{"id":2491,"date":"2014-12-15T16:46:54","date_gmt":"2014-12-15T16:46:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/unitelive.org\/?p=2491"},"modified":"2014-12-17T11:23:39","modified_gmt":"2014-12-17T11:23:39","slug":"equal-pay-plea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/?p=2491","title":{"rendered":"Equal pay plea"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The courage of Ford Dagenham\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s women workers in 1968 in their strike for equal pay changed the way women were paid for ever \u00e2\u20ac\u201c or so we hoped.<\/p>\n

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Now in austerity Britain, nearly 50 years on from the landmark 1970 equal pay ruling, the pay gap is widening once again.\u00c2\u00a0The gender pay gap between men and women in their twenties has doubled in the past three years, and is also on the rise between men and women in their thirties.<\/p>\n

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In the past three years, the pay gap has doubled with little hope from the present government of seriously addressing the issue. Today\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s women workers are earning on average just 81 pence for every \u00c2\u01411 earned by a man.\u00c2\u00a0Since the equality act of 2010 \u00e2\u20ac\u201c which only required employers to adopt pay transparency on a voluntary basis \u00e2\u20ac\u201c just five companies have come clean on their gender wage gap. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s enough to make those brave women weep.<\/p>\n

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But today, (December 16), Rotherham MP Sarah Champion, backed by Unite, Grazia<\/em> magazine, some of the original Ford Dagenham women and stars from the West End show, hopes to change this.<\/p>\n

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Sarah Champion is bringing a 10 minute rule Bill being which would place a duty on ministers to implement section 78 of the 2010 equality act. This would mean any employers with over 250 workers would have to publish wage data \u00e2\u20ac\u201c thereby making transparent any existing gender pay gap within their organisation \u00e2\u20ac\u201c and the reasons behind it.<\/p>\n

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\u00e2\u20ac\u015bIt is 46 years since this union\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s members at Ford began their fight to close the gender wage gap \u00e2\u20ac\u201c and a disgrace that all these years later, women are still fighting for a fair deal,\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 said Unite national equalities officer, Siobhan Endean.<\/p>\n

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\u00e2\u20ac\u015bOur wages are vitally important to the household income but underpaying and undervaluing the work we do still goes on.\u00c2\u00a0 Worse, this government appears to be doing next to nothing to address this.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n

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But by shining a light on the problem, employers, employees and unions will have the information to address inequality in pay between men and women working equivalent jobs, as well as too few of women in the highest paid roles.<\/p>\n

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\u00e2\u20ac\u015bMore and more women workers are now union members because they know that, with a union on our side, we do better but an end to pay secrecy\u00c2\u00a0in larger companies will make all the difference in the battle against discrimination,\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 added Siobhan.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

We certainly hope that fairness is achieved and the UK\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s workforce can begin to earn the same pay.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The courage of Ford Dagenham\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s women workers in 1968 in their strike for equal pay changed the way women were paid for ever \u00e2\u20ac\u201c or so we hoped.   Now in austerity Britain, nearly 50 years on from the landmark 1970 equal pay ruling, the pay gap is widening once again.\u00c2\u00a0The gender pay gap between […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2495,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[116],"wps_subtitle":"Campaigners support MP's pay transparency bid ","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2491"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2491"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2491\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2494,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2491\/revisions\/2494"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2495"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2491"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}