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Union negotiating teams with at least 40% women members and training for all union negotiators on gender issues are part of a 10-point plan to tackle Europe’s persistent pay gap between men and women.

The UNI-Europa Women’s conference, meeting in Nyon, Switzerland, also called for an Equal Pay Day every year and affirmative action to improve work-life balances.

Men still earn more than women - by an average of 25% across the European Union - in spite of years of equality laws. Discrimination cheats women out of 500,000 Swiss francs in their working lives in Switzerland, the conference heard.

An action manual, checklists, guidelines, a regular exchange of best practices and campaign cooperation with bodies like the ETUC are among the ingredients in a strategy to win pay equity and equal opportunities - a move that will bring more women into trade unions.

“Equal pay for work of equal value is an indicator of the level of democracy in a society,” said the conference, whose slogan was Unions=Women=Pay.

“Equal pay for women means allowing them to take control of their own lives and be financially independent. It also means respecting the often different set of skills women possess and valuing those skills.”

The conference elected Mette Kindberg of HK Denmark as the new UNI-Europa Women’s president with Grace Mitchell of CWU UK and Daniela Rondinelli of FISCAT-CISL Italy as vice presidents.

“Women are les well employed, they are less well paid, they interrupt careers to bring up children - encouraged by parental leave systems that benefit the career of men,” Bernadette Ségol, UNI-Europa Regional Secretary, told the conference.

And the gender gap doesn’t end with retirement - fewer women have access to a pension and in Italy women have 40% lower pensions than men.

Bernadette highlighted pressure for a European social contract to ensure common thresholds for social measures.

She briefed participants on moves to break the Brussels deadlock on a directive to cover temporary agency workers - the majority of them women. “If we cannot establish equal pay for temporary workers from their first day (of attachment) with their colleagues we will see the pay gap grow”.

As laws have prohibited open discrimination more subtle ways have emerged to keep women out of jobs - like glass ceilings, said Ilona Schultz-Muller, the outgoing Joint President of UNI-Europa Women who chaired the conference with Andrée Thomas.

“We see old-boy networks being used to stop the spoils being shared,” said Ilona. “But we believe that, in the near future, we can remove the pay gap between men and women - it is a social issue.”

Delegates highlighted the need for fairer pay scale systems and UNI-Europa Women’s 10-point action plan calls for a checklist for union negotiators to “verify that the evaluation of women’s work is not the object of discrimination”.

Armenian delegates: Zhanna Davtyan and Laura Hakobyan	Interpreter Peter Sand with Andree Thomas and Ilona Schulz-Müller

Unions from across Europe reported on their own initiatives to bring pay equity.

From GPA Austria Kirstin Essenthier reported on their campaign to raise the pay of 38,500 doctors’ assistants - 35,000 of them women.

Not easy to organise in so many workplaces and no Works Councils, the union ran a very public campaign - not anti-doctor Kirstin stressed - and visited 1,000 surgeries. A questionnaire sparked follow up ideas and collective bargaining raised the minimum wage in seven out of Austria’s nine states.

Arlette Puraye from CNE Belgium said that in her country the pay gap among full time workers is 15% but 17% among part time workers (figures for the private sector only).

Belgian unions have been looking at ways to end the gender gap sectorally. “We want parity and we want greater transparency in (pay) systems.” In insurance a move to switch from age related pay to a system based on experience - including life experience - could be one of the keys.

Pia Desmet, Monique Marti and Arlette Puraye	Italian delegates

The CWU Ireland ran a “Welcome for Women” campaign to involve more women in the union, said Carol Scheffer. The message to women was join, get active and get involved at a senor level in the union.

4,000 members were surveyed, a researcher was hired and focus groups launched to follow up on the replies. Interested women joined focus groups along with representatives from local branches and the Executive. One key point was to take the campaign away from the capital - Dublin - and to women around the country.

Extra seats have been reserved for women on the Executive and training is in hand to help women members overcome a lack of confidence in seeking advancement identified in survey returns.

In Vodafone Italy unions have recruited women workers - even across 24-hour shift systems and 365 day working, reported Antonella Pizzino of FISTEL-CISL. “We have to be present every day on the ground. We have to look at special shifts for women.”

UNI's new Equal Opporutunities Officer Veronica Fernandes Mendez with UNI-Europa Women' new top team: Daniela Rondinelli, Vice President; Mette Kindberg, President; Grace Mitchell, Vice President

In affluent Switzerland the gender pay gap is 19.7% in the public and private sector, said Catherine Laubscher of UNIA. In commerce the gap is 24%. “Pay equality won’t come by national measures, we have to push for it.”

The union ran a successful campaign with a 50 Swiss franc note for men and a 39 Swiss franc note for women - to highlight the income gap.

In Commerce the campaign aims to raise all pay levels but to ensure that women get more each year to remove the gap - with the first ever differential pay increase claimed in Switzerland. “It’s not equitable to be paid less for doing the same work,” said Catherine.

In Sweden the law compels employers to map their pay structures - every year at the moment but the right wing government wants to relax the measure to every three years, against the wishes of the unions.

“It takes a long time but if you do this work regularly it goes more quickly,” said Ulla-Maria Jonsson of Unionen.

Daniela Rondinelli told the conference that “through collective bargaining we want to establish working time policies to allow a reconciliation between home and working life, with the cost to be shared by the whole of society”.

She reported on the development of working hour groups of part time workers - allowing women to arrange working schedules that suit them best and experiments with working hour banks. “It means that companies can no longer blackmail their employees.”