Legal coercion was an option but it was not always needed, because employers were on the whole eager to keep within the law, and more often sought advice on how to change things than resisted. Once it had found its feet, the Commission found it ‘possible to visit organisations and advise management, employees and trade unions on the legislation and its implications at the place of work’.21 To try to discover the problems, but also as a way of building bridges, the Commission undertook an investigation, with Baroness Seear and the London School of Economics, into the ways that 500 companies (later expanded to 575) had reacted to the new legislation. In those early days the findings were that not much had been done positively, though most complied with the letter of the law.
Protective legislation
One reform that the Equal Opportunities Commission championed from early on was the repeal of the special protective legislation that barred women from certain jobs and shifts, such as the Mines and Quarries Act (1954) and the Factories Act (1961). As the EOC News explained, ‘Legislation embodied in the Factories Act dates from Victorian social reforms that were designed to protect women from the “evils of exploitation by unscrupulous employers.”’
But they argued that
today these restrictions on hours of work not only prevent a woman worker applying for the better paid shift work that her male colleagues can do, but they also mean that in many cases, women are not considered for factory jobs at all.
They commissioned research that showed that ‘the majority of working women approved of women being allowed to work evenings and double day shifts’. On the other hand, most women ‘do not approve of it being done by women with young children’. The Commission recommended ‘lifting the restrictions on nightwork, shiftwork and overtime for women and replacing them with legally enforceable Codes of Practice on hours of work, applicable to both sexes’.22
The Commission was supported by the Health and Safety Executive, which had recommended the repeal of Section 20 of the Factories Act 1961 (the section that ‘deals with the cleaning of moving machinery and provides for the protection of women and young persons, but not for men’). The Commission ‘agreed with the HSE’s recommendation that the section should be replaced by regulations ensuring that only trained adults (regardless of sex) should do this work’.23
Convincing industry
The early years of the Equal Opportunities Commission were marked by success. Their newsletter was full of reports and photos of women who were the first in their field, like Linette Simms, the first to drive a school bus for the Inner London Education Authority; Claudine Ecclestone, the first council plumber; Margaret Gardner, the first woman to become a guard on the Underground; Joanne Oxley, David Brown Tractors’ first engineering apprentice; Anne Haywood, training to be Britain’s first gas-fitter; Debbie Ryan, the first to be taken on as an apprentice painter and decorator under the Construction Industry Training Board schemes; and Jacqueline Abberley, training to be Britain’s first train driver.24 There were firsts for women in the professional world, too: Ellen Winser, the first stockbroker; Geraldine Bridgewater, the first woman to be admitted to London Metal Exchange; and Judith Bell, Marine Broker at Lloyds.25
Gwyneth Mitchell, Scotland’s first ever female artificial inseminator, joked to the EOC News that the ‘main qualification for doing the job well was a strong right arm’.
The important innovation in the 1980s was, in parallel with the Commission for Racial Equality, the Equal Opportunity Commission’s work to persuade employers to adopt their own equal opportunity codes, mirroring the legislative framework set out by the Equal Pay and Sex Discrimination Acts in company policy. In a booklet Guidance on Equal Opportunities Policies and Practices in Employment:
[T]he Commission believes that equal opportunities will not be achieved principally by enforcing laws against discriminatory practices; they can only be attained by the acceptance by employers, and employees and their trade unions, that the full utilisation of talents and resources of the whole workforce is important in their own interests and in the economic interest of the country.26
Baroness Seear’s survey, published as Equality between the sexes in industry: how far have we come?, helped the Commission to identify good examples. In all, ‘Eight firms, Sainsbury’s, ICI, Delta Metal, Cadbury’s, Wilkinson Match, Lloyds Bank, H J Heinz and Rolls Royce are singled out for praise in a report’:
ICI, for example, who have a widely publicised policy on equality, have instituted an auditing system with a built-in monitoring function: factory management have a checklist for identifying the cause of imbalances, and suggesting a course for remedial action.
And:
Sainsburys Limited have adopted a particularly positive approach, identifying areas for action, and providing such benefits as a training course for women wishing to return to work, and special training for women to undertake work previously done only by men, for example, in butchery.
In the last case the Commission added that ‘in the last three years this policy has resulted in the doubling of women managers from 41 to 89’.27 Both Rolls Royce and Lloyds Bank had used positive measures to get women into training, in apprenticeships at Rolls Royce, and in a management training scheme at Lloyds Bank.28 Bringing in equal pay had been done through the employers’ federations and the corporate boards that were common at the time:
National Joint Industrial Councils influenced some employers when the Equal Pay Act was introduced, as in the motor vehicle and repair industry. Others were influenced by their appropriate Federations’ recommendations and suggestions. There was an agreement within the chemical and allied industries towards moving towards introducing equal pay four years prior to the effective date of the Equal Pay Act. Central Arbitration Committee Awards were made in respect of at least four employers we contacted.29
Moreover, ‘a few large companies have made approaches to the Commission for guidance in developing policy in the period of the survey, which indicated that willingness to respond to the issues is beginning to emerge’.
The Commission did worry that ‘only a quarter of the companies surveyed by the EOC had written equal opportunities’ policies, and that positive measures they proposed were ‘seen as low priority compared with other business pressures’. Also, they suspected that ‘traditional and attitudinal barriers have been part and parcel of a view that positive action on equal opportunities is unnecessary and costly’.30
Under the Sex Discrimination Act, ‘the Equal Opportunities Commission has the power to make recommendations to the Secretary of State to lay Codes of Practice before Parliament’. Early on, the Commission prepared a draft Code of Practice to be ‘considered by the TUC, the CBI, the Department of Employment and ACAS as well as other interested bodies and individuals’. The draft was published in March 1978.31
In 1985 Baroness Writtle, who had taken over as chair of the Commission, could announce that ‘last April marked a milestone in the history of the Commission in the approval of our Code of Practice by Parliament, with the wholehearted support of both sides of industry’:
The Commission’s Code of Practice on employment came into effect in April 1985, after several years of consultations, and received the forceful and unqualified support of the then Secretary of State for Employment, the Rt. Hon. Tom King, MP.32
As well as providing ‘far-ranging guidance on the promotion of equal opportunities to give effect to the spirit of the law’, the Code now blessed by Parliament meant that it could be used by any employees ‘as evidence in an industrial tribunal’. The Code was launched at a meeting with Tom King MP, Judge West-Russell, President of the Industrial Tribunals, Sir Terence Beckett, Director General of the CBI, Mr Norman Willis, General Secretary of the TUC and ‘over one hundred employers’ representatives from the private and public sector and representatives of the trade unions’.
At the launch the Tory Minister for Employment, Tom King, said:
I believe passionately, that for Britain to succ
eed, we do have to make most of all the resources that we have: and one of the most neglected resources that we have as a country is the skill, ability and intelligence of many women in society, which has not had the opportunity that it should in the past, but which can make a significant contribution to the future. That is why I support equal opportunities, quite apart from the equity and fairness of it, because for us to succeed as a nation, we must ensure that the potential of women in senior management, professional and skilled occupations is properly recognised and more developed than it has been in the past.
King’s message was echoed by the Confederation of British Industry which issued its own Code of Practice on Equal Opportunities at the same time. The Equal Opportunities Commission’s Code sold 52,000 copies in its first eight months.33
Fifteen years later the Commission would report that in ‘a survey of senior managers in larger UK organisations in Summer 2000, 68 per cent of organisations claimed to have an Equal Pay policy’. What was more, ‘40 per cent claimed that they were currently monitoring the relative pay of women and men’.34 That was a long way off from 1985 though. Looking back, Irene Bruegel and Diane Perrons saw that:
Equal opportunities legislation and in-house equal opportunities policies are generally complementary. The legislation provides a framework for equal opportunities while organisations’ policies set out more practical ways of implementing the policy.35
Beryl Platt was a scientist before she led the EOC
Baroness Writtle claimed that ‘much has changed since the Equal Opportunities Commission came into existence ten years ago, not all of it visible to the public’. Still, she thought that ‘in its totality the change amounts to a record of achievement for which the Commission can fairly claim a substantial share of the credit’. How much was due to the Commission and how much due to broader social changes might be argued over, but in any event Writtle was right to say that ‘the transformation of the attitude of the press and mass media, from one of flippancy and trivialisation to a genuine understanding of the issues, is the most visible change’. The attitude of the general public was one ‘which no longer needs to be convinced’. She highlighted the most lasting change, saying that ‘ten years ago the educational establishment regarded the Sex Discrimination Act as at best marginal to its concerns’. ‘Today’, by contrast, ‘equality of opportunity in education between boys and girls is regarded as a central part of a school’s business’.36
For all that, there was a strong feeling that the early successes of the Equal Pay Act were followed by diminishing returns. So, in the EOC News, it was reported that:
Between 1970 and 1975 when firms were preparing for the implementation of the Equal Pay Act women’s average gross weekly earnings increased from 54.5 per cent of men’s. By 1976 when the Act had come into force they had reached 64.3 per cent. But it looks as if this improvement is tailing off.
The Commission thought that:
It is generally accepted that the Equal Pay Act had a once-for-all effect. There are many other factors contributing to the low pay of women, such as their concentration in low-paid industries, which the Act can have little influence on. The Commission envisages a shift of emphasis over the coming years from ensuring that women are paid equally for equal work to ensuring that the can acquire the skills needed to work in more highly paid occupations…37
Again, in 1982, the Commission had a sombre message, saying that ‘we must also draw attention once again to the fact that the marked progress towards equal pay between 1970 and 1977 has been effectively halted in the last five years.’38 Women’s gross hourly pay seemed to have plateaued at 74% of men’s in the early Eighties.
Outside the Commission, many feminist activists were sceptical. In the magazine Spare Rib Jenny Earle and Julia Phillips wrote that ‘there is little room for doubt that the impact of the Equal Pay Act is dwindling — not that it was ever that substantial’. The narrowing of the pay differential ‘seems to have gone into reverse’.39
Development of the Commission
Another issue that was hard for the Commission to make headway on was the provision of nurseries. Already, at the Women’s Liberation Conference of 1970, campaigners had connected childcare and women’s equality at work. If women were tied down by commitments to raise children, they would not be able to compete fairly with men in the labour market. The WLM Conference called for ‘free, 24-hour nurseries’. The demand seemed utopian to many, but it crystallised the structural inequality in women’s social position.
The Equal Opportunities Commission took up the argument in 1984, saying that ‘Opportunities for women in employment and other areas continue to be restricted by the inadequate provision of childcare services’. As they argued, ‘services for the under-fives and school-age dependent children are essential in allowing parents to combine careers and public duties with a responsible family life’.40 The harsh recession, along with a government committed to resisting public spending commitments, was not a good time to be asking for greater spending. Ideologically, Conservative Prime Minister Thatcher was sharply opposed to women with young children working, and to nurseries for pre-school age children, which she described as ‘soviet’ in an interview with Radio 4’s Women’s Hour.
Stuart Hall on duty at the Women’s Liberation Movement Creche, 1970
Later on the Commission would shift its emphasis toward the questions of ‘work-life balance’, flexibility in work, childcare for working mothers, and the minimum wage in its efforts to close the gender pay gap — which we will look at later on. But still, at the turn of the new century the Commission was appealing that ‘the Government needs to reform the Equal Pay Act which is now 30 years old’.41
Betty Lockwood was chair of the Equal Opportunities Commission from 1975 to 1983. Beryl Platt, Baroness Writtle, who had a background in engineering and was a Conservative Party supporter, if a modernising one, served as chair from 1983 to 1988. After Writtle, Joanna Foster was appointed as chair. She had worked in the Conservative Party Press Office in the 1960s, but was also the first chair to have had ‘a background in the women’s movement’.42 Beatrix Campbell explains that the Conservative women put in charge of the EOC played a key role relaying the Commission’s message back to the party: ‘Amongst Conservatives it was left to the Tory leaders of the EOC alone to defend women against their own party and their own government.’43 Foster was replaced in 1993 by Kamlesh Bahl, who had been on the Law Society executive, and working for British Steel and Texaco on equal opportunities issues. Bahl, though, was a divisive figure among the Commission staff, who saw her as a tyrant, preferring the Chief Executive Valerie Amos, with whom Bahl clashed.44 In 1999 Julie Mellor was appointed chair. Mellor had worked in senior Human Resource Management positions for Royal Dutch Shell and the Trustee Savings Bank, as well as for Islington Council, the Greater London Council and the Inner London Education Authority. Jenny Watson, who had worked at Liberty and Charter 88, as well as in some private-sector positions, took over from Mellor in 2005 until the two Commissions, Equal Opportunities and Racial Equality, were combined as the Equality and Human Rights Commission.
As we have seen, the Equal Opportunities Commission’s budget had been kept down to £3.4 million in 1985, rising to nearly £6 million in 1993, when the Commission employed 171 people. Two years before it was wound up, the Equal Opportunities Commission had a budget of £8.5 million and still a staff of 171. The Equal Opportunities Commission was a little smaller than the Commission for Racial Equality, and spent less, but then the CRE also granted a share of its budget to local Community Relations Councils. The EOC, whose head office was in Manchester, supported sub-offices in Cardiff, Glasgow, and Belfast.
Beyond its own offices, of course, the Equal Opportunities Commission was carried by a lively and intellectually productive women’s movement. Women’s groups, though they were often short-lived, proved to be a durable form of not-so-formal political organisation for thousands of women, who argued and wrote and
protested in all kinds of ways. College campuses and trade unions also sustained strong women’s groups and caucuses. There were many feminist newsletters and magazines, of which Spare Rib (1972-93) was only the most popular, alongside more short-lived publications like Red Rag and Women’s Voice. Bookshops like Silver Moon (1984-2001), the publishing house Virago (since 1973), and the Fawcett Library sustained many women’s groups. Women’s Studies courses were developed at many universities, though these found it difficult to thrive.45 And as we will see, municipal authorities, especially in the larger cities, were the basis of durable women’s committees and offices. Less declaredly feminist women’s organisations like the Women’s Institute, National Association of Women’s Clubs, and the Mothers’ Union also helped to feed ideas into the Equal Opportunities Commission, as well as promoting the Commission’s work.
— FOUR —
Equal Opportunities at Work — How They Came About
The equal opportunities policies are about changing relations at work. From 1980 to 1990 there was a marked uptake of equal opportunities policies and today they are the norm. But back in the early days of the Equal Opportunities and Race Equality Commissions there were no equal opportunities policies. Here and in the following chapters we look at the adoption of these policies and what they meant for the world of work, and why they were adopted.
What stands out is the timing. Equal opportunities policies were taken up around the same time that the older, corporatist, or ‘tripartite’ system was being dismantled. As we saw in Chapter One, the older system of workplace relations was built on a bargain between organised labour and employers. That bargain often meant that women and migrant workers were on a lower rung in the pecking order. But when that older system, the ‘tripartite’ system, was taken apart, a space opened up for a new kind of setup at work. More than that, employers felt they needed to rebuild their relationship to their workforces on a different footing. Surprisingly, given the reactionary tenor of the times, equal opportunities policies featured in the new workplace relations.
The Equal Opportunities Revolution Page 9