LEAVING the EU would “turn the clocks back” on women’s rights, TUC general secretary Frances O’Grady warns today. 

A new TUC report argues that European Union employment rights have empowered women to challenge unequal pay and inequality at work.

But Labour MP and Leave campaigner Kate Hoey insists that women will continue to be protected by British laws won by trade unions if voters choose to break with Brussels on June 23.

The famous 1968 strike by Ford sewing machinists, which inspired the Made in Dagenham film and musical, pushed Parliament to pass the Equal Pay Act two years later.

The TUC — which was converted to the EU project by promises of a “social Europe” in the late ’80s — says amendments made at a European level have allowed 300,000 women, many of them in low-paid cleaning, caring and catering roles, to challenge bosses if they aren’t getting equal pay for work of equal value.

Even the heroes of the Dagenham strike used the EU laws to win a further pay rise, according to the TUC.

And Ms O’Grady said: “Women have made huge gains in the workplace as a result of EU membership, ranging from protection against pregnancy discrimination to fairer pay, holiday and pensions.

“Brexit risks turning the clock black decades on these hard-won rights.”

But Ms Hoey told the Star: “All the benefits for women on equal pay and equal rights have been won by the hard work and campaigning of trade unionists and campaigners for equality.

“On June 24 they will all remain being enshrined in British law.

“Maybe the TUC should speak to Greek women workers and see how the EU has treated them before producing such a biased report.”

The report comes after Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, Plaid Cymru leader Leanne Wood and Green MP Caroline Lucas met in the shadow of a statue of suffrage campaigner Emmeline Pankhurst at Westminster to issue a joint statement in support of EU membership.

Speaking to the Star, Ms Wood said she was “not an evangelist for the EU” and accepted that TTIP would provide “further challenges” to implementing progressive policies such as public ownership.

She said: “Those are the aspects of the EU I would like to see reformed. But on the whole, on balance, from a Welsh perspective, we’re better off in.

“There are rights which have been won on a European-wide level that risk being lost if we are to pull out.”