Building the movement

November has been another busy month for Wanda as, one talk, presentation and event at a time, she spreads the message that inequality is bad for us all. 

Starting with a presentation at the Queen Mary #EqualPay50 event, Wanda spoke alongside Carrie Gracie and Professor Geraldine Healy about combatting the gender pay gap.

Wanda and Rianna also headed to Brussels to coordinate a European Fight Inequality Alliance meeting, ahead of the Global Protests this January and to lobby European MEPs on tackling financialisation and inequality. To round it off, on Friday 22nd November Wanda spoke at Barclays National Charities Day, on increasing socio-economic diversity in the voluntary sector. We are also delighted to announce that Wanda has been elected to be a trustee of the Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations (ACEVO), where she will continue to press for the sector to tackle inequality.

Would you like to work for us?

Come and work for The Equality Trust! We have a fixed term vacancy for our Equal Pay Campaign Officer role. Applications close Tuesday 3rd December 9am, so get your application in soon! For more information, see our website.

The Big Give

Last year the brilliant children and young people that we worked with as part of our Young Equality Campaigners pilot met with the UN Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights, Philip Alston. These conversations contributed to his damning report into the state of poverty in the UK, with the views of young people featuring centre stage at the launch of the report at the UN this June. This project, along with our other work with young people fighting inequality, was made possible by donations we received in both the 2017 and 2018 Big Give Christmas Challenges.

We are excited to say that we will once again be taking part in The Big Give Christmas Challenge. For just one week only, our supporters have the opportunity to double their impact by donating via The Big Give. All donations received between midday on the 3rd December to midday on the 10th December will be matched by our external champion Four Acre Trust and several generous individual pledgers, doubling your donation! Gift Aid can also be added, meaning that a donation of just £50 could be worth up to £125.00, as a direct contribution to expand the work of the Young Equality Activism and Education programme.

By supporting us in The Big Give 2019, you are giving young people a much-needed voice in discussions about socio-economic inequality through our work at an individual, local and national level in the UK and even internationally. Please make a donation after midday on Tuesday 3rd December, tell your friends and family and spread the word if you’re on social media.

Thanks for your support this #EqualPayMonth

This November, we focused our attention on calling out gender pay inequality in UK companies and supporting calls for greater transparency.

At the beginning of the month, we gave out 500 roses to women in central London to mark the beginning of Equal Pay Month and to promote our lifetime loss calculator (which has already been used by over 1,000 women!). We had hundreds of conversations with women – many of whom were shocked to find out that women effectively “stop earning” in November and were even more shocked to see their own estimated lifetime loss (some women even shared their frustrations on Instagram and Twitter). Watch our short video for an overview of the day’s action.

Our friends at the Fawcett Society launched a petition calling on the government to give people the legal #RightToKnow whether they are being paid less than their colleagues, which has reached more than 50,000 signatures!

We’ve got even more planned in the lead up to the 50th anniversary of the Equal Pay Act next year, sign up now for campaign updates and to find out how to get involved.

Join the Global Protests to #FightInequality

Each year in January, the Fight Inequality Alliance (FIA) coordinates mobilisations across the world to highlight the crisis of inequality. We are proud to be the convener of the UK and the European chapters of FIA.

From Saturday 18th to Friday 25th January 2020, thousands of people in more than 30 countries worldwide are mobilising to demand a fairer, more equal and sustainable future and make the voices of people on the frontlines of inequality heard. The global protests will take place as the top 1% meets at the World Economic Forum at the exclusive Swiss mountain resort of Davos. Our mobilisations will see ordinary people coming together to make noise and call on their Governments to listen to its citizens, not the wealthy elite. Let’s not forget that our governments, including the UK Government, have committed to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and SDG 10 is reducing inequalities.

We want our supporters across the UK to get active during this week and there are plenty of ways to get involved:

• Join the London mobilisation to make some noise and drown out Davos
• Organise a leafletting session in your area
• Arrange a meeting with a community leader
• Hold a film screening
• Write a letter to your local paper
• Ask your MP what our Government is doing to fulfil its commitment to SDG 10
• … and many more ideas that we’d love to discuss with you!

To add your event to the global calendar or to find out more, please contact Angela, Local Groups Organiser.

Tell us what you think!

The General Election is an opportunity for us to press the case for a more equal and fairer society, one that we can be proud to live in and to hand on to future generations.

Now is the time to consolidate our manifesto for how we can tackle inequality. This is an opportunity to continue to influence, with a chance for you to support The Equality Trust’s work at national level across parties. We have a proud history of influencing legislation and party manifestos, from the introduction of pay ratio reporting legislation, due to start in Jan 2020 to manifesto commitments to a tax on earnings from wealth and the introduction of the Socio-Economic Duty.

We need your views and commitment to move forward. Please submit your thoughts as soon as possible. You might be concerned about violent crime, physical and mental health, community cohesion, stable government, obesity levels, housing and homelessness, improving the NHS and other public services, or even just an economy that works for all.

LOCAL GROUPS BULLETIN

Equality Oswestry Group

Equality Oswestry’s ‘Food and Friendship’ meeting proved successful, despite one of the speakers dropping out the day before due to illness. Thankfully, Stuart Turnbull from the Shrewsbury Salvation Army, was well prepared to take up the whole session, presenting a full account of the wide range of support offered locally and internationally to those living with inequality. Several questions were raised about the Salvation Army’s liaison with other support organisations to deal with homelessness, social care services and the needs of children and their families in Africa.

The group’s positive relationship with Shropshire Council’s Syrian Refugee Coordinator continues with work underway to establish a programme to support local Syrian refugees. Local chair Maureen is having her first conversational English meet up with a new local from the Syrian community.

The group is also taking advantage of the free use Community Room at the local Morrisons to hold a meeting with Oswestry’s Deputy Mayor to focus on how to move forward with local inequality issues.

Contact Equality Oswestry to get involved.

Cambridge Commons

In addition to the Cambridge Commons monthly meet-ups, the group also organised a parliamentary hustings for the main party candidates in Cambridge on the theme of Inequality, Social Justice and Public Services. This was a chance to get the candidates and voters to focus on the key message that inequality harms the whole of society and that the gap between the richest and poorest matters. 

Cambridge Commons is developing plans for a strategy to communicate that message to a wider audience and to create a set of pledges as part of an Equality Charter that organisations and individuals can sign up to in order to indicate their commitment to reducing the gap.

They are also exploring developing an ‘Equality Audit’ – a set of specific measures that organisations can take to address inequality and would provide a means to track progress. They plan to work with students and other volunteers to develop these campaigning tools. They would welcome shared experience from other groups doing similar things and are continuing to work with the City Council to promote the Living Wage campaign.

Cambridge Commons is also part of a Cambridge wide initiative called Cambridge2030.org which has brought together a group of companies and not-for-profit organisations to apply the UN Sustainable Development Goals in the most unequal city in the UK. The initial focus is on wellbeing before birth and will be formally launched in January 2020.

If any of the above interests you, please get in touch with Cambridge Commons to share ideas.

South Wales Equality Group

South Wales Equality Group is currently planning an event about transport in the New Year, including an introduction to the group and equality; public discussion of lived experiences as well as an expert panel discussion.

They also hope to hold a pre-election hustings event for Swansea candidates in early December.

Please visit their website and Twitter page for updates and information.

Bristol Equality Group

Bristol Equality Group distributed some Equal Pay Leaflets at the Festival of Economics events this week.

The group continues to keep one of Bristol’s FTSE 100 employers on track for Living Wage accreditation, including attending its AGM in October to ask further questions. While the Board is committed in principle, it is still working on the practicalities.

To get involved, contact Equality Bristol.

Do you want to make a difference in your community?

Find your local Equality Trust group or contact Local Groups Organiser, Angela, to find out how you can start an Equality Trust group in your area.

LATEST BLOGS / COMMENT / RESOURCES

• Inspiring projects across the UK to change the rules
• Wanda’s blog for CLASS: The Yachts And The Have Nots
• The TUC questions the effectiveness of Mental Health Awareness Days
• Wanda was among signatories of a letter to the Guardian calling for a citizens’ assembly to reform our democracy 
• Christmas is only for the rich
• Archbishop of York on the failure of wages to provide dignity
• The Equality Trust co-founder, Bill Kerry, on homelessness

KEY DEVELOPMENTS AND REPORTS

• How World Bank rankings promote government deregulation at the expense of human welfare
• Resolution Foundation ‘Feel poor, work more’ report
• High Pay Centre/TUC: How the Shareholder first business model contributes to poverty, inequality and climate change
• TUC: Child poverty in working households skyrockets by 800 000
• The growing list of women seeking equal pay at the BBC
• APPG Report on the Poverty Premium in the UK
• Disabled People work 2 months for free according to TUC Report

INEQUALITY IN THE NEWS

• Local press coverage containing our comments ranged far and wide, including Worcester, Bournemouth, Wiltshire and Dorset on the gap between the biggest and lowest earners
• In 40 years, housing costs have increased from 15% of household incomes to 40% for the poorest UK households
• Local press in Wales: Equal Pay remains a dream
• How inequality fuels the climate crisis
• How the richest get away with paying only 10% tax
• From food banks to shoe banks, how UK children are in need of shoes alongside some of the poorest nations in the world
• Football Australia closes the gender pay gap for professional footballers
• Best life expectancy in the EU is for men in West London
• Wealth held by the Forbes 400 more than doubled

BEST INEQUALITY READS AND LISTENS

• Richard Wilkinson on Ted Talks
• Inequality is hard-wired into the climate emergency
• Institute of Fiscal Studies 2019 election analysis
• A Just Fair Manifesto for Social Rights
• Equally Ours: Equality Manifesto GE2019
• CLES: The Manifesto for Local Economies