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MORE MONEY! WE DEMAND REAL PAY JUSTICE!
Even in 2022, equal pay for men and women* is still not a reality! In 2021, December 5th was the « unequal pay day » in Luxembourg, which means that from that date on, women* worked for free for the remaining 26 days of the year. This persistent injustice is unacceptable and must be abolished now!
Historically, women have had to fight for many decades for the principle of equal pay to be socially accepted and affirmed by legislation. However, if we compare the total annual salary in Luxembourg, women* still earn 7.2 percent less than men. Moreover, they work more often part-time, accumulate career breaks and find themselves blocked in their professional path. As a result, they accumulate less income, can save less, will have less pension and are at greater risk of precariousness and economic dependence.
Women* are overrepresented in low-wage occupations that also inflict difficult and tiring working conditions. The pandemic has shown that women are more likely to work in essential jobs on the front line of the health crisis. It is therefore at the level of low wages that we must act to impose wage justice!
Women* are also less likely to obtain positions of high responsibility. They are clearly disadvantaged when it comes to bonus payments and variable remuneration, being linked to evaluations or to the goodwill of the boss. It is therefore at the level of salary transparency that we must act to obtain wage equality!
Transparency is the only real guarantee against wage discrimination. But equal pay must also be guaranteed by the recognition and revaluation of traditionally female professions which are chronically underestimated and underpaid.
This is why we demand, in particular:
- more transparency : a real obligation to implement control and transparency tools for all companies
- more control : more means for the Labour and Mines Inspectorate
- more compensation : an end to the company culture of long hours and the practice of unaccounted and unpaid overtime
- more exemplarity : responsibility of the State, which must assume its role as an example to follow, implementation of a State seal – not only of the Ministry of Equality between men and women – of equality and diversity for companies
- more progressive careers : objective and guaranteed career progression in all public and private sectors, in particular through more collective agreements
- more figures : implementation of a method for calculating the « gender pay gap » which considers the overall average annual salary + the structural inequality linked to part-time work and the lower activity rate of women
- more revalorization : better recognition for jobs that are mostly done by women and underpaid: cleaning, trade, catering…