Louise Nousratpour
Thursday March 12, 2009
The Morning Star
TUC WOMEN'S conference expressed solidarity with sisters around the world on Thursday.
And it urged global leaders to use this year's G20 summit in London to meet the Millennium Development Goals of ending poverty and inequality.
In a series of motions on the global recession, speakers challenged the assumption that the consequences of the crisis are gender neutral, when history shows that the most vulnerable groups are women, children and elder citizens.
They highlighted how women internationally still make up the majority of the poor, especially in the developing world where they also face high levels of maternal death and are forced to send their children to work.
Unite delegate Monika Taylor welcomed a recent study by the International TUC highlighting the gender aspect of the crisis.
"We need a support system for women and the most vulnerable in society to stop the downward spiral impact that the recession is having on them globally," she urged.
Conference was urged to join the demonstration in London on March 28 - before the April 2 G20 summit on the global financial crisis - to press world leaders to implement strategies that will help the downtrodden.
TSSA delegate Pauline McArdle called for a "properly financed action plan to meet the fifth millennium goal to cut global maternal deaths by 75 per cent."
More than 530,000 women die in pregnancy and childbirth each year because of a lack of medical care and sanitations, conference heard.
Prospect delegate Catherine Donaldson highlighted the horrific plight of Mayan child labour in Guatemala and urged the TUC to forge links with unions in that country.
"Four out of five Guatemalans live in poverty and three out of five in extreme poverty. Over 28 per cent of children between the ages of seven and 14 are compelled to work, an increase of over 300,000 in five years," she noted.
Supporting the motion, FDA delegate Sarah Guerra highlighted the millennium pledge of achieving universal primary education and ending child labour.
Another motion highlighted women's situation in Iraq and the violence they experience specifically because of their gender.
"There has been a 70 per cent increase in religious murders during the past year, with 47 recorded so-called honour killings," UCU delegate Veronica Killen told conference.
She urged the TUC to continue to support the Iraqi Women's League's campaign to end this "spiralling violence."
'We will be the biggest losers'
Louise Nousratpour
Thursday March 12, 2009
The Morning Star
BRITAIN is heading for a depression arguably worse than that experienced in the 1930s and working-class women are its biggest losers, speakers at a TUC women' conference meeting warned on Wednesday.
Charter for Women secretary Sharon Allen told the fringe meeting in Scarborough that there has never been a more pressing time for women to mobilise around demands for their rights as business-friendly ministers and bosses look to tear into equality laws to maximise profits.
The charter, launched in March 2003, sets out a list of demands including closing the gender pay gap, providing affordable childcare provisions, fighting racism and resisting the so-called feminisation of poverty.
"Support for the charter is going from strength to strength, with new unions and organisations affiliating to the campaign," Ms Allen beamed, urging delegates to make sure their unions are involved.
A recent TUC study found that women are losing full-time jobs at twice the rate of men, with employers using the recession to target single mothers, pregnant women and the disabled for redundancies.
Women are disproportionately suffering from the crisis because of the gender pay gap and because their unpaid caring responsibilities leave them stuck in low-paid and part-time jobs, where the pay gap is a staggering 40 per cent.
Ms Allen warned of a rise in violence against women as the recession bites and attacked the government for "clawing back funding from women's refuge centres and rendering them incapable of providing the support victims need."
TUC women's committee member Mary Davis warned that Britain was in a depression that could potentially be worse than that of the 1930s.
"Between 1929 and 1931, there was some restructuring of British industry as it moved into light industry which employed many women. But I don't think that opportunity exists now, as the manufacturing base has been destroyed," she argued.
"This is not a banking crisis alone, but a crisis of no industry. It is about an unfettered global market that zooms across the world and goes where rates of exploitation are at the highest.
"The financial deregulation, which began with the Tories and continued under new Labour, coincided with the destruction of our public sector as huge sways of services were privatised."
Ms Davis dismissed as "nonsense" the analysis offered by mainstream economic experts who use bourgeois terms to explain the capitalist crisis, arguing that to understand the nature of the crisis we must revisit Karl Marx's Das Kapital.
As the floor opened for discussion, delegates welcomed Ms Davis's Marxist analysis and made suggestions to improve the charter.
CWU delegate Tricia Clarke expressed disappointment at conference decision on Wednesday to reject a bold motion calling for support for the People's Charter that included demands for the nationalisation of the banking system and companies that threaten huge job cuts.
The motion fell on grounds that its demands were "unrealistic" and "too aspirational."
Ms Clarke said that the charter must emphasis the fight against privatisation.
NUJ delegate Lena Calvert said that the charter should also advocate international solidarity, especially with women in the developing world where the effects of the global crisis are more extreme.
"As more people fall into extreme poverty, reactionary traditions and religious fundamentalism will take roots, with devastating implication for women's rights," she warned.
Thursday March 12, 2009
The Morning Star
BRITAIN is heading for a depression arguably worse than that experienced in the 1930s and working-class women are its biggest losers, speakers at a TUC women' conference meeting warned on Wednesday.
Charter for Women secretary Sharon Allen told the fringe meeting in Scarborough that there has never been a more pressing time for women to mobilise around demands for their rights as business-friendly ministers and bosses look to tear into equality laws to maximise profits.
The charter, launched in March 2003, sets out a list of demands including closing the gender pay gap, providing affordable childcare provisions, fighting racism and resisting the so-called feminisation of poverty.
"Support for the charter is going from strength to strength, with new unions and organisations affiliating to the campaign," Ms Allen beamed, urging delegates to make sure their unions are involved.
A recent TUC study found that women are losing full-time jobs at twice the rate of men, with employers using the recession to target single mothers, pregnant women and the disabled for redundancies.
Women are disproportionately suffering from the crisis because of the gender pay gap and because their unpaid caring responsibilities leave them stuck in low-paid and part-time jobs, where the pay gap is a staggering 40 per cent.
Ms Allen warned of a rise in violence against women as the recession bites and attacked the government for "clawing back funding from women's refuge centres and rendering them incapable of providing the support victims need."
TUC women's committee member Mary Davis warned that Britain was in a depression that could potentially be worse than that of the 1930s.
"Between 1929 and 1931, there was some restructuring of British industry as it moved into light industry which employed many women. But I don't think that opportunity exists now, as the manufacturing base has been destroyed," she argued.
"This is not a banking crisis alone, but a crisis of no industry. It is about an unfettered global market that zooms across the world and goes where rates of exploitation are at the highest.
"The financial deregulation, which began with the Tories and continued under new Labour, coincided with the destruction of our public sector as huge sways of services were privatised."
Ms Davis dismissed as "nonsense" the analysis offered by mainstream economic experts who use bourgeois terms to explain the capitalist crisis, arguing that to understand the nature of the crisis we must revisit Karl Marx's Das Kapital.
As the floor opened for discussion, delegates welcomed Ms Davis's Marxist analysis and made suggestions to improve the charter.
CWU delegate Tricia Clarke expressed disappointment at conference decision on Wednesday to reject a bold motion calling for support for the People's Charter that included demands for the nationalisation of the banking system and companies that threaten huge job cuts.
The motion fell on grounds that its demands were "unrealistic" and "too aspirational."
Ms Clarke said that the charter must emphasis the fight against privatisation.
NUJ delegate Lena Calvert said that the charter should also advocate international solidarity, especially with women in the developing world where the effects of the global crisis are more extreme.
"As more people fall into extreme poverty, reactionary traditions and religious fundamentalism will take roots, with devastating implication for women's rights," she warned.
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.
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.
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