Paddy Lillis – Usdaw General Secretary says: “Providing care has an impact on most aspects of women’s daily lives, decision making and financial circumstances and yet their care responsibilities and the effort required to make themselves available to do their jobs is frequently invisible to or ignored by employers. Due to this lack of recognition and support in the workplace, women carers are often compelled to reduce hours of work, take unpaid or sick leave or give up work altogether. This has a knock-on effect on income.
 
“While we welcome government measures to provide carers with the ability to take time away from work and acknowledge that they give trade unions a base from which to negotiate improvements, without pay they make little practical difference to low paid women carers. There is still much to do in policy terms to ensure that care is valued and carers are supported appropriately. Public expenditure must be regarded as an investment in our communities, our society and our economy.”
 
Usdaw calls on the ICTU to continue to press for:

• Flexible and paid employment rights that explicitly value the contribution of unpaid carers, no matter what kind of job or contract they have.
• Improved access to quality and reliable social care.
• Social security and decent jobs that prevent and protect against poverty and enable women to work and care. 

Notes for editors:

Usdaw (Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers) is one of the fastest growing unions in the TUC and the UK's fifth biggest trade union with around 360,000 members. Most Usdaw members work in the retail sector, but the union also has many members in transport, distribution, food manufacturing, chemical industry and other trades www.usdaw.org.uk

For Usdaw press releases visit: http://www.usdaw.org.uk/news and you can follow us on Twitter @UsdawUnion