Received from: TUC Women's Conference
The Covid-19 crisis has impacted women with job losses, maternity/pregnancy discrimination, unsafe working practices, working from home issues including domestic abuse, being undervalued as key workers, and serious problems for migrant women workers. Self-employed and freelance women are also vulnerable.
EQIAs are essential for negotiating recent changes to working practices, particularly home-working policies, risk assessment, redundancies, working hours, fair pay and conditions.
The government has not performed any EQIA on its Covid-19 measures nor consulted with the EHRC when developing guidance.
Congress welcomes the Women’s Budget Group report, Creating a Caring Economy, calling on government to take action to address inequality.
Therefore, Congress calls on the General Council and affiliates to:
i. prioritise protecting everyone’s safety, jobs and income
ii. encourage women to become health and safety and/or union equality reps
iii. train reps to carry out EQIAs
iv. campaign for mandatory workplace EQIAs – and for implementing and monitoring their actions
v. campaign to extend the equality duty to the private sector
vi. in all TUC Women’s Committee activities, give consideration to the particular challenges faced by self-employed/freelance women
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- write to MPs for a strategy supporting women through Covid-19, tackling child poverty and addressing Covid-19’s immediate impact through:
- new redundancy protection for pregnant women/new mothers
- a national childcare strategy
- a national funded strategy supporting women facing domestic violence/abuse
- decent social security, not universal credit
- a public sector pay rise
- national living wage increases
- a trade union rights’ framework.
TUC Women’s Conference