Gender and labour regulations - Professional equality and the recognition of care professions
Foreword
Does the professional equality index offer a faithful overview of the pay gap between women and men?
Thomas BREDA, Juliette DUCOULOMBIER, Paul DUTRONC-POSTEL, Marion LETURCQ, Joyce SULTAN PARRAUD and Maxime TÔ
In September 2018, the French government implemented a suite of measures to reduce wage gaps between women and men. Among these measures, a requirement on all private companies with more than 50 employees to calculate their professional equality index. They must attain a minimum threshold on this index, or face sanctions. We analyse the efficacy of this index in highlighting pay inequality between women and men. After first explaining the rules for calculating the index, we analyse the results for companies in 2020 and compare them with male-female pay inequalities measured using other indicators. We observe that the pay gap indicator as measured by the index tends to minimise the true level of inequality, resulting from the exclusion of certain employees, from the option for companies to declare the index to be incalculable, and the methodologies chosen.
Keywords: male-female equality, professional equality index, remuneration, pay gap.
Professional equality: an oversight of collective bargaining around remote working
Sophie POCHIC and Cécile GUILLAUME
In France, remote working policy is often borne of collective bargaining; company-wide agreements signed on the subject have proliferated during the pandemic. This qualitative study carried out at 18 companies allows for an understanding of the evolution of the bargaining dynamic in respect of remote working in the period between 2020 and 2024 and to examine the (weak) consideration of the professional equality dimension, as part of a feminist perspective on worker relations. This article identifies three approaches – extensive, restrictive and minimalist – to remote working, strongly affected by the work sector, and therefore the type and qualification of the work. It underlines the oversights and sexist biases engrained in collective bargaining, as much on the part of employers as unions, with the implicit definition of « best practices » in remote working continuing to be androcentric and socially situated.
Keywords: professional equality, collective bargaining, remote working, sexist bias.
Thèmes : négociations collectives ; genre.
Reducing disparities and expenditure for public finances: towards a public sector of care
François Xavier DEVETTER, Muriel PUCCI and Julie VALENTIN
Early years and loss of independence care services are increasingly recognized as needing to be enshrined in a « public service », in the sense that they cover social needs considered as essential. This article offers an evaluation of the potential cost, from the point of view of public finances, to replace the current system with one based on a care civil service allowing for the homogenisation not only of working conditions but also access to these services across the country. We show that, in the early years and elderly care fields, offering a service level identical to that of the tenth-best-equipped county, 183 000 more jobs would need to be created, which would cost 7,9 billion euros. Through these estimates we show that the costs of the current system are already largely footed by public finances and that the creation of a care civil service would not constitute a disproportionate investment.
Keywords: care, public sector, working conditions, equality of access, public finances.
My job is worth it! A consultation on the feminised professions of care work
Louis-Alexandre ERB, Séverine LEMIÈRE and Rachel SILVERA
The consultation « My job is worth it! » carried out between late 2021 and early 2022, gave the floor to around 7 000 workers in the care industry, giving them the opportunity to explain the reality of their work, its complexity, working conditions and hardship. This material is analysed against criteria derived from the legal principle « equal pay for equal work », in order to bring to light the under-valuation of these very feminised professions. The complex and/or technical nature of the work, responsibilities, qualifications and organisational requirements are detailed, with direct quotes serving to enrich the statistical data. Despite the diversity of care professions, a number of similarities are nevertheless apparent, enriching knowledge on the undervaluation of feminised professions.
Keywords: care, feminised professions, “My job is worth it!” consultation, undervaluation.
The study of unionism through the lens of multiple and intersecting dominations
Cristina NIZZOLI
The globalisation of production, the tertiarization of the economy and new modes of labour mana-gement have altered the conditions of representation and conflict for workers. Through a study on the practices of the Italian CGIL in the cleaning sector, this article shows how the observation of multi-ple and intersecting dominations is fertile ground to study the workings of union representation. Where union representation is staffed by white Italians, having never worked in the sector and not sharing the workers’ experience of oppression in this « dirty job », the only link between them is the relationship of trust. It is nevertheless difficult to maintain over time and, when it is not accompanied by structural changes in the modalities of representation, it fails to constitute a long-term driver of union engagement for these employees.
Keywords : cleaning industry, CGIL, trade union representation, domination.
Regulation and practice of remote working: union representatives and remote working in the services
Sophie LOUEY
While remote working has been used in some service companies since before the 2020s, it seems to have been of little interest to unions. Yet, during the health crisis, and since, union activists have, like many other employees, become remote workers, and have had to adapt their practices in order to pursue their activities in a changed professional and union context. We have carried out a collective study on the effects of remote working on union activity in insurance and assistance companies: through this study we are able to observe that remote working, on the one hand, was already in use before the health crisis, but on the other hand became widespread during the Covid-19 crisis and laid down a challenge for unions, requiring union representatives to change their organisation and practices in a context of increasing union workloads.
Keywords : remote working, trade union collective, services, insurance, assistance.