Women's Views on News |
| Saving our working rights on Brexit Posted: 24 Oct 2016 02:30 AM PDT
Theresa May announced last month that the government will look to pass a Great Repeal Bill, which will replace the European Communities Act [ECA] once Britain has left the EU. That is necessary – the Act needs to be repealed for us to leave the EU, but because numerous laws have been passed through the ECA, to repeal it without replacement would cause those laws to fall away. For workers' rights, this would mean some of the most fundamental protections would be scrapped, including equal rights for part-time and agency workers; the right to annual and parental leave; and the protection of employment upon the transfer of a business or outsourcing of services. But the Bill will still weaken those rights, and scrap others. According to the House of Commons library, the Great Repeal Act would likely secure all legislation passed through the ECA in the form it currently exists – namely, secondary legislation, which can be changed through what's called a statutory instrument (SI). Because SIs don't need to be debated or voted on in parliament, this Bill would give this, and any future government the ability to amend or repeal hard-won rights without even giving a say to MPs. At the Tory [the Conservative Party] conference last month the prime minister said: "Existing workers'…rights will continue to be guaranteed in law". However, there appears to be disagreement in her Cabinet. On the same day as Theresa May's speech, Chris Grayling told the press that the government only wanted to keep measures on workers' rights. He, along with several other Cabinet members, are on record calling for the scrapping – or in one case, halving – of employment protections. Whatever the intentions of this particular government, the fact is that by maintaining employment protections in the weakest form of legislation, while removing Britain from the common floor of minimum rights ensured by the EU, May's Great Repeal Bill will leave workers' rights hanging by a thread. The other way in which the European Union has helped to secure and protect the rights of British workers is through the courts. A huge number of rulings from the Court of Justice of the European Union protect employees in our country. For example, the requirement for overtime and commission payments to count towards holiday pay is because of a European court ruling, as is the requirement to pay care workers a full wage for sleep-in shifts. When talking about the Great Repeal Bill, Grayling said that "decisions made by the European Court of Justice on the United Kingdom will cease to apply, so that is one thing that will change." So while some workers' rights will be made more vulnerable, those derived from the courts will effectively be repealed, and it will be left up to British judges to decide whether to maintain them. It certainly does not feel like the sovereignty of Parliament is being restored: it is merely taking back control from one unelected judiciary and giving it to another unelected judiciary. It is important to note that European courts in recent years have been far more progressive than rulings in British courts, which have tended to favour employers. If May was serious about protecting existing workers' rights, she would be securing all of them in the strongest form of UK legislation. That is exactly what my Workers' Rights (Maintenance of EU Standards) Bill would do. I'm not holding my breath however on whether the Tories instruct their MPs to vote for it. Melanie Onn is MP for Great Grimsby. A version of this article appeared on the LabourList website on 20 October 2016.  |
| Women: act for climate justice for ten days Posted: 24 Oct 2016 01:15 AM PDT
Join the Women’s Earth and Climate Action Network, The Women’s Global Call for Climate Justice and allies around the world for ‘Women Act for Climate Justice — Ten Days of Global Mobilization’ from 28 October until 6 November, 2016. Diverse women and girls around the world are organizing together to show their resistance to environmental and social degradation; to highlight the climate impacts our communities are facing; to demand drastic change away from our unjust neoliberal economic and development systems; and to demonstrate the many effective, just and safe climate solutions, strategies and political calls that are being implemented by women and girls around the world on a daily basis. For example, in the Shetland Islands a group of women – Da Wives Atween Wadders – gathered sea-borne rubbish from a local beach and used it to create a collage of Uruk, the polar bear, standing on a melting iceberg. ‘Women Act for Climate Justice: Ten Days of Global Mobilization‘ is a worldwide call for women and girls to bring light to their climate struggles and solutions by sending in photos and statements; or through escalated actions including – but not limited to – educational events, community projects, protests and marches. The 2016 ‘Women Act for Climate Justice’ campaign has been called in advance of the November 2016 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) – COP22 Conference in Marrakech, Morocco, where we must work together to ensure a sustained civil society presence and pressure to demand that all government's road maps ahead originate in a climate justice framework, and with respect to human, Indigenous and women's rights, and gender, social, economic and ecological justice. ‘Women Act for Climate Justice — Ten Days of Global Mobilization’ is an opportunity for diverse women and girls around the world to organize together and show their resistance to environmental and social degradation. Although COP21 in Paris last year was perhaps the most important international climate negotiation of our time, COP22 will, in many ways, be equally important. COP22 is where intentions by governments must become more ambitious and result in detailed plans. The hope is the campaign will provide a powerful tool for highlighting many of the just and safe climate strategies/solutions of women and girls from around the world, and putting forward legal and policy demands as governments meet to act upon last year's Paris Agreement. That said, the Women Act for Climate Justice's decentralized mobilization is intended to show there are collective actions and voices far beyond the UNFCCC calling for continued momentum in the years to come. Women of all ages and allies around the world are invited to share their photo and statement and/or hold a variety of decentralized local actions over the extended action from October 28 to 6 November. Want to join in? Take a photo of yourself and/or a group holding up sign[s] with messages about the climate impacts your community is facing, your solutions, and/or your message to world governments in advance of COP22, and send it in. We encourage participants to take their action photo at a meaningful location, such as a site of pollution, extraction and profit, or a place of continued struggle, resistance and hope. Example messages include: 'Keep Fossil Fuels in the Ground', ‘Keep the oil in the soil’, ‘No Gender Justice without Climate and Ecological Justice’, 'No Climate Justice, Without Gender Justice”, "Water is Life', ‘No Healthy Oceans, no Life'; 'Climate Justice Now', 'Women for 100% Renewable Energy', '#WomenClimateJustice is our name, Resistance is our aim', ‘Communities own seeds, not corporations’, 'System Change, Not Climate Change'. Or simply get creative! A second level of action would be to involve organizing town-hall or village meetings, vigils and demonstrations, rallies, sit-ins, marches, educational events, art projects, and other actions and statements to showcase local struggles and solutions being offered by women leaders and their communities. For example: work in your community, such as starting a seed bank, planting a street verge/ food security free garden, community garden, installing a solar panel, cleaning up a public space, planting fruit and shade trees; Organize an educational event or campaign online or in your village, district, school, workplace, local council, women’s group, community hall, town hall; Record a short video about the climate harms in your life and community, and/or solutions you or your community/organization are offering; Organize a sit-in, a march, a demonstration, a protest or other non-violent direct action at sites of extraction, places of corporate destruction, pollution and profit, and/or sites of positive resistance and solutions. Please do submit photos, videos, and statements to the 'Women Act for Climate Justice — Ten Days of Global Mobilization' web portal which will be open from October 28 until 6 November. No action is too small and EVERY voice is critical! Your diverse ideas are welcome. In the days preceding COP22, global action submissions will be woven together and shared via social media, shared images and videos, and print and digital news outlets. Submissions also will be shared at events in Marrakech during COP22. For further information, how to join in, what to do next, click here.  |
| You are subscribed to email updates from Women's Views on News. To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
| Google Inc., 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043, United States | |