Wednesday, February 10, 2016

Women's Views on News

Women's Views on News

Fighting against zero hours for decent work

Posted: 09 Feb 2016 12:41 PM PST

Unite the Union, decent work for all campaign, five things‘Decent work for all’ campaign focusses on 5 issues.

Trade union activists targeted Sports Direct over its shameful employment practices in a protest at Rangers' Ibrox stadium on the weekend.

Protest banners also appeared in other parts of Scotland, including at the Forth Bridges, Glasgow's George Square, The Kelpies near Falkirk, as well as in the Ibrox grounds.

This was part of the trade union Unite's ‘Decent Work For All’ campaign which has seen the retail chain Sports Direct and its owner Mike Ashley targeted over the company's use of zero-hours contracts, poverty pay and draconian employment practices.

Before Christmas, for example, carol singers targeted Sports Direct stores to highlight the company’s 'scrooge-like' working practices amid calls for HM Revenue and Customs to investigate the non-payment of the national minimum wage at the retailer's Shirebrook warehouse in Derbyshire.

Those calls, from Britain's largest union, Unite, and the 12 December action in towns and cities across the UK, came after a Guardian investigation found that extra, unpaid time taken for “rigorous” compulsory searches meant workers were paid less than the minimum wage.

Likening working conditions in the Sports Direct warehouse to a 'gulag', the investigation also found that workers were being docked wages for arriving as little as one minute late for work.

Sports Direct had also come under fire repeatedly for its use of low paid, zero-hours contracts and agency staff at the Shirebrook site where workers work in fear of a 'six strikes and you're out' rule.

Under this rule workers can receive a 'strike' for a range of 'offences', including taking too long in the toilet, chatting too much or being off sick.

Unite's regional officer Luke Primarolo said at the time: "The majority of the workers at the Shirebrook depot are on precarious agency contracts, which while not illegal, make it virtually impossible for them to challenge unfair treatment for fear of losing their job.

"The culture of fear at Sport Direct's Shirebrook depot is more akin to a workhouse than a FTSE 100 company.

"It needs to change with agency workers being given permanent contracts by Sports Direct and paid a decent wage."

Activists are now seeking to build solidarity with Rangers fans angry at Ashley, who has a 9 per cent stake in the club, for using Rangers as a money-making machine for flogging his products.

Unite Scotland’s community co-ordinator Jamie Caldwell explained that: "Around 1.8 million people across the UK are on zero-hours contracts with no entitlement to holidays, sick pay or security and the majority of those affected are young workers in the retail and hospitality sectors."

Caldwell accused Sports Direct of being "one of the worst culprits" in using the contracts, adding that the company, which has an operating profit of £180 million, is "responsible for one-fifth of all zero-hours contracts in the UK retail sector, while owner Mike Ashley has made billions off the back of these draconian working conditions."

Ashley attempted to deflect the growing negative publicity by awarding a 15p pay rise to workers – but Unite are calling for Sports Direct to pay a living wage.

Unite, Britain and Ireland's largest trade union with over 1.4 million members working in all sectors of the economy, is currently campaigning to win the 5 things that make ‘Decent Work For All‘:

1. A wage you can live on: We all need a pay rise – and joining a trade union is the best way to win one. Trade union workplaces get 7 per cent better pay than those without trade unions.

2. Safe, secure work: All workers should be treated with dignity, in work that does not harm your health with workplace rights from the day you start work. Trade unions ensure you can enforce these rights when you need to.

3. Guaranteed hours each week: Too often flexible working just means insecurity. The use of forced zero and short-hours contracts needs to stop! We can win better contracts by organising and campaigning together

4. Training, development and career opportunities: We need positive routes into work, with training and development at work and not forced free labour on pain of losing benefits. Instead, we should have proper apprenticeships.

5. A collective voice and union representation: Organising together means strength in numbers as people act together in trade unions at work. Without this things like your pay and contract are just decided by your employer.

For more information about how to support the #FightFor5 campaign and win Decent Work For All click here.

Join the fight for decent work – pay you can live on; guaranteed hours; safe, secure work; training and career opportunities and a union voice #Fightfor5 #fightforfive and #decentwork4all.

The health of England’s women

Posted: 09 Feb 2016 12:33 PM PST

Sally Davies, CMO, women's health report, 17 recommedationsWe need to ensure that the many 'taboo' subjects are discussed more easily.

You have to be impressed by the way the media can distract the public from something important.

Now the furore has died down, we would like to draw your attention to the UK's Chief Medical Officer's report, ‘The Health of the 51%: Women’.

It was released in December 2015, and concentrates on the health of England’s women and some taboo health issues.

An annual report in two volumes is published by the Chief Medical Officer each year: a 'surveillance' volume which provides an epidemiological picture of the public's health, and an 'advocacy' volume which presents recommendations for action to benefit the public's health.

The Chief Medical Officer (CMO) acts as the UK government's principal medical adviser and the professional head of all directors of public health in local government.

Professor Dame Sally Davies is England's first woman Chief Medical Officer.

The report covered such issues as gender-based violence against women; female genital mutilation (FGM); women's health in the reproductive years: eating disorders; pre-conception health; prenatal screening; perinatal mental health; post-pregnancy care: missed opportunities during the reproductive years; women's health in later life: psychosocial factors and the menopause: the impact of the menopause on personal and working life; incontinence and prolapse; women and cancer and women's cancers; and a human rights approach to women's health.

A woman's life course offers multiple opportunities to prevent predictable ill-health, and address predictable problems, Davies pointed out.

And she wanted, she said, to ensure that the many 'taboo' subjects were – are and will be – discussed more easily, that women should feel confident to ask about the variety of ways they can best manage symptoms of incontinence and menopause, and how employers could lead the way by making it more acceptable for female staff to discuss health issues in the workplace, so that embarrassment is not a barrier to better health.

In the end she came up with 17 recommendations. Number 1 was ridiculed in a large sector of the UK's media and the other 16 largely ignored, despite their significance.

Recommendation 1: that the Government includes obesity in its national risk planning.

Recommendation 2: that the General Medical Council ensures that medical undergraduate training equips future regulated healthcare professionals to recognise and respond to violence against women, and that other regulators (General Dental Council and Nursing and Midwifery Council) ensure this issue is given due prominence.

Recommendation 3: that Health Education England e-learning modules (such as the newly developed set for female genital mutilation and those for domestic violence and modern slavery) be:

a) developed for sexual violence, 'honour'-based violence and forced marriages; and

b) freely available to all regulated healthcare professionals via the e-learning for health portal and portals used by other health and social care professionals and that there is continuing professional development credit for doctors in this area.

Recommendation 4: that Clinical Commissioning Groups and local authorities ensure that integrated specialist health and social care services are in place to meet referrals safely for sexual violence, other domestic violence, female genital mutilation, 'honour'-based violence, forced marriages and modern slavery.

Recommendation 5: that acute hospitals, mental health services and GP practices provide information on referral pathways for violence against women at their workplace inductions for healthcare professionals.

Recommendation 6: that the social science community applies to the Economic and Social Research Council for funding to investigate relevant social issues and how to change attitudes to FGM in diaspora communities in England from countries where female genital mutilation is practised.

Recommendation 7: that Clinical Commissioning Groups ensure prompt access to evidence-based enhanced cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT-E) and family-based therapy for eating disorders. This should be available in all areas, as in the NICE guidance, and not restricted to specific age groups.

Recommendation 8: that the Department for Education and Department of Health together make integrated personal, social, health and economic education (PSHE) with sex and relationships education (SRE) a routine and, if necessary, statutory part of all children's education.

Recommendation 9: that NHS England, Local Authorities and Clinical Commissioning Groups in their system leadership role should ensure provision for a full range of contraception services to all women, that is person centric and at all reproductive ages.

Recommendation 10: that the Royal Colleges of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, Midwives and Paediatrics and Child Health and the Department of Health, should jointly convene a meeting of stakeholders to determine the optimal data items, assessment tools and linkeage to child outcomes to capture information about women's mental and physical health before, during and in the years after pregnancy

Recommendation 11: that the UK Clinical Research Collaboration works with research funders to review the research needs and spend in the area of pregnancy.

Particular research areas highlighted in this report include: pre-conception interventions to improve maternal and child mental and physical health; screening tests, prevention and treatment for pre-eclampsia, foetal growth restriction and pre-term birth; and optimum models for antenatal and postnatal care.

Recommendation 12: that NHS England and Clinical Commissioning Groups ensure that all women have prompt access to evidence-based psychological interventions for perinatal mental disorders, a local perinatal mental health service and regional mother and baby inpatient units.

Recommendation 13: that the Health and Social Care Information Centre modifies the Mental Health and Learning Disabilities Dataset (v.1.0.12) to include pregnancy and the post-partum year.

Recommendation 14: that the Faculty of Occupational Medicine co-ordinates the production of evidence-based guidelines for employers to ensure that they provide appropriate advice and support to women experiencing disabling symptoms while going through the menopause.

Recommendation 15: that Public Health England convenes a group of stakeholders to consider ways of a) raising awareness of urinary and faecal incontinence and prolapse in women, and b) improving signposting to resources, self-help information and treatment pathways which alleviate these conditions.

Recommendation 16: that the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists ensures that sub-specialist training in gynaecological oncology equips doctors to perform optimal surgery for gynaecological cancers and reduce mortality from ovarian cancer.

Recommendation 17: that a national clinical audit should be undertaken of treatment and survival trends for women with ovarian cancer in England. High priority should be given to including this topic in NHS England's National Clinical Audit and Patient Outcomes Programme commissioned by the Healthcare Quality Improvement Partnership.

Those were her recommendations.

To read the whole report, click here.

Please take up any or all of these issues with your MP, your boss, your line manager, or your union rep, among your friends, and with the person next to you if you get stuck in a slow moving queue. Thanks.