Women's Views on News |
| Posted: 23 Feb 2015 05:39 AM PST
The TUC’s Fair Pay Fortnight, a series of events across the country aiming to raise awareness about Britain's cost of living crisis, runs until 1 March this year. Working people in the UK, the TUC says, are seeing their living standards squeezed harder and harder every year; the cost of energy, food and housing is soaring but wages aren't keeping up. Key findings in a report published by the Fawcett Society last year, ‘The changing labour market 2: women, low pay and gender equality in the emerging recovery’ showed how this was affecting women: ‘Since the start of the crisis in 2008, almost a million (826,000) extra women have moved into types of work that are typically low paid and insecure. ‘Since 2008, female under-employment has nearly doubled (to 789,000) and an additional 371,000 women have moved into self-employment, which is typically very low paid. 1 in 8 low paid women now describe themselves as on a zero hours contract. ‘And the increasing levels of women in low paid work, along with the declining value of low pay, is contributing to the widening inequality gap between women and men; last year the gender pay gap increased for the first time in five years and now stands at 19.1 per cent for all employees’. The TUC also reports that people have lost over £4,000 since 2009, and while jobs may be returning to the economy they are increasingly low paid, and involve low hours and low security. That's why the TUC is running Fair Pay Fortnight and that's why Britain needs a pay rise. Getting money back into people pockets, the TUC points out, is essential to securing a strong recovery. The UK also needs to avoid another debt fuelled spending boom of the sort that caused the recent financial crisis – sustainable economic growth depends on fairer pay for ordinary workers and smaller bonuses for the super rich. That’s why the TUC is campaigning for action that will start to move the economy back in the right direction. The TUC is calling for: A properly enforced minimum wage While the national minimum wage safeguards from extreme low pay it is no use if not properly enforced. We need the government to publicly name and shame those companies who aren’t paying up. HMRC also need more resources to help them to identify more minimum wage cheats. Higher minimum wages for employers who can afford to pay more We know that in many low-paid sectors employers could afford to pay more without making job losses. That’s why we need new ways for unions and employers to work together to set higher wages, so that workers and businesses both get a fair deal. Increased commitment to the Living Wage Companies that can well afford to pay the living wage are not doing so and contractors are winning lucrative public sector contracts are continuing to pay poverty wages. We need more local authorities to make sure that their own staff, and those in their supply chains, get at least the living wage. A crackdown on excessive executive pay Pay at the top continues to rocket, fuelling inequality and excessive financial risk-taking. We need real action to get top pay under control starting with worker representation on pay committees and far more transparency about how much the super-rich are being paid. And then there is what David Cameron should do if he's serious about getting Britain's workers a pay rise. We need measures to boost collective bargaining, union membership and sectoral agreements. And, as the economy grows, we need to end the public sector pay cap and deliver a new deal for public sector workers. More broadly, we need a coherent industrial strategy that creates well-paid secure jobs, especially for young people. This is how you build a fair and sustainable recovery. If the Prime Minister is really serious about sharing growth with workers then he needs to take these steps and turn his sights on executive pay. Research carried out by Incomes Data Services for the TUC last year showed that Britain's highest paid director earned what a worker on the Living Wage earns in an entire year in just 49 minutes. This illustrates just how hideously uneven the distribution of reward in our country has become. And even when companies perform badly, senior executives continue to rake it in. This is why we need to put workers onto company remuneration committees to restore a much needed dose of reality to pay-setting. Fighting excess at the top; tackling low pay at the bottom; ensuring all workers – public and private – start seeing the proceeds of growth in their pay packets; these are the priorities that must shape a work programme in the run up to the election and beyond.  |
| Take action to end the gender technology gap Posted: 23 Feb 2015 03:31 AM PST
A global technology revolution is taking place, and if women and girls are not part of it, the future for women's human rights will be bleak. Join us in asking world’s leaders to ensure an end the gender gap in science and technology. The Global Fund for Women and UN Women need 20,000 petition signatures by 5 March 2015. Women and girls have the power and ingenuity to ignite change—but not unless they are equal players in science and technology. Right now, women around the globe are too often excluded from the global technology revolution. The result: more inequality, less innovation, and solutions that leave women out. As the United Nations sets global goals for the next decade and beyond, join us in asking governments to end the gender gap in science and technology. Global Fund for Women has joined forces with UN Women to create the Fueling Change Petition. Add your signature so it will be included when the petition is delivered to some of the world's leading decision makers for International Women's Day in March 2015. The petition will be delivered to the Director General of UNESCO, the Secretary-General of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the chair of the 59th session of the Commission on the Status of Women, and the President of the General Assembly of the United Nations. So please sign – and call on your government, regional institutions, and the United Nations to make sure women and girls are at the centre of the science and technology revolution and ask them to: Remove all barriers to the development and use of technology; Increase investment in girls' science and technology education; Ensure women's and girls' full participation as developers and innovators; Increase the recruitment and progression of women in science and technology jobs; and Ensure that science and technology respond to the needs of women and girls. Go for it. Thanks.  |
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