From this morning’s reading: I didn’t quite fall of my chair, but it is a close-run thing. The Tory party is “risking a dispute with some of its staunchest supporters in business” by talking of making illegal contract clauses preventing work colleagues from telling each other their salaries. The theory is this will allow women to find out just how badly they are paid in relation to male colleagues.
Research by the Chartered Institute for Personnel and Development shows that about one third of employers stipulate that staff do not discuss pay and conditions with their colleagues. The Tories want to consult on outlawing confidentiality clauses, arguing that they contribute to the pay gap and “inhibit effective and informed pay bargaining”. While the Equal Pay Act requires that men and women receive equal pay for doing the same or similar work, the party says that identifying a pay gap can be made more difficult by such clauses.
…The Conservatives will also announce plans to hold an Equal Pay Day on July 17 to hammer home its message and urge employers to do something about it, in a move which will chime with leader David Cameron’s “big idea” of social responsibility.
Also in the same Guardian story is some data about how women graduates are poorly paid: “the proportion of women graduates who are in the lowest-level jobs has increased from 5.4% to 13.2% since 1995.”
Meanwhile, the judges are having to make common law since the Blair government is too cowardly to make law to deal with the breakdown of de facto relationships. It can only be hoped that when Blair goes lots of the fundamentalist Christian influence in the Cabinet will go too, and this might be dealt with.
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