Women vow to fight gender pay inequality

Louise Nousratpour
Wednesday March 11, 2009
The Morning Star

WOMEN trade unionists attacked the government's continued failure to stamp out widening gender pay inequality on Wednesday, pressing the case for mandatory pay audits and collective representation.

Delegates at the 79th TUC women's conference in Scarborough dismissed the voluntary approach to equal pay audits in the private sector and parts of the public sector as "useless," pointing out that the gender pay gap had widened in the last year.

They were particularly scathing about the exemption of private firms that bid for public-sector contracts, especially when the public procurement is worth £160 billion a year.

"Where public money is being spent, it is right and proper that the companies benefiting from that money are, at the very least, required to meet the same high standards in equality as the public sector," UNISON delegate Sue Highton said, adding that the exemption of public-sector organisations such as Post Office Ltd and Royal Mail were "even more bizarre" and demanded that mandatory equal pay audits be extended to all sectors.

PCS delegate Pat Campbell said that, as they stand, the equal pay laws "just aren't working. We have the fourth largest gender pay gap in the EU. And in the civil service, the gap is above the UK average - up to 28 per cent in some areas."

She called for the right for unions to bring representative action, noting that employment tribunals are grinding to a halt as tens of thousands of individual women are fighting for equal pay through the courts.

There are 46,000 equal pay cases pending in Scotland and 130,000 in England, with each case taking anything between eight and 12 years to complete, conference heard.

"We want mandatory audits and equality laws that work. We don't want to spend our lives in court to negotiate equal pay," she added.

Delegates attacked Business Secretary Peter Mandelson's attempt to scrap measures in the Bill, including enhanced maternity leave and measures to ensure that government contracts were awarded to companies with good records, to protect bosses' interest in the current economic climate.

Diana Holland of Unite stressed that the Single Equality Bill should be strengthened, not watered down.

She said: "We need to be strong and fight against" the minister's attempt to gut the Bill.