The labour movement, gender inequality and fair pay

Blaming trade unions for gender inequalities at work is misplaced (The most hated lawyer in Britain, 1 May). Where unions are not recognised, inequalities are greater, not less. However, unions are possibly more open to criticism for their strategies in dealing with inequalities.

Since the 1970s, when governments encouraged local productivity bargaining in local councils in order to justify increases beyond incomes policies, variations in pay grew between sections of the workforces. Where groups of workers were organised and had more power, they won better deals. Over the years, employers could have granted higher settlements to low-paid groups but have chosen not to do so. Without strategies to generalise the lesson that organisation and activity secure advances, the unions increasingly resorted to equal pay claims to rectify the problems of equal pay, causing employers, as your article notes, to devise the agreement in 1997 to harmonise white collar and manual conditions (single status) and equal pay through job evaluation schemes. This was mainly an attempt to protect their pay structures against the growth of tribunal claims.

Trade unions not only fell for this solution but did so with an agreement that sought to achieve these ends without any additional funds. The simple fact is that to raise the pay of a large proportion of the workforce without additional resources brought with it the need to reduce the pay of others. Groups of workers who organised and fought are now penalised and accused of discriminating against women and the low-paid.

If government and the employers were truly interested in equal pay for work of equal value, rather than using it as a device for pay cuts to higher-paid manual workers, we might expect a social audit that raises nurses', social care workers' and millions of others' wages alongside reductions in the pay of bankers and local authority chief executives. I won't be holding my breath.

Professor Bob Carter

De Montfort University

• Where has Zoe Williams been working (Comment, 29 April)? Yes, the labour movement has its fair share of sexism (and racism and careerism etc). Why would we be any different from other arenas of public life? Yes, some unions in some workplaces have sometimes colluded with management to protect the privileges of favoured groups – and, guess what, women and black people and part-timers have tended not to be in those groups. But for a lot of women in a lot of different workplaces, it is only the active presence of a trade union that gives them information about their rights when pregnant, any control over their hours, or even basic information about what, when and how they should be paid. I understand that collectivism is out of fashion and that atomised individualism is in, but no-win, no-fee lawyers are not going to protect our employment rights in the continuing economic carnage ahead.

Professor Gargi Bhattacharyya


Today's best video

Today in pictures