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When the Equal Pay Act and Sex Discrimination Act came into force one year ago, they were heralded as a great step towards equal rights for women. Experience has not borne this out. Both pieces of legislation are full of loopholes which let employers off the hook. In only a very small minority of cases have tribunals found in favour of women workers.
The labour government's legislation and their phrases about equal rights have meant little for women fighting to end their oppression. Talk of equal pay is a sick joke when more and more women are being denied the right to work. To win equal rights, it is necessary to tackle head on the policies which have created unemployment as well as demanding facilities like nursery places, abortion and contraception on demand, and total financial and legal independence for women. Women are the first to be hit by unemployment and weifare cuts which load the burdens of social welfare heavily on the backs of women through their position in the family.
At the end of last year the Working Women's Charter Campaign (WWCC) issued a call for a national rally in London to mark the first year of the Sex Discrimination Act. The rally, to be built around the demands of the Charter, which tackle these rea! issues facing women, is to discuss how to confront the situation which still exists one year after the SDA hit the statute book. Scottish WWCC supporters have taken the initiative of calling for a further rally in Glasgow on May 7th.
All bodies of the labour movement must be pressed to give maximum support to
this rally. The Scottish Labour Party have already played a prominent role in fighting for trade union support for the rally; Edinburgh SLP has now called for a tour of all SLP branches by the rally organisers. Wide support has also been forthcoming from the women's movement; women's groups in Glasgow. Aberdeen and Edinburgh, as well as the Campaign for Financial and Legal Indepepdence, have already decided to sponsor the rally.
The raily has an important role in raising the issue of women's rights inside the Labour movement and of exposing the real record of the Labour government on this score. Build it!
ANN HENDERSON (Edinburgh SLP and WWCO) For further details about the rally or Parkers and or tacte we not a cur Party branch Oldham, contact Women'S Centre, Third Floor, 57 Miller Street, Glasgow.