womens rights and being in europe

[grasspigeons]

My mum was at the forefront of fighting for employment rights for women (cant give too much away but she was a test case in court for something)

anyway, she says that a lot of employment rights for women were 'won' because they were a condition of joining the EU or whatever it was called back in the day. Britain had to work hard to get itself up to scratch in all sorts of areas to be allowed to join

I'm now pondering whether as we move away from Europe, if some of these employment rights will disappear or be stripped back.

anyone got any knowledge of this

Many senior Tories have already stated clearly that Brexit will mean a rollback of human rights laws and employment law.

But things were painted onto the side of a bus, so it will all be just fabulous.

Right wingers in the conservative party have been talking about getting rid of employment rights for ages. I will be completely gob-smacked if, in a few years time, there are any substantial employment law rights left. I suppose it is possible that maintaining some rights could be made a condition of a trade deal with the EU? If not, I think we are stuffed. For the right wing of the Tory party, which is driving Brexit, surely the aim is a rights free society in which everyone works extremely hard and flexibly for low pay?

Its already happening, the Tories voted against keeping EU human rights legislation 'because it was all covered by the Equality Act'.

Now they are working to destroy The Equality Act with self ID. And you don't hear them jumping on Labour over their stance on All Women Shortlists, do you?

EU law and progressive EU states have kept prodding the UK for years. Brexshit is only gong to be regressive.

Yeah... but we're getting the blue passports back so, you know, on balance...

What about the black passports though? Mine was one of those.

its quite worrying - I'm not going to have more children, but maternity leave is something I can see gradually dwindling

I can easily remember when maternity leave was 6 weeks. But the Tory party hard right are huge admirers of the system in the US, and I don't think they have any statutory maternity leave or pay at all there. So we may well end up with that. In the US they also have the right to dismiss at will with no right to any notice, let alone the right to claim unfair dismissal. A few years back, well before the EU referendum, the Tory hard right were already talking about wanting to get rid of unfair dismissal rights.

Oh, and they generally get 2, maybe 3 weeks of annual holiday entitlement.
Enjoy life post Brexit!

It was what we called the Common Market though the proper name was European Economic Community. When I was in school in the US I learned about France vetoing the admission of the UK. The UK and other countries in the European Free Trade Association were not doing as well so they wanted to join the Common Market. Eventually they did.
What we called the Common Market is made up of the original organizations that became the EU.