Equal pay for women - but not at men's expense

Equal pay for women - but not at men's expense

The need to draw women into the workforce - and keep them there - is in- creasingly determining both government policy and industrial strategy. In the House of Commons the 'sensible' ruling class have recognised the continuing necessity of allowing women access to abortion, while the chain stores have been forced to accept the argument for Equal Pay for Work of Equal Value in recent regrading exercises. The Equal Pay Act of 1970, through which women only ever achieved about 75% of men's hourly pay, was amended in 1984, include to provision for a com- parison with work of equal value. There have been a number of cases going through the pipeline since, including the three NHS speech therapists who have claiming been com- parability with predominantly male pharmacists and psychologists, who eam up to £11,500 a year more. This has No to a feminist Incomes pollcy! been continuing for five years and will come to appeal in October. In the retail industry, where chain stores and food retailing are still making increased profits, there have been a series of develop- ments. In October 1989 Geraldine O'Sullivan, a check-out worker in Sainsbury's Lewisham branch, won the first round of an industrial tribunal arguing that her job was comparable with that of (mainly male) workers in the warehouse. In March this year Sainsbury, recognising they had lost the battle, offered pay increases to their mostly female retail staff of between 8.5% and 20% - averaging at 11% - and USDAW dropped the case. Marks & Spencer too have carried out a job evaluation exercise and have given their shop staff, mostly women, a three year deal worth 26.4%. The increase will be immediate, but will last until July 1993, making the an- nual increase 8% - less than the going rate of inflation! Marks & Spencers have even decided to offset some of this miserable in- Paqe 22

FEATURES crease by cutting the real level of pay to other

staff: warehouse workers, mostly men, will have a three year wage freeze, with only a £500 lump sum to stave off the rising cost of living. Other food chains are following suit: Tesco's 75,000 employees will receive between 10% and 20.2%, weighted towards its part-time and younger workers.

While it's true that several unions, especially USDAW, have used the new amendment to good effect, the underlying demographic changes are the real reason why employers are suddenly recognising women's equal worth. The fact that the number of 16 to 25 year olds is expected to fall by 1.4 million up to the year 2000 means that more and more women will be needed in the workforce. By the end of the century it is variously estimated that women will make up between 44% and 50% of the labour force.

This demographic 'timebomb' means that industries employing a large percentage of women workers are having to upgrade their pay and conditions, not just to keep the staff they have, but to attract new female staff in an increasingly competitive labour market. Staff fumover in the chain stores and especially at the checkout has been very high in the last few years. An Asda superstore out of London recorded 100% tumover of workers on the tills every 6 months in 1986-7. Marks & Spencer's (traditionally very low) tumover of sales staff has been running at 20%, and at Sainsbury at 40%.

Nor is this trend confined to the chain

stores. The banking and insurance industry are also under pressure. In response to the demographic trends some of the banks have introduced workplace nurseries and they are under pressure to agree to parental leave and career breaks as well. The Banking, Insurance and Finance Union (BIFU) is drawing up claims for hundreds of workplace nursery places after the new tax concessions in this year's budget. But the banks haven't been immune to equal pay cases either. Lloyds Bank is appealing against a first tribunal decision in

favour of six women secretaries claiming equal pay with senior male messengers. The underlyE QUALITY ing problem created by a decreasing number of school leavers is clearly forcing employers to submit to equal pay pressure along with other improvements in the conditions of women workers. This may lead to a less segregated workforce. If women can carn as much as an equivalent male worker then there's less incentive to keep 'women's' jobs separate from "men's". But we should beware of attempts such as that at Marks and Spencers to freeze male wages in order to increase those of women. This is the notorious 'feminist incomes policy' writ large. Bea Campbell, and others, argued in the late 1970s that women should get a bigger 'slice of the cake, thus setting up a situation where women are pitted against men for a finite amount of money. It looks like the unions involved have gone along with this, instead of fighting for an increase for all which would include extra for women to put them on a level with men.

The employers should not be allowed to get away with radical sounding policy for women and younger workers which at the same time undermines the wages of other sectors, and perpetuates the old tactics of divide and rule' in a new disguise.

Jane Kelly

SOCIALIST OUTLOOK no 25, June 1990