Catherwood LibraryILR School

Britain's equivalent of the U.S.'s AFL-CIO, the Trades Union Congress (TUC), is increasingly facing tough questions what it has and has not done for women in both the membership and the ranks of union officers. For many women in Britain's labor movement, the widespread expectation that the TUC will, for the first time ever, today appoint a woman to the organization's second-highest position has merely served to highlight the overwhelming deficit of female leaders in the top ranks of the umbrella labor organization and its various affiliates. These complaints have been exacerbated by the continuing existence of pay gaps between female and male union workers in the same jobs that---while far less than the thirty-three percent pay gap between non-unionized working men and women---are still hovering around eleven percent.