Greater income inequality, higher levels of insecure work, and the emergence of a two-tier workforce pose serious problems for women workers, the Irish Congress of Trade Unions 2014 women’s conference was told yesterday.

Addressing 200 delegates representing women workers north and south, Congress assistant general secretary Sally Anne Kinahan said the economic crisis had brought more badly-paid, insecure work. “The only way to combat this is to make decent work – good pay and good jobs – a key ambition for post-troika Ireland,” she said.

She said women – especially younger women, migrant workers, women with lower skills and women with children – were most severely hit by insecure and low paid work.

IMPACT member Marion Jackson, who’s a school secretary in a primary school in Sallins, county Kildare, told the conference about the continuing disparity in employment terms for school secretaries. “There are two groups of school secretaries – those paid directly by the Department of Education and those who are paid out of the so-called ancillary grant. In effect these secretaries, like me, have been contracted out.

“The secretaries paid by the education department are public servants and have standardised terms and conditions. The grant-paid secretaries are individually employed by the school boards of management who can pay any amount they wish” she said.

Please sir

Marion told delegates that many school secretaries have no contracts and that many have their employment terminated at the end of the school term and are forced to sign on the dole during the summer months. “In some schools, there are two school secretaries doing exactly the same job with one being paid by the department and the other having to go cap-in-hand to her board looking for a rise. Please sir, can I have some more?”

Marion added that the Government had briefly recognised secretaries like herself as public servants. “Ironically we were, for a brief period, recognised by the Government as public servants when they included us under the law used to impose pay cuts on public servants.”

She said that her experience was not unique as thousands of other women experience what is now called precarious work. “Unfortunately this is a trend which has gotten worse since the onset of the economic crisis. Like school secretaries, many women are on short fixed-term contracts or, worse, have no contracts at all and no access to basic conditions like pensions, sick leave and promotional opportunities.

“The erosion of decent working standards has led to a worsening of inequality and has left those experiencing it just about surviving on a week-to-week basis. This is no way to live happy and fulfilled lives. It breeds worry, insecurity and anxiety and has a huge impact on family life too."

She said the alternative to precarious work must also include decent pay. “For the last five or six years we've all had to take a big hit to our incomes. Now that growth is coming back to the economy it's time that workers got a fair return so that they can begin to live again and dare to hope for the future.”