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Fair pay for women - a battle for everybody to support
The NUJ is urging chapels and branches to take up the cause of equal pay for women.
Last Friday was Equal Pay Day in the UK to mark the fact that women still earn on average about twenty per cent less than men.
The Financial Times NUJ chapel is organising an equal pay survey and others are urged to follow suit.
Equal Pay Day 2009 was organised by gender equality pressure group the Fawcett Society and public sector trade union Unison – with the support of the TUC.
Supporters of the campaign are urged to do at least one of the following:
- Collect signatures for an equal pay petition.
- Write to your MP and urge them to do more to achieve pay equality.
- Ask your NUJ branch to organise an event.
- Ask your NUJ chapel to organise a survey and lobby management over the issue.
There is more information and resources are available on the Fawcett Society website.
Last year the NUJ launched a campaign to mark the 90th annivserary of the union’s first equal pay agreement – believed to be the first in Britain and Ireland.
Lena Calvert, NUJ Equality Officer, said: “Men in the UK with full time jobs earn on average 17.1 per cent more than women while male part-time workers trouser 36.6 per cent more than their female counterparts.
"I’m sure the union pioneers who negotiated parity in October 1918 would be shocked that we still have to fight for fair pay for women.
“All workers lose out - because paying women less enables employers to keep down the overall market rate.”
Jeremy Dear, NUJ General Secretary, said: “Women journalists do exactly the same work as men and the NUJ is totally committed to keeping up our honourable tradition of fighting for equal pay.
“I urge all chapels to organise surveys so we have the statistics we need to check the facts. Where women are underpaid the NUJ will support chapels to fight for equality.”
2 November 2009
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