TUC: Women Demand Change!!

TUC Women’s Conference opened today in Eastbourne to discuss the Women’s Agenda, and how we should campaign for it with a general election coming up.

The conference was opened by this year’s chair Mary Davis a history lecturer and well known socialist and feminist.

She reminded the conference of the history of women’s struggle for basic rights, starting from the right to vote and the right to equal pay. Her conclusions were stark, a reminder that at every level women’s participation in politics is no where near “fifty-fifty”, but nearer “eighty-twenty”, or less. Equal pay meantime for many women remains a dream rather than a right. (UNISON’s efforts in this regard, whether with Agenda for Change, or Single Status are solid achievements in this context.)

Mary opened the conference with insight but also with humour. It is unfortunately to be regretted that she is standing down from the Women’s Committee, as she takes retirement form her paid employment as a lecturer, but she promised Conference that there is still much Women’s history to be written, and she intends to be around to write it. Unisonactive salutes her distinctive contribution to the socialist women’s movement.
The agenda for the afternoon included:-

 The Workplace Agenda for Women
 Equal Pay in the Private Sector
 Equal Pay Promotion and Long Hours
 Protecting our Pensions
 Part Time Workers
 Older Workers
 Discrimination
 Motherhood
 Public Services and the Global Recession

Jane Carolan for UNISON intervened in the debate on the Workplace Agenda for Women; challenging conference to name a women dominated industry that was currently being decimated. She went on to list the attacks being made on local government, through cuts, the pay freeze and the privatisation agenda.

Clare Williams moved the UNISON motion on pensions, noting that pay inequality, impacted by part time working and caring responsibilities means that two thirds of the poorest pensioners are women and that current arrangements will continue that discrimination unless changed. Clare called for pensions to reflect the reality of women’s lives, but went further to call for women’s involvement in the management and trusteeship of existing pension schemes.

“Women’s low wages mean that saving for a pension can be a luxury, particularly for young women for whom the pension seems a lifetime away. In the 21st century that needs to change", she said.

Later Angela Lynes moved the other UNISON motion, calling for a defence of the existing protections for working mothers, especially as the recession means that many employers see them as an easy target, and for a future government to take up an agenda that will reinforce them.

In the only debate of the afternoon, an emergency motion from PCS on their current industrial action on protection for the current civil service compensation scheme drew opposition from smaller civil service unions. The PCS motion was passed overwhelmingly.