Irish Women Workers and the EU
27 Sep 2002
Forum National Conference "Women in an Enlarging Europe" Liberty Hall, Dublin - Sinead Tiernan, ETUC
Thank you very much Chair and may I begin by thanking the Forum for inviting me on behalf of the ETUC to address this conference. As we are all very well aware, many Irish women did not vote during the last referendum, citing a lack of information and understanding amongst their prime reasons. A conference which acknowledges the role women have played in the success of Europe, and which provides a platform to discuss the issues facing women in an enlarged Europe is very timely, necessary and therefore very welcome.
Before I go any further perhaps I should say a few words about myself. I have been living and working in Brussels for the past 8 years and since 1998 I've been working in the area of gender equality for the ETUC - European Trade Union Confederation. The ETUC is an umbrella organisation which brings together national trade union confederations from 34 European countries - we cover trade unions from the 15 EU countries as well as those from CEEC. In all we represent more than 60 million workers in Europe. ICTU is of course affiliated and actively involved in the work of the ETUC.
With that background then it will come as no surprise that for my presentation I would like to focus my remarks on the world of work, concentrating on working women, and in particular on Irish working women and how we have fared since we joined the EU.
The framework in which I will be basing my remarks is that membership of the European Union has been a good experience for Irish workers in relation to our employment and social rights and it has been a very good experience for Irish women workers - we have benefited enormously over the past number of years in terms of our access to and treatment in the labour market. Much of this improvement is due to the influence of the EU and the policies and programmes which have been agreed upon and developed in Brussels. In fact, practically the entire body of law which gives rights to people at work in Ireland has resulted from EU Directives.
This is particularly true in the case of gender equality and this is the first area I would like to address. (And don't worry, I know its late on Friday evening, so I am not going to give a mini history lesson on equality legislation from 1973 - 2002!)
But, if we go right back to the early days of our membership, 2 important pieces of legislation were introduced in quick succession and both had extremely important implications for Irish women.
The first was the Equal Pay Directive of 1975 which stated that women and men should earn the same amount of money for doing the same work or work of equal value. The Irish government of the day tried to delay transposing this Directive into Irish Law but thanks in no small part to the trade union movement this was stopped and the Directive was subsequently introduced into Irish Legislation.
However, even with this Directive, we are still a long way from enjoying equal pay, and this is true not only in Ireland but across all of the EU. Despite having the legislation, on average women still earn less than men. There are many reasons for this, including gender segregation at work, the value attributed to women's work, etc.
On the other hand, at least by having this legislation in place progress has been made and several cases, a number of them high profile cases, have been taken and won which have left many women with more money in their pocket and their sense of dignity at work, restored.
The second European Directive that came into force around this time which had a huge direct impact on Irish women was the Equal Treatment at Work Directive of 1976, which led to the lifting of the marriage bar for Irish women - no small achievement, I think you will agree...
In addition, this Directive also enabled a number of legal challenges to be taken by Irish women and Irish trade unions such as the Hill Stapleton case which ensured that job sharers were treated equally in relation to pay when they returned to work on a full time basis.
More recently at the EU level, first the Maastricht treaty, and then the Amsterdam Treaty, were particularly important for workers in the sense that social rights and employment issues were strengthened. Social dialogue between ourselves - the ETUC, and the European employers organisations takes place and through this we have managed to negotiate a number of Agreements since 1996. Three of these agreements have become European Directives - Parental Leave, Protection of Part Time Workers and the Protection of Fixed Term Contract workers. (you will note that each of these have particular relevance for women workers!) In addition we have just concluded a voluntary agreement with the European employers on teleworkers.
The Parental Leave Directive allows parents to take time off to care for their children. Prior to this, Ireland was one of just 3 countries out of the EU 15 that had NO provision what so ever for parental leave. During the negotiations in Brussels, all ETUC affiliates supported the case for parental leave in Ireland and remained solidly behind Irish Congress throughout the entire negotiation process.
As most of you will be aware, there were problems when this Directive was being transposed into Irish law with regard to the date of birth of the child. Congress took a case to the European Commission who acknowledged that Ireland had incorrectly transposed the Directive - hence the law was changed which gave more parents the right to avail of this leave.
There is still an issue in Ireland with this Directive regarding payment - or rather non-payment. When the Directive was being negotiated it was agreed that issue of payment would be left to the Member States to decide, although ETUC's position was and still is that it should be paid. Clearly ETUC supports Congresses case for payment.
What I think is important to stress here is that the Directives which come from Brussels set a minimum standard, a minimum level. It is then up to Member States to build on this themselves. That's why if we look at how other countries use the parental leave directive for example, it varies on issues such as duration, payment etc. .
So I would say that in terms of legislation, although we are not quite there yet, we are certainly on the right path to achieving gender equality at work. Without a doubt I believe that our first steps onto that path would have happened much later had it not been from the push we got from the EU. It is now up to us to continue, at all levels, to push things even further.
The second area I want to address this evening is women's access to the labour market - again the past 25-30 years have seen a huge change on the Irish landscape with more women than ever going out to paid work. Hand in hand with this, is the increase in education levels and recent studies show that young girls are in fact outperforming young boys at school and through to further education.
Despite the progress, again there is room for improvement. The Lisbon Council set new targets which aim raise the female participation rate to 60% by 2010. The current EU rate is 54% - already well on the way. (Ireland is lagging slightly behind with a rate of 49%)
But, to ensure that the target is reached and that the jobs created for women are real jobs, proper, good quality jobs, serious efforts towards gender equality are needed.
This means that specific issues which can act as barriers to women's access to the labour market must be examined. These include issues like reconciling work and family life, and are issues for which we have been campaigning long and hard.
During the Spanish presidency of the EU which took place in the first part of this year, they tried to address this and during the Barcelona Council, targets on childcare were defined - these call on Member States to provide care facilities for at least 90% of children between the ages of 3 and the mandatory school age; and for at least 33% of children under 3 years of age. This must be done by 2010.
We welcomed this development very warmly - it's the first time that specific targets on childcare have been set and given to national governments to achieve. Now, I know that these targets are not perfect and that even by achieving these there is still a problem for parents of children under 3. Nonetheless, in an Irish context, if by 2010 these targets are realised, and decent, affordable childcare was provided for 90% of kids aged 3 and up, this would represent a huge improvement.
The third area I want to highlight is the actual situation faced by some women at work and here I am referring to the whole area of sexual harassment at work. According to a recent study conducted for the European Commission, 40-50% of women in the EU considered that they had been sexually harassed at least once in their working lives, and 10% of men.
These are quite startling statistics.
A few minutes ago I mentioned the 1976 Directive on Equal Treatment at Work. For the last number of years, the ETUC has lobbied very hard to have this Directive revised and improved to cover a number of issues such as sexual harassment at work. In 2000 the revision process began and in April of this year agreement between the European Parliament and Council was reached.
The revised directive goes much further than the original 1976 version and introduces a number of new measures including a definition of sexual harassment and an obligation to introduce preventative measures against sexual harassment at the workplace.
It will come into force in Member States in 2005
Again I mention this to show you that progress is being made on issues that are very serious in their nature.
The final comments I want to make are in relation to women in the accession countries - for example women from Poland, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, and what their labour market realities are like.
In many ways their situations are similar to ours in the West - women are more highly educated, yet more women are unemployed than men, for those women who work, they tend to work in highly segregated sectors - in particular in the public sector, and on average women receive lower pay for the same work.
What is different however, is that after the fall of the Berlin Wall, their economies underwent drastic changes and this had had particularly tough consequences for the labour market as many of their jobs disappeared overnight.
In addition, problems of discrimination are fairly common. Ads for jobs often specify young men. In interviews women tend to be asked a number of personal questions such as whether or not they are married, have children or intend to have children etc. There have also been cases that as part of a medical check up for a job, some women have been forced to take pregnancy tests....
Furthermore, sexual harassment at work is a very real issue for many and there are almost no regulations in the transition countries against this.
Clearly then, for women workers in CEEC there are benefits to be had from joining the EU - assistance and technical expertise in rebuilding their economy, legislation to protect them at work. Surely they deserve the same opportunities we have had in Ireland. By voting NO to Nice, the Irish people would be sending a signal to the rest of Europe which, whether rightly or wrongly, would be interpreted as Ireland wanting to prevent or block the 12 accession countries from joining the European Union.
So, let me conclude by reminding you that we have benefited, Irish women have benefited and Ireland as a country has benefited from EU membership. Can we really have it on our conscience that we would deny these same opportunities to our friends and colleagues in the CEEC?
Thank you.