The contents of the seminar

The Education Department of the European Trade Union Institute organised a joint course with UNI Europa: "Promoting gender equality in the Postal sector" which was held from 22 to 24 June 2010 in Vienna, Austria. The aims of this event were:

To enable women being more active on international level, get self-confidence and enable them to coordinate and communicate.
To identify the common problems they are all faced with in the postal sector, how to coordinate the topics and bring them into the discussion.
To share experiences and support each other on national level and raise the numbers of women active on international and national level.

The participants were welcomed to Austria by Ms Verena Wiesner on behalf of the Austrian trade union GPF. Jean-Claude Le Douaron gave a brief overview of the activities of the European Trade Union Institute. The aims and activities of UNI Europa were introduced by Ms Cornelia Berger. (Download her presentation from the "Document" section of this site.)

In working groups the participants exchanged about the state of play of gender equality in their respective countries and trade unions. As in many other sectors women are often overburdened when trying to conciliate work duties with family life. Child care has in some countries often to be organised on a private and quite often expensive basis, limiting the opportunities for women to engage in trade union work.
There is a general trend in Europe to decentralise collective bargaining and to replace tarifs in collective agreements with individual wages. In such negotiations women seem to be less assertive when it comes to claim their fair share of wage increases. Women in the postal sector are confronted with H&S problems due to working time arrangements, late hours and risks of assault during their rounds.

Employers in some countries demand higher and higher time flexibility, making it difficult to combine work and family life. Women are also overrepresented in part time or other precarious work contracts.

Most represented organisations have specific bodies to promote gender equality. And some unions have quotas stipulating a minimum proportion of women on election lists. The participants agreed about that the declared gender equality policies of their organisations are not enough reflected in the means at their disposal to implement and monitor those policies. In most of the present trade unions the proportion of women in decision making bodies doesn't correspond to the composition of the membership and of the workforce.
Where women committees exist they are quite often underfunded or meet obstacles to obtain the resources to organise relevant activities as training or meetings. The lack of child care and the timing of meetings make it difficult for women to participate in meetings and to be candidates for elections. Women need to support each others to get confidence so that they more actively can take part in trade union activities at all levels.

The UK experience on Mainstreaming Gender Equality whitin the Connect trade union was presented by Ms Denise McGuire nowadays Deputy Vice-President of Prospect and UNI World Women's President. Ms Verena Wiesner gave an overview of the same topic in the framework of the Austrian union GPF and her national confederation ÖGB. (Their presentations can be downloaded from the "Document" section of this Web Site)

The Management Committee of UNI supports the proposal to the Nagasaki World Congress of UNI in November 2010 to work towards a minimum of 40% women and 40% men in all UNI decision-making structures. The participants also seized the opportunity to discuss and develop action plans to promote Gender Equality in their national unions and made also proposals about how cross boarder cooperation on those issues could be further developed.

Some useful links

UNI Europa

UNI Globa Women Workers

INTERNATIONAL TRADE UNION CONFEDERATION - CONFEDERATION INTERNATIONALE DES SYNDICATS

EUROPEAN TRADE UNION CONFEDERATION - CONFEDERATION EUROPEENNE DES SYNDICATS

EUROPEAN TRADE UNION INSTITUTE - INSTITUT SYNDICAL EUROPEEN

INTERNATIONAL LABOUR ORGANISATION - ORGANISATION INTERNATIONALE DU TRAVAIL