Equal pay fight

The gender pay gap has remained stubbornly high, as new figures released this week show that it stands nationally at 9.4 per cent, just barely below last year’s 9.6 per cent.

 
At one company, however, the gender pay gap may be nearly double, and workers are striking in a bid to change this.

 
At Fujitsu, up to 300 IT workers in Manchester are taking industrial action in a dispute over pay, pensions and job security, starting on November 1 with a 24-hour walkout followed by a 48-hour stoppage on November 7.

 
The days of strike action will also be accompanied by a continuous work-to-rule, as well as withdrawal of goodwill and and an ongoing overtime ban from October 31.

 
The strike action comes against a backdrop of vicious job cuts — Fujitsu announced recently it planned to slash 1,800 posts, which amounts to nearly a fifth of its sizable UK workforce.

 
The workers, Unite members, have chosen the date of November 7 for their second planned strike to highlight the specific issue of the gender pay gap, because that day marks when women working for Fujitsu would begin, on average, to work for free for the rest of the year.

 
Unite has used data from pay bargaining to investigate the extent of the company’s gender pay gap at its Manchester site — the findings show that the gap may stand at 16 per cent. On average, men get paid an astounding £5,500 more each year than women working for the company in Manchester.

Pay transparency 
Fujitsu has so far refused to publish its gender pay gap until legislation forcing them to do so comes into effect in 2018. The new rules will mean that companies employing more than 250 people must publish both the average and the median gender pay gap within their workforce.

 
The effectiveness of gender pay gap transparency was highlighted by accountancy firm PwC this week, which voluntarily publishes its pay gap.

 
PwC head of people Laura Hinton noted on Wednesday (October 26) that “publishing our gender pay gap has allowed us to understand the reasons for the gap and helps hold ourselves accountable to make practical changes.”

 
“For example, we know that when senior women leave us, they are more likely to be replaced by a male,” she noted.

 
“We are challenging ourselves on this by testing our recruitment processes, making more senior jobs available as flexible or part time and targeting women who have been out of the workplace for a number of years.”

 
Unite has argued that while the legislation is welcome, companies should be forced to publish much more detailed data beyond a mere headline figure and there should also be a strong enforcement mechanism.

 
Unite has long been a proponent of mandatory equal pay audits, in which companies would be forced to delve into pay gap data much more deeply in a transparent manner and — crucially — they would be forced to take concrete steps to close any gender pay gaps that were discovered in the process.

 
That’s precisely what Unite is calling on Fujitsu to do as its members take strike action next week, explained Unite regional officer Sharon Hutchinson.

Asking questions
“We’ve been aware of the gender pay gap for a while now, but Fujitsu has been very reluctant to give information,” she said.

 
Hutchinson noted that at Fujitsu, all workers are on a set pay scale but no one knows which scale others are on. This lack of transparency has helped fuel an ever-widening gender pay gap.

 
“The pay gap has festered because for the most part, women never questioned their pay rates,” she explained. “It’s only been in the last 12 months that women have started to ask questions and what we’ve found is significant pay inequality.”

 
Hutchinson added that Unite is calling on Fujitsu to tackle the gender pay gap immediately by publishing pay gap data as well as introducing a Living Wage for all employees.

 
“They know that they will have to publish pay gap information by law once the new legislation kicks in,” she noted. “They’ve brushed our concerns aside for too long — with our decisive strike action we’re demanding that they change their tune.”

 
Unite national officer for equalities Siobhan Endean hailed the action that the Fujitsu workers are taking to stomp out gender pay inequality once and for all.

 
“Women workers across the economy are sending all our support to the workers in Fujitsu who have set out their determination to the senior management of the organisation that they want fair and transparent pay,” she said.

 
“The gender pay gap is often the result of discrimination when individual performance pay prevails,” Endean added. “Collective bargaining through strong trade union organisation in the work place is the best way to achieve equal pay for all. Fujitsu should come back to the bargaining table, stop the pay secrecy and negotiate a fair and equal pay policy.”