Shephard faces clash on women's low pay

GILLIAN Shephard, the Secretary of State for Employment, is set for a confrontation with the Equal Opportunities Commission over the plight of low- paid women, particularly part-timers.

A forthright response to a plea for the maintenance of wages council protection for the low-paid has stunned officials, who allege Mrs Shephard came close to accepting that many women only worked for 'pin money'.

The letter, received last week by Joanna Foster, chair of the commission, is to be discussed by senior staff next week. It is believed to have reinforced the Government's hostility towards wages councils, which lay down minimum pay rates for 2.4 million workers, of which 1.7 million are women.

The Department of Employment would not disclose the details of the correspondence, but said: 'Most of the low-paid are young people or women working part-time who live in households with other sources of income.

'Based on household income, most of the low-paid are not poor. Low pay and poverty are not synonymous.'

Any justification of low wages because they are part of household income will incense the EOC, which says the wages councils provide a legal safety net for women workers. It is likely to tell Mrs Shephard that its approach to the issue of women and low pay contradicts its support for the Opportunity 2000 campaign to improve the position of women in the workplace.

The Government said earlier this year that it saw no 'permanent place' for wages councils in the labour market and there has been speculation that their abolition would be added to the Employment Bill this autumn. Minimum wage rates for those under 21 were abolished in 1986.

Workers in service industries, such as hotels, restaurants and retailing, make up the majority of those covered by wages council minimums. Current rates vary from pounds 2.63 an hour for clothing manufacture to pounds 3.08 an hour in food retailing. The Low Pay Unit, in a report published today, said a third of companies visited by wages council inspectors were found to be underpaying. The level of underpayment was worst among retail food employers but was common in all wages council sectors.

A total of 5,971 employers, up 15 per cent on 1990, were found to be underpaying but only 15 were prosecuted. The amount of back pay outstanding was pounds 1.49m. The Low Pay Unit said that since 1979 more than 100,000 cases of underpayment had been discovered, with just 82 prosecutions.

Chris Pond, the unit's director, said there were 67 inspectors compared with 177 in 1979. He blamed the Government for virtually turning a blind eye to 'the scandalous level of criminal underpayment' which rises annually.

The Department of Employment said the high rate of discovery of underpayment resulted from the fact that inspectors concentrated their efforts on employers where there had been complaints. It was also policy to persuade companies to comply with the law.