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Germany VerDi
VerDi has been campaigning to increase the value of women’s work through non-discriminatory job evaluation and equality-focused wage agreements. There are wage agreements which do not differentiate between white and blue-collar workers, and gender specific interests are mainstreamed into collective bargaining policies. This is part of the union’s broader policy on gender mainstreaming, which includes the appointment of a gender mainstreaming collective bargaining coordinator and a project to integrate pay equity into collective bargaining. This has included a discrimination-free checklist for the gender-proofing of collective agreements and work to persuade employers of the importance of avoiding costly litigation on indirect discrimination by implementing equal pay for work of equal value. A key objective is to ensure that pay equity is a central part of the union’s strategy, not a side issue run from the Women’s Department. For example, reforms of collective bargaining rights in 2003-4 introduced a uniform collective agreement for all workers and a major objective was to achieve a gender-neutral collective agreement through a gender-neutral evaluation system for the grading of jobs. In 2003, measures were introduced to reduce gender pay inequalities. As part of this the government intends to examine collective agreements that determine pay and conditions for civil servants in order to check for any discrimination. All parties to the collective agreement have set a deadline of 2005 to ensure that agreements are free of discrimination.
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