Letter: `Lads' of the TUC win fair deals for women at work

John Monks
Saturday 22 March 1997 00:02 GMT
Comments

Your support helps us to tell the story

From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.

At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.

The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.

Your support makes all the difference.

Sir: Diane Coyle, in an otherwise interesting discussion of the labour market ("Listen lads - women's work counts too", 20 March), misrepresents a new TUC report to suggest that the TUC is interested only in full-time male workers.

Nothing could be farther from the truth. The TUC has been campaigning in the courts, in Parliament, in Brussels and in the media to improve the lot of part-time workers. Thanks to union campaigning part-timers can no longer be excluded from company pension schemes and the Government was forced to reduce the qualifying period for part-timers to gain protection against unfair dismissal to the same two-year period as for full-timers. TUC research then showed that this had no adverse effect on part-time jobs, contrary to the warnings of ministers.

Our campaigning for a minimum wage, the Working Time Directive and the Social Chapter promise to bring real benefits to women part-timers, who are the lowest paid and least likely to have paid holidays.

Our report was spurred by claims that the UK is a rip-roaring success because it has more people in work than other countries. What we found was that this was due to there being fewer young people in full-time education than elsewhere, more people working when they are past retirement age and, yes, there being more part-time workers here than in most other EU countries. The UK is no better than others at creating the quality jobs that men and women need to give them the kind of income required to bring up families and save for retirement.

JOHN MONKS

General Secretary

Trades Union Congress

London WC1

Join our commenting forum

Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies

Comments

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged inPlease refresh your browser to be logged in