pupils in main stream schooling are more specialised with the closure of ation'. All this adds to the stress exthey cannot deliver the service users Increased levels of stress among poorly publicised TUC surveys. For home helps, predominantly women, our and harassed and suffering sleep jobs if alternative emconducted for UNISON by Profes sor Tom Cox, director of the Centre for Organisational Health and De.
Teachers have lobbied and demonstratco in toeir tousands in de fence of their right to early retirement. Education is the second most stressful sector of employment after the voluntary sector, according to a TUC survey, and this has been made hugely worse by the Tories educational reforms and the general levels of deprivation experienced by many pupils as a result of Tory social In 1978 26 per cent of teachers took carly retirement while 73 per cent continued teaching until they By 1996 these proportions had almost completely re versed - with 80 per cent of teachers grounds of ill-health. ented service, strict budgets and harsher management regimes hits particularly hard workers, such as teachers, whose training and ethos is based on the quality of the service they offer. Labour's announcement that it will channel money from the assisted places scheme to reduce class sizes for five and six year olds will do nothing to change the overall conditions for educaAs the Labour leader of Glouces tershire council said in response to Brown's announcement: "We need millions of pounds just to fix leaky roofs and deficient school buildings". An end to teachers' ability to get carly retirement is expected by many to be likely to lead, among other things, to increased numbers ocing sackca tarouka capabi procedures, or dying on the job bef. ore they can claim their pension.
Pensions have themselves
through the raising of women's pensionable age to 65, and through breaking the link with retail prices. The position of older women will also worsen as the switch in pension• ers' income between state and occunational pensions increascs, since a smaller percentage of women have occupational pensions, even where Nearly 90 percent of all full time male workers are in pension schemes, but only 77 per cent of full time women, who make up just over Poverty in old age has been reinforced by increased means testing in benefits (700,000 pensioners don't which they are entitled) and cuts and orivatisation in the HS. Hunto afford private nursing homes hospital before your pension is reDischarged "Stabilised" patients are increasingly discharged, to rely on means.
i ac replacement or contribuuon based benefits by means tested benefits presents a huge potential saving to those who want to impose cuts on Allowance replaces the second six ment benefit with a means tested benefit and is therefore expected to 'save' some £400 million in the first Claimants with partners may lose benefit completely, and it is expected to cut the official unemploy. ment count by tens of thousands in the first year. Women will lose out as their partners are more likely to be in work, and women with children will find it harder to show they have been actively seeking work and that they are immediately able to ta dye wifer vate is beite dis As the welfare state is being dismantled, care is supposedly pushed ingly unable to play the role both the Tories and Labour think it should. In Britain 6.8 million people Seventeen per cent of women are carers, and the estimated savings to the state of that unpaid caring is 524 billion, all of which represents unpaid wages to the working CiRss Cuts in health and social service care mean a disproportionate weight being placed on women who are expected to take on, unpaid, the caring' role the state is no longer But the notion of the family that coura takc on tae buraca or all this unpaid caring is one that no longer SAVE WOMENW OUR HEALTH SERVICE!