Windfall for the working woman?

Press, Volume CXVI, Issue 34104, 17 March 1976, Page 6

Windfall for the working woman?

(N.A. Staff Crspdt) LONDON. Women workers all over Europe could be in for a back pay windfall of hundreds of pounds, francs, lire, marks and guilders — thanks to a former Belgian air hostess. When Ms Gabrielle Defrenne left Sabena Air, the Belgian national airline, she was not given the same pension as that awarded to male stewards.

Angered at this discrimination, she took her case to the European Economic Community’s Court of Justice, the Common Market’s highest legal authority. The court’s advocate-general has just ruled that all women in the six original Common Market nations should have been receiving equal pay with men for the last 14 years — since the E.E.C. formally came into being. And women in Britain, Ireland and Denmark should have had equal pay since January 1973, when they joined the community.

If the ruling is upheld by the European Court — which will make a decision within a month — it will spark off an avalanche of back-pay claims that could cost the nine E.E.C. nations millions of pounds.

Estimates in Britain are that claims for about SNZIB7Om in three years’ back pay could be involved in Britain alone from women who have not been getting the same wages as men for identical work.

The advocate-general Mr Alberto Trabucchi does not have the final say, but past experience .shows that the full court usually accepts his judgment.

The key to the case is Article 119 of the Treaty of Rome, which established the European Community. This calls on member States to "ensure and subsequently maintain the application of the principle that men and women should receive equal pay for equal work.” The members have claimed that this is a general constitutional principle which needs legislation in individual national parliaments to make it law. Mr Trabucchi has ruled: “Not so.” The Common Market issued a directive last year, calling' on all member Governments to institute equal pay by February 10 this year. The- Irish Government, wracked by acute economic problems is already in hot water for refusing to obey.

Britain has followed the order passing national laws for equal pay for equal work which came into effect last January I. Reports from Brussels indicate that most member nations are hoping the European Court will recognise the political difficulties and immense cost to national economies of handing out up to 14 years’ back pay to women workers before they accept Mr Trabucchi’s opinion.

Mass for Onassis.— Mrs Jacqueline Onassis. widow of Mr Aristotle Onassis, the Greek shipping millionaire, and his daughter, Christina, attended a requiem for him at his grave on the tiny island of Scorpios on the first anniversary of his death. Mr Onassis was 69 when he died in Paris last year. — Athens.