One particularly satisfying piece of news in the last week is that Jo Swinson and Nick Clegg have forced the Tories to agree to transparency on equal pay between men and women. 45 years after the passing of the Equal Pay Act, women still earn on average almost 10% less than their male colleagues for doing the same job.
Now, after a voluntary scheme saw only five companies publish details of men and women’s pay in their company, an amendment to the Small Business Bill will make the reporting mandatory, with a potential £5000 penalty (as well as the bad publicity) for failure to comply.
The Guardian quotes Nick Clegg and a Liberal Democrat source on this:
Welcoming the move, Clegg said: “While the Liberal Democrats have made real progress in areas like shared parental leave and extending the right to request flexible working, the labour market is still stacked against women.
It simply cannot be acceptable that, in the 21st century, women on average still receive a smaller pay packet than men.
We can’t wait and we can’t dither. We need to sort this out now. Both Jo Swinson and I have pushed for this to happen within government for a long time.
These measures will shine a light on a company’s policy so that women can rightly challenge their employer where they are not being properly valued and rewarded.”
A Lib Dem source added: “In discussions this week, it was clear that the Tories wanted to delay taking any action on equal pay and kick the can down the road, just like they have for the last five years.
“This is extraordinary [in the same week as] International Women’s Day, you have some Tories feigning support for women in the economy while dragging their feet on gender pay transparency.
“It’s a huge U-turn from the Tories but it’s welcomed. At last we can take some real action before the election to make companies publish pay differences between men and women.”
* Newshound: bringing you the best Lib Dem commentary in print, on air or online.
Follow @libdemvoice.org on Bluesky
Like us on Facebook
Subscribe to our feed
Sign-up for our daily email digest
Violent Bonham Carter features on Fake or Fortune?
Have resignations led to a rethink?
High Fell leaflet watch (2)
Two new Makerfield by-election polls gives Burnham 5 and 12 point leads
Peter Martin
expats
theakes
Meg Thomas
8 Comments
Great news. Jenny Willott also deserves a special mention for working on this too.
“10% less than their male colleagues for doing the same job.”
Well, that’s a lie. And the ONS report certainly does not make this claim.
“It simply cannot be acceptable that, in the 21st century, women on average still receive a smaller pay packet than men.”
So what’s Clegg going to do? Force women into the same occupations as men? Force women not to take maternity leave or look after their family? Force women to work as many hours as men?
What a populist, shameless plank. No better than Miliband or Cameron.
“women still earn on average almost 10% less than their male colleagues for doing the same job.”
That isnt an accurate understanding of what the ONS data says. There is a 10% gap – but overall . You have to take account that women are more likely to work in lower paid areas .
My guess is that far more women feel strongly about the fact that median gross weekly earnings for full-time employees were £518, up 0.1% from £517 in 2013.
This is the SMALLEST annual growth since 1997.
This is what the ONS actually said —
Key points
In April 2014 median gross weekly earnings for full-time employees were £518, up 0.1% from £517 in 2013. This is the smallest annual growth since 1997, the first year for which ASHE data are available. Growth has been slower since the economic downturn, with the annual increase averaging around 1.4% per year between 2009 and 2014.
Adjusted for inflation, weekly earnings decreased by 1.6% compared to 2013. The largest decrease was between 2010 and 2011, but inflation-adjusted earnings have continued to decrease every year since 2008, to levels last seen in the early 2000s.
For the year ending 5 April 2014 median gross annual earnings for full-time employees (who had been in the same job for at least 12 months) were £27,200, an increase of 0.7% from the previous year.
The gender pay gap has narrowed, to 9.4% compared with 10.0% in 2013. This is the lowest since records began in 1997, and despite a relatively large increase between 2012 and 2013, there is an overall downward trend, from 17.4% in 1997.
In April 2014 the bottom 10% of full-time employees earned less than £288 per week. At the other end of the distribution, the top 10% of full-time employees earned more than £1,024. Since 1997, earnings at the 90th percentile have remained consistently at around 3.5 times earnings at the 10th percentile.
Median gross weekly earnings for full-time employees increased by 1.0% in the public sector, and by 0.7% in the private sector. The gap has closed slightly over the long term, but private sector earnings have remained consistently at around 85% of public sector earnings since 2009.
http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/ashe/annual-survey-of-hours-and-earnings/2014-provisional-results/stb-ashe-statistical-bulletin-2014.html
The gender pay gap (in terms of people doing the same job) has been illegal for many years. Perhaps instead of just “naming and shaming” employers who flout the law, it would be better to give the law some real teeth? This government has done the opposite – making it more difficult and expensive for employees to take their employers to tribunals.
@PT
“So what’s Clegg going to do? Force women into the same occupations as men?”
That’s rather missing the point. Even in occupations where women dominate, research shows that they are paid less than the few men in the same jobs. See :-
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-business/10984281/Listen-up-Women-in-girly-jobs-are-also-paid-less-than-men.-Nows-the-time-to-act.html
One of the occupations mentioned happens to be domestic service. So here’s a perfect opportunity for Clegg to lead from the front. Perhaps he could publish the pay details of his own domestic servants, so we can all see that he’s setting a good example by paying the female ones the same rate as a man would expect?
This is a good idea as long as it doesn’t just become another burden on small businesses. Large corporations have the resources to swallow these kinds of additional administrative requirements, for small businesses they can add to do be a real burden. Fewer jobs being created in small business doesnt help women (or men).
From what I’ve heard about this measure I can’t see it actually delivering any meaningful or useful data.
Whilst the full details of how this data will be disclosed is subject to a forthcoming consultation period that will most probably conclude after the election, we can look at what is being suggested by No 10 as being disclosed.
Firstly, the minimum reporting requirement, here companies (with 250+ employees) will be required to publish the gender pay gaps for full-time, part-time and overall staff. The implications from reports is that this could be simply three figures for a company the size of BT!
Even the fuller report doesn’t really get much better: “Companies will be expected to publish the difference between men’s and women’s starting salaries; the difference between average basic pay and total average earnings of men and women broken down by grade and job type; and reward components at different levels, for example bonuses.” So here for example, we may get to know that for a particular staff grade/job (eg. S6 Engineer which means whatever it means in that particular company) the average starting salaries for men and women at that grade, the average basic pay for staff working at that grade, gross pay and bonus’es; all without any real context for differing levels of skills, ability, experience and involvement with business successes (eg. a team got a large bonus because they won an order for 40 aircraft).
So I conclude this is yet another one of those box ticking exercises that politicians love because it sounds as if they are making a difference, but actually won’t deliver any tangible benefit to the rest of us and in fact just introduces yet more regulatory overhead on business…