Download the 16th TUC Recession Report

Today we’ve published our 16th and final Recession Report. From next month we will be moving to a shorter monthly Labour Market Report and a bi-monthly Economic Report. The latest labour market figures cover the
period October to December 2009, and show that 2,457,000 people were unemployed by the ILO measure − down 1,000 (effectively unchanged) compared with last month’s release, which covered September – November. Youth unemployment fell a little, with 725,000 18 – 24 year olds unemployed – 3,000 fewer than last month. Overall, these are quite good results – especially the fall in youth unemployment – but it is far too early to say we no longer need to worry about employment. Read more »

   Filed under: Equality, Labour market, Recession, Recession Report | 1 Comment »

We’ve just published a new review of the impacts that the recent downturn has had for women at work, and examining how proposed public sector cuts might have a heavy impact on working women and families.

I’ve written a post about the issue for Progress Online, which you can read over here.

   Filed under: Equality, Labour market, Public services, Public spending, Recession, unemployment | 1 Comment »

International Women’s Day has seen the release of a fascinating range of women focused facts. These range from the concerning (twice as many men than women think the sexes are equal when it comes to getting the top jobs with men also twice as likely to appear on TV) to the political (Boris Johnson aims to eradicate violence against women in London while Gordon Brown has called for dramatic change to increase female representation on company boards) and the slightly tangential (a higher share of women than men use internet banking in Estonia, France, Latvia and Lithuania). Read more »

   Filed under: Equality | No Comments »

There’s a lot of good stuff in the Guardian’s “Citizen Ethics” series, including an important article by Julian Glover (“Liberty is equality’s intractable opposite.”) The article is a good example of a certain strand of liberal criticism of the current government, and it’s worth going into why it’s wrong. Read more »

   Filed under: Equality, Politics | No Comments »

The final report of the National Equalities Panel (NEP), “An Anatomy of Economic Inequality in the UK” is out today – you can download the full thing or exec summary from the Government Equalities Office website. It’s an exceptional piece of work, describing in graphic detail just how unfair and unequal our society has become thanks to ‘market knows best’ policies. Read more »

   Filed under: Equality, Inequality | 9 Comments »

Regular readers will be following my occasional series looking at the differences between public and private sector pay, prompted by the regular attacks on the public sector by the small state right. Most of this has been a bit dull and geeky as I want to be more careful with the stats than our critics often are, though it has got quite lively. But what about gender? Read more »

   Filed under: Earnings, Equality, Public services | 1 Comment »

We’re glad to see the Court of Appeal today uphold an Employment Appeal Tribunal ruling that a council registrar could not refuse to conduct same-sex civil partnerships for religious reasons.

Lillian Ladele had taken the case to the court after controversial rulings at the original Employment Tribunal and first appeal. Read more »

   Filed under: Equality | Comments Off

This year’s World AIDS Day theme focuses on the rights of people living with HIV/AIDS. And rightly so. In our view, the rights of the people living with HIV/AIDS have not yet received the attention they deserve. According to the ILO, there are over 33 million people living with HIV/AIDS in the world. Over 30 million of them are of working age. Most of them are in developing countries, in Africa in particular, and over half of them are women. Read more »

   Filed under: Equality, Human rights | 1 Comment »

We have not got stuck into the debate about MPs’ expenses here as everybody else has done it to death. Nor do I think – given voter anger – MPs have any option other than to accept the Kelly recommendations in full, even if I agree that some of them are badly thought through. (Charles Clarke has an intelligent critique).

They are collectively guilty of accepting a system that attempted to disguise their pay, by diverting it into an allowance system, so they now have to take the collective punishment. There do seem to me to be two points – however – worth making: Read more »

   Filed under: Equality, Politics | Comments Off

According to an IPSOS-MORI poll (pdf) for the Fawcett Society, a narrow majority of men think that we have a fair pay system while a bigger majority of women disagree.

But when prompted with the size of the pay gap, both men and women want to close it and back equal pay audits.

   Filed under: Earnings, Equality, polling | Comments Off