Sarah Veale's Archive 
Sarah Veale is Head of the Equality and Employment Rights Department at the TUC. The Department covers women’s equality, equal pay, race equality, disabled workers’ equality, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender equality, and equality on the basis of religion and age; as well as leading on employment rights, both individual and collective. Sarah is a member of the ACAS Council and the Government’s Better Regulation Task Force.
Sarah Veale
It may sound like a chapter from a dry history book but the “Swedish” derogation caused some interest at Congress today. Reference was made to it in an Emergency Motion from Unite, who are concerned about its impact on agency workers, and indeed other workers, in the UK. So what is it?
Sarah Veale
A little noticed U-turn by the Coalition Government will mean that 4.9 million people will have to wait longer to get their pension – with 500,000 women aged 56-57 having to work more than an extra year, and 33,000 working for exactly two years longer.
Last May the Coalition Agreement assured people that it would:
“hold a review to set the date at which the state pension age start to rise to 66, although it would not be sooner than 2016 for men and 2020 for women.”
But a few weeks ago you could hear the tyres screech and smell burning tar when the government published new plans to accelerate the increase in the state pension age to 2018 for women, and then increase both men and women’s state pension ages to 66 by 2020. This is particularly bad news for women aged 56 or 57, giving them very little time to prepare or amend existing plans.
Sarah Veale
Today is Equal Pay Day – the point in the year where, because of the gender pay gap in the UK, women start, effectively, working for no pay. In other words because, on average, women are paid 17% less than men, they miss out on around two months’ pay a year.
Gender pay inequality is a deeply embedded form of discrimination at work. Usually, but not always, unintentionally employers value work done by women less highly than work done by men, sometimes even where men and women are doing the same job.
Sarah Veale
Watch out at next week’s Conservative conference for news of changes to the Employment Tribunal system. These are likely to include introducing charges for employees taking claims. This is a response to employer lobbying for the Government to “do something” to reduce the number of cases going to the Tribunals. Treating employees better might be the most productive starting point but no, they would rather make it much more difficult for those who have been sacked, or discriminated against to have their case heard.
Sarah Veale
Here we go again – another right wing “think tank” pronouncing on an issue about which they have little practical knowledge and trying to fix things that are not broken.
Let’s look at their main proposals, as no doubt some of them will be attractive to some in Government – we learned under the Thatcher Government that one day’s mad idea could rapidly become tomorrow’s Parliamentary Bill.
