had got above their station and were bringing this country to its knees," she said.

Today, despite huge improvements in women's treatment in the workplace since 1968, she believes there is still plenty to fight for.
"There's still this roughly 15% pay gap on full-time hours," she said – and the gap is almost twice as wide in part-time roles, many of which are filled by women. "We still haven't finished the job."

Equality campaigners at the Fawcett Society last year dubbed 7 November equal pay day, arguing that because of the 14.9% pay gap, women were in effect working for nothing for the rest of the year.

The 1970 Equal Pay Act in theory secured parity for similar jobs, but O'Grady said a series of factors, including outsourcing, supply chains strung out across the globe and performance-related pay, which can often be opaque and hard to monitor, make it hard for women to make direct comparisons and assess whether they are being fairly treated.
The last Labour government introduced legislation to compel employers with more than 250 staff to carry out gender pay audits, but it was not enacted by the coalition, which was keen not to impose new costs on firms during tough economic times. Instead, it launched a voluntary scheme, called Think, Act, Report, which by November 2012, a year after its launch, had signed up just 54 of the 6,000 firms that employ more than 250 people.

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2013/jun/06/austerity-women-workplace-society

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