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Archive : ISG Pamphlets : Even More Unemployment - The Case Against EMU
Why women won’t be conned
The Equal Opportunities Commission (Wales) held a conference in May about the new equality provisions of the European Union - The Part Time Work directive and The Parent Leave Directive. Through the development of equality provisions such as these, and the provision of social fund money to retrain women, the EU has promoted itself as a positive force for women’s rights. EU propaganda claims that the Treaty of Amsterdam places unemployment and citizen’s rights at the heart of the Union. The treaty also contains a specific commitment to equality between men and women and to fight discrimination on other grounds. These fine words are belied by the economic policies that are written into the same treaty and by the ineffectiveness of rights that ignore fundamental economic disparities along the lines of class and race. The process of Economic and Monetary Union across the EU demands that labour is "flexible". This is an acknowledgement that industrial restructuring has led to the decline of secure full-time employment. Rather than trying to improve the employment opportunities of workers, the EU promotes economic conditions that lead to labour casualisation. The Maastricht Convergence Criteria, reiterated in the Treaty of Amsterdam, ensure that EU economic policy is committed to low inflation as a priority above employment. The effects of this policy can already be seen in the drive for industrial competitiveness across the EU, inherent in the process of economic convergence, which has lead to a squeeze on wages and redundancies. These hit hardest at low skill occupations - the low-paid, mostly working class women. In this context the Part Time Work Directive seems particularly inadequate. Clause 4 of the Directive provides that "part-time workers should not be treated less favourably than comparable full-time workers, and that the pro-rata principle should apply". These rights are only available to employees - agency workers and the self-employed are excluded. Working class women, who still constitute the majority of casual labourers, are thereby excluded from the employment protection they are most in need of. The provision of rights through the EU regularly ignores the economic imperatives which make rights inaccessible as The Parental Leave Directive also demonstrates. This Directive requires employers to introduce a minimum of three months parental leave for male and female workers, to be taken before their child’s eighth birthday. It also provides for the introduction of family leave for working parents, in the event of sickness or accident and protects workers against dismissal on the grounds that they have taken parental or family leave. Although these rights are welcomed by feminists as a step in the right direction, they are a tiny step. Consultation with business has ensured that the EU parental leave provisions, according to EOC predictions, are only likely to cost business £5 per year per employee. This is because parental leave does not have to be paid. As the Maternity Alliance have commented "hardly anyone will be able to afford to take it … unpaid parental leave will be beyond the wildest dreams of most parents". Employers also have the right to deny parental leave when it is not convenient for their business. Once more the needs of women are subordinated to the needs of capital. The final EU sop towards women’s equality is also under attack at the Cardiff Euro summit. Agenda 2000, the proposed basis for enlarging the EU towards the East of Europe, will be debated at this summit. The proposal is to enlarge the EU by an additional 6 member states and to divert 15% of EU structural funds towards improving the economies of these new members. Agenda 2000 redefines the objectives under which structural funds are allocated. Although there remains a commitment to funding projects that promote training for women and that combat social exclusion, there is less funding available overall. The EU commitment to women’s rights is selective. It provides the right to parental leave from employment but not the right to employment. It provides the right to ask employers to give consideration as far as possible to requests from full-time workers to work part-time but not from part-time workers to work full-time. Although women and men are treated equally by these directives they ignore the fact that some (well-paid, securely employed) women are better able to access these rights than the women who are economically insecure. The underlying trend of European economic convergence is to attack the welfare state and job security. This constitutes an attack on the services where women are the primary users and the majority of employees. It also constitutes an attack on women’s employment, as women constitute up to 80% of those in low paid insecure jobs in EU member states. An understanding of these economic realities behind the EU rhetoric of equality is leading women across Europe to join the Cardiff EU Summit Demonstration.
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Cath Larkin