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3 Full details are available in ’Health & Safety at Work*. Department of Employment booklet, No. 23, HMSO 1973; and ’Hours of Employment of Women & Young Persons Employed in Factories: A Report’, HMSO

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In general, the hours worked are limited by lav; to nine hours a day and forty-eight hours a week, with a small allowance of overtime. Night work and x^ork on Sundays is normally prohibited, but shift work on weekdays between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m. may be authorised in certain circum­ stances. The Secretary of State for Employment has power to grant

exemptions (renewable annually) upon application by individual firms. Exemptions are normally granted if the conditions are suitable and the workers concerned have no objection.

Most of the heavy labour in industry is left to men, although this is by custom and not by law, except in the coal industry where, under the Mines and Quarries Act 1954, it is illegal to employ women as underground workers. It is also proposed to repeal this legislation under the Equal Opportunity legislation. In fact, most m o d e m British laws concerning welfare, health and safety in factories apply to everyone regardless of age and sex.

The proposal to abolish the existing legal restrictions on women1s employment has been debated for many years. As the Department of Employment pointed out'*’ most of these restrictions fwere imposed at a time when social and industrial conditions were vastly different from what they are today* and it has been suggested that these now stand in the way of higher produc­ tivity, greater industrial efficiency and the economic advancement of women.

The Trades Union Congress, however, has in the past argued that repeal of restrictions might lead to further exploitation of women, that women will still be expected to do the additional job of running the home, and that until the Equal Pay Act is implemented, repeal would provide employers with a supply of cheap labour for night work. There is, among many trade unionists, a dislike of a fblanketf repeal of protective legislation, and a preference for the flexibility of the present fexemption after consul­ t a t i o n system, as well as concern for greater protection of the safety and health of all employeees.

1 Department of Employment evidence to the House of Lords, Vol. I, p. 4, para. 11.

On the other hand, the DE point out that current practice shows that over the country as a whole, women’s hours of work are often less than the statutory maximum, at least, as settled (like those of men) by agreement between the trade unions and the employers’ associations concerned, while their actual hours in practice are not (like those for men) generally

extended by overtime working. The average time worked by women of 18 years of age and over, in all the manufacturing industries and in some of the principal non-manufacturing industries, is about 38 hours a week.

In Northern Ireland, too, the Houghton Committee were divided on the advisability of altering the protective legislation on hours of work for women. ’Some of us felt that if women were to receive equal pay and ...

opportunity, they should no longer be sheltered behind this kind of protec­ tive legislation. The analogy, too, was drawn with the nursing profession where round-the-clock working has always been the rule. The majority of us felt, however, that the prohibition should remain, arguing that indus­ trial conditions were vastly different from those in hospital and suggesting that although shift work might initially be on a voluntary basis, it might eventually tend to become a condition of employment’'*'.

In certain areas of public service, for which the Home Office is respon­ sible, such as, police, the prison service, fire service, probationary and after-care service and immigration service, there may be no legislative discrimination between the sexes (except that the Prisons Act 1952 requires the appointment of a female governor of a female prison), but it may be found that the administrative regulations by which the services are run are frequently drafted in terms of a ’male person’ and certain assumptions are made as a matter of customary practice.

b) Legislation Relating to Pregnancy

The only other class of legislation specifically restricting women’s employment relates to their actual, or potential, child bearing capacity.

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The safety legislation restricting the employment of women on dangerous or harmful materials falls in this category. There is no restriction relating to women not working in factories.

There is also no legislation, outside that relating to the conditions on which maternity benefit is payable, beyond the Public Health Act 1936, s. 205 (relating to England and Wales) and the Factories Act I

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(relating to Scotland) which prohibit an employer from ’knowingly’

employing a woman within four weeks of the birth of a child: an employer who does employ a woman during this period is liable to a small fine but no prosecutions under either Act appear to have taken place for many years'*'.

Women in Great Britain have, therefore, no legal right to protection in employment during pregnancy, no legal right to maternity leave and there is no obligation on the employer to keep a woman’s .job open after her confine­ ment.

In most cases, absence for maternity leave is regarded as a break in employment. This affects pension and various other rights based on contin­ uity of service. The government have proposed that the Equal Opportunities Bill should remedy one of these anomalies, whereby a woman absent on maternity leave may lose her entitlement to ’redundancy payment’ which requires a

two year previous employment qualification. It does not propose to give women a right to reinstatement in their .jobs after maternity leave.

The TUG Women's Advisory Committee have made several studies of maternity leave. Their

1969

’women would only wish to return to work within weeks of the birth of her child where there were severe economic difficulties. The most important issue, therefore, was to ensure adequate social security allowances to maintain a mother and her child. The

1 This was the finding of the TUC Women’s Advisory Committee See ’Women Workers

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Advisory Committee did not support the principle of legislation to prohibit the employment of women following child-birth, but took the view that if there were legislation it should include a clause enabling a woman to return to work if it were proved this would not be injurious to her health or that of her baby: in the case of still-birth it might be important not to place any obstacle in the way of the woman returning to employment. The Advisory Committee considered it to be important to ensure that pregnant women should be protected while they remained in paid employment and supported those parts of the ILO Convention

(

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Attention was also drawn to the likely effects of the journey to and from work.

The TUC was concerned that very little information was available about the effect of working condit ions on the health of pregnant women and argued that there should be a comprehensive occupational health service, large enough to deal with the problems of the pregnant woman worker. Proposals were consequently put forward to the Department of Employment in 1970 for paid maternity leave and for pregnant women to be given time off work with pay, as a right, to attend ante-natal clinics during the whole period of pregnancy.

The reply of the Employment Secretary to the TUC proposal emphasised the problems of framing and enforcing legislation to protect pregnant women, and argued that the social security benefit system was adequate to enable women to refrain from working. It was also pointed out that the Industrial Relations Act would protect a pregnant woman from unfair dismissal.

The Department of Employment also reminded the TUC that it was open to unions and employers to make more favourable arrangements themselves. The TUC General Council drew the attention of all affiliated unions to the desirability of including maternity leave arrangements in collective agree­ ments, and to let the TUC have copies of them. At the present time, there are not many in the private sector, but in the public sector they are more widespread. The TUC Women’s Advisory Committee carried out a study of these and published a statement of fbest practice1**'. This recommended that mater­ nity agreements should cover all women workers with more than twelve months service; that they should grant eighteen weeks leave; and that they should give full pay for four weeks and half pay for fourteen weeks. Further proposals included restrictions designed to ensure that the woman resumed work after maternity leave; the exclusion of maternity leave from sick pay entitlement calculations; and protection for the health of the post-natal mother as well as paid leave for attendance at ante-natal clinics.

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