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18 May, 2009
A UK Trades Union Congress (TUC) study released 12 May on workers now forced to take involuntary part-time work reveals a sharp increase. On the eve of the UK releasing its first quarter unemployment numbers, the TUC said the number of workers forced into involuntary part-time work had increased to 829,000, the highest figure in 15 years.
One in nine people work only part-time because they cannot find a full-time job, states the TUC. Most of the part-time workers are women, 451,000 compared with 378,000 men. Women who work part-time earn, on average, 36% less than men who work full-time, while men working part-time earn 27% less.
“As unemployment rises, people are doing whatever they can to stay in work,” said TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber. “But while part-time work is better than no work at all, people will be shocked by the pitiful pay rates on offer – a disgrace that millions of women have suffered for many years.”
Workers in part-time employment are subjected to a double jeopardy, because their rates of pay are low and they are unable to work enough hours to make financial ends meet. UK government statistics cite that in job placement centres across the country, more than one in four work vacancies are filled for fewer than 16 hours per week.
On 13 May, the government released figures showing that the number of jobless had risen by 244,000 for the first three months of 2009. That is the biggest quarterly jump in unemployment statistics since 1981. The 2009 increase in those without jobs raised UK’s official unemployment rate from 6.3% to 7.1%.
Also in the UK, hundreds of construction workers converged on the site of the 2012 Olympics in the east London community of Stratford on 6 May. Workers were protesting the wide use of agency labour by contractors on the £9 billion site, undercutting a promise that contractors would pay union-negotiated pay rates and full-time construction workers.