‘A very small step’

Nearly 50 years after the Ford Dagenham sewing machinists strike, when heroic women (pictured above) walked out and paved the way for legislation that made unequal pay between men and women unlawful, the gender pay gap still holds stubbornly at close to 20 per cent.

This means that for every 80p a woman earns, a man takes home ÂŁ1.

In certain areas, the pay gap is even wider. For example, in the finance sector, the gender pay gap stands at a stark 55 per cent.

Unite has long called for pay transparency as a way to tackle the pay gap, most recently in conjunction with Grazia and the then shadow minister for equalities Gloria de Piero in a campaign in 2014 that urged the government to force companies to be transparent about gender pay gaps in their workforce.

The campaign was a resounding success, with the government pledging to enact existing legislation in the Equality Act which would make businesses with 250 employees publish information about gender pay disparities.

Today (February 12) marked the latest chapter in that struggle for pay transparency, with equalities minister Nicky Morgan announcing details about how the newly enacted legislation will be implemented.

Beyond publishing data about the gender pay gap itself, companies will also be required to publish the number of men and women in each pay range. The government will publish league tables by sector, and so will highlight which sectors pay more equally and which ones are the worst culprits.

Unite national officer for equalities Siobhan Endean welcomed the news but noted that it was a very small step on the road to gender pay equality.

‘Disappointing’

“The new legislation won’t come into force until at least two years, which is disappointing,” she noted. “Also, the biggest issue for us has been how it’s going to be enforced and how detailed the information they have to publish is going to be.

“What employers can quite easily do is that they can divide their business into subgroups,” Endean explained.  “If you’re a bank for example, you’ve got one division of the business which is branches, one is call centres, and another is investment banking.

“If all of your women work in the call centre and they’re paid at minimum wage and all your men work in investment banking are being paid massively high wages, but you separate that out in relation to your equal pay data, then you’re never going to tackle what is in fact a massive pay disparity in your business.”

Endean noted that the information large companies will now be required to publish will only be a headline figure, and pointed to mandatory pay audits as the next step in true pay transparency.

“Mandatory equal pay audits are much more detailed,” she noted. “Companies have to look at detailed pay information and if they find any disparities they have to take action.”

Unite is campaigning for mandatory equal pay audits for all companies, but at the moment, trade unions negotiate such audits with employers individually – and they’ve made a big difference.

Endean pointed to one equal pay audit undertaken at a food distribution company. Over the course of the audit, it was discovered that 85 people, the vast majority of whom were women, were on a pay rate that varied between ÂŁ8 and ÂŁ24. After negotiations, the company agreed to equalise all pay on the grade over a period of time.

Unite regional women and equalities officer Caroline Simpson noted that equal pay claims in employment tribunals – the only recourse women have at the moment to gain equal pay when there is a disparity – are notoriously difficult to win.

“Lawyers have to do a lot of work and ask the right questions so that the courts force employers to supply the information that will support your claim,” she explained. “Equal pay claims are even rarer now because employment tribunal fees have been introduced under the previous government.”

One notable case, Simpson recounted, was won almost two decades ago when dinner ladies across all councils claimed that they were being undervalued and so underpaid.

“In an equal pay claim, you’ve got to prove that your job is of equal value and for the dinner ladies, their comparator was dustbin men. At the time, dustbin men were getting bonuses for getting out of bed, for finishing on time and for finishing early. The dinner ladies were getting nothing extra – no bonuses, nothing. The dinner ladies claimed that their work was of equal value and they won. It ended up costing millions to sort it all out.”

This historic case, Simpson noted, paved the way for a ground-breaking Unite-negotiated agreement called Single Status in 1997, which applied to all local authorities in England and Wales by 2007.

“Single Status meant that local authorities had to look at every single pay grade, every agreement, every job and make sure they equality-check every single aspect of their entire workforce to eliminate pay differences between men and women doing similar jobs,” she explained. “Single Status took us years to get, but it was a really significant achievement for equal pay.”

Mandatory audits

Simpson and Endean both agreed that today’s news is a good foundation for greater pay transparency but it’s only through mandatory pay audits that companies will be forced to take action.

The measures the government has set out to implement today, they note, won’t go far beyond a simple ‘name-and-shame’ exercise if it isn’t supported by strong enforcement.

“What’s needed, too, to achieve equal pay is sectoral bargaining, collective bargaining, a Living Wage across all jobs and more quality apprenticeships to encourage women into science and engineering,” Endean said.

“Closing the pay gap is a complex problem but it can be achieved – we just have to tackle it from every direction, and that’s precisely what Unite has been campaigning for.”

Find out more about how Unite is tackling the pay gap here.