COLLECTIVE BARGAINING AND EQUAL PAY: THE COMPARATIVE PATTERN IN EEC COUNTRIES

The Equal Pay Act in the UK has had a limited effect on earnings, but the gap nonetheless is still substantial; in the distributive trades, no women gets on average more than two‐thirds of men's earnings, and among non‐manual workers, women get on average only half. Yet in other EEC countries, minimum earnings are the same for men and women. Enzo Pontarollo, contributing the second half of his major feature on hours, wages and earnings in EEC countries, suggests that this international comparison reinforces the proposition that distribution in Britain is a low‐pay sector (whatever definition of low pay is taken), and that this is true not only in relation to earnings in Britain, but also in relation to distributive workers in other EEC countries. The writer has spent a period of nine months or so discussing working conditions in large‐scale retailing with retail managements and trade unions in EEC countries. The project has been funded by the Italian retail group, La Rinascente.