EMPLOYMENT secretary Gillian Shephard wants to scrap wages councis - currently the only legal protection for millions of Britan's lowest paid workers - because they 'destroy jobs'.
Ms Shephard can perhaps be forgiven for her ignorance of the realities of life on a low income. The poor woman has to scrape by on her £63,047 a year cabinet salary, with only a little extra income trom her agricultural business interests.
But such a direct attack on the worst off is only one aspect of digestin new Trade Union Reform and It will also give 'the publié -in prachico, outfits Freedom Association - the power to take 'illegalstrikers' to court, impose a seven day coolindustrial action, hamper the collection of union dues and extend state powers to regulate internal labour movement affairs.
The TUC's so-called "Brid. lington Agreement on which Angry - Willis unions organise which sector will be scrapped, allowing the AEEU to recruit to its hard right bloc, wreking smaller unions in the process.
We on'task to write the rule book at the Carlton Club or the CBL Why should the Tories tell our class what its organisations can or cannot do?
Finding ways round the bill's few plus points, including extension of materity leave, and protection against dismissal for pregnancy or for carrying out safety rep duties, will be easy enough for most bosses.
Wages councils set rates of between 17.50 and 13.10 ar hour for some 2.5 million workers, four-fifths of them women, in areas like retailing. hairdressing, textiles and caterI They were set up in 1909 by Winston Churchill, then in the Liberal government of the period, specifically to prevent good employers being undercut by bad and bad employers by worse'.
However, Shephard insists wages councils are an example damaging. practices' with 'no role to play in the 19905.
If they are abolished, Britain will be the only EC country without some form of legally enforceable minimum wage Proweste Already, the average hourly minimum set by the councis has steadily declined as a percentage of the national average wage since the Conservatives took office in 1979. Since the late *80s, they have ceased to cover young workers.
Shephard waxes lyrical that the bill 'Is designed to increase the competitiveness of the economy. Chris Pond, director of the Low Pay Unit, agrees: Scrapping the councils will Andrew Ward Major's anti-union hardliner- Gillian Shephard tur Britain into the Taiwan of Europe!
Low pay for women is justified, she semingly argues: *Eighty per cont of people in wages council industries live in other source of income.' Never wund wat tis may well De a dole cheque or a second low pay packet.
Where companies pay above the pay levels laid down by wages councils, they are irrelevant. Where the wages councls force companies to pay to say our strike record is now at an all time low. We need to make sure that we keep it that way. This bill provides further protection against the damaging consequences of strikes.
TUC general secretary Norman Willis branded the bill a charter for cheating cowboy employers' and pledged Congress House to 'all we can dó' to oppose the measure.
All we can do' apparently translates to leaflets, stickers and posters, 'a full briefing from the Tuc on our assessment of