defend women at work The Tories' attempts to restructure the workforce and cut labour costs are hitting women hardest. JANET KNIGHT explains why any effective response from the unions would challenge both the 'new realism' of their bureaucracies and the male
monopoly of top union
positions.
WHEN THE Thatcher government was
elected in 1979, many on the labour
left believed that one of its main aims
would be to drastically reduce the
number of women at work in order to
force the burden of the social crisis on
to individual women and thus save
state expenditure on social welfare.
The Tories, however, had other
ideas.
In fact there has been a growth in the
number of women at work. In 1986
women made up 45 per cent of the
workforce (compared with 41 per cent
in 1981) and nearly half of them were
part-time. This growth in part-time work is largely due to the expansion of the service sector where management aims to have a fairly small group of well-trained and multi-skilled fulltime staff backed up by temporary and short-time workers plus part-timers. For example, many supermarkets now use part-time workers to cover lunchtimes. late night shopping, Saturday shifts and shelf-stacking in the evenings.
Employers particularly like this typ: of labour because if their staff are paid: less then £35.49 per week companie:
Cheri tonal No 9 March/April 19a-
do not need to pay their national insurance and statutory sick pay. Employees also lose entitlement to unemployment benefit, maternity allowance, death grant, state retirement pension and so forth. Those who work less than eight hours a week have no legal employment rights. Workers on less than a 16-hour week must stay with the same employer for five years to obtain the same legal rights as full-timers. This rarely happens in any case as part-time workers do not often stay in that type of work long enough to fulfil that condition. International No 9 March/April 1987
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It is in the service area women make up over 90 per cent of the part-time workforce. Thus they represent an overwhelming majority of the low paid who are forced to work unsocial hours while at the same time having the barest minimum of rights and social benefits. Right across industry the progress of women has proceeded at a slow pace. Despite the introduction of the Equal Pay Act in 1975, women's hourly earning are still only 69 per cent of men's and when compared on a weekly basis they drop to 61 per cent.
Women are essentially concentrated in the low-paying industries or sectors. The National Health Service which is notorious for its low pay policy, 28 per cent less than their male counterparts.
The outcome of Thatcherism, therefore, has been a deepening of labour costs and an undermining of rights, especially through the growth of part-time labour. pushed into part-time employment by cuts in and the steady reduction in day nurseries and childcare facilities, so they have paid the highest price for Thatcher's poliCIes.
At present only a third of part-time women workers are in unions compared to full-time employment where half are unionised. The TGWU recently announced its intention of launching a big campaign to recruit part-timers. This move is to be welcomed and all other unions should follow suit. Up to now, though, the unions in general have been none too enthusiastic about organising part-time workers. This is probably because they know such workers have little legal protection against sackings and victimisation. They are fearful of becoming involved in costly disputes to defend their part-time members. Also other employees sometimes resent part-timers, think-
EN where ing they are a threat to their jobs.
Both attitudes are shortsighted. A growth in the number of nonorganised workers weakens the position of the unions, divides the workforce and can lead to the undermining of everyones' conditions.
If a recruitment drive for part-timers is to be successful then the unions must campaign for these workers to have the same legal rights and social benefits as all others - full and statutory sick pay, maternity rights and so on. The unions would have to put their own house in order as well. Recruitment among women workers, both full and part-time, would be aided if led by women organisers. But this would mean some changes in the unions. For example COHSE, the health service union has 80 per cent female membership yet only 12 per cent of its full-time organisers are women. NUPE, with over two thirds women members, still only has seven per cent female organisers.
High visibility of women in their unions' decision-making structures would also help recruitment. However, a Labour Research survey published in 1986 revealed that, here again, there is a long way to go. Despite the active involvement of many women trade unionists at workplace level they are still sorely under-represented on union executives and delegations.
Women can be won to unions in large numbers but the unions must have policies that meet their needs. That means the unions must have a social programme which is more than a resolution carried at conference, now mouldering away in the general secretary's filing cabinet. Equal pay means what it says — cutting the gap between male and female earnings and creating genuine job opportunity so women can qualify for higher pay. The basic minimum wage has to apply to all full-timers and to part-time workers on a proportionate basis.
The unions must insist that both parents or single parents are allowed an agreed amount of time off per year for caring for children who are ill. They must take up the fight for adequate childcare facilities, both at the workplace and in the community. Finally, redundancy hits everybody, male or female, and the threat can only effectively be countered by work sharing with no loss of pay.
Such social demands have political implications and run counter to the 'new realism' of the right-wing trade union bureaucracies. The fight for women's rights, therefore, cannot make headway without the 'new realism' being challenged and without many more women claiming their share of leadership of their unions at every level. B 21
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