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Sandra Beale

SJ Beale HR Consult Ltd

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Blog: How to deal with equal pay after the Birimingham ruling

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The recent high profile case where 170 women have been given the right to take an equal pay case against Birmingham City Council brings equal pay firmly in the spotlight.

The workers, mainly women who worked in traditionally-female roles, such as cooks, cleaners and care staff won the right to seek compensation in the civil courts for missed bonuses.

The women were among workers who had been denied bonuses which had been given to staff in traditionally male-dominated jobs such as refuse collectors, street cleaners, road workers and grave diggers.

For example, the annual salary of a female manual grade 2 worker was £11,127, while the equivalent male salary was £30,599. The men received a bonus of up to £15,000 per year.

Usually such claims have to be made within six months leaving a job in an employment tribunal, but the Supreme Court has over ruled that principle in this case. These employees now have six years to raise a claim with the potential for a £2 million payout.
 
They are likely to win and cost Birmingham City Council many millions of pounds. This "landmark" judgement could have huge implications for potentially thousands of other workers including in the private sector.
 
This case is remarkable given the existence of over 40 years of equal pay legislation. In 1970 the Equal Pay Act was brought in following a fight by women sewing machinists employed by Ford to stitch the car seating who were paid much less than their male equivalents who assembled the cars.
 
Taking action
 
Whilst the men and women did different jobs, the value of their jobs was deemed to have the same demands in terms of effort, skill and decision-making ie work of equal value. This and equal work underpins equal pay legislation.
 
Equal work can be the same or broadly similar (known as like work) or different but equivalent (known as work rated as equivalent). However men on average are paid more than 10% more than women.
 
Organisations that want to pre-empt claims being laid at their door need to start thinking how to head off such claims. One way would be to undertake an equal pay audit.
 
The Equality and Human Rights Commission provides a toolkit which is a guide for employers carrying out an equal pay audit. It is designed for businesses with over 50 employees. It helps carry out an equal pay audit related to gender, race, disability or working patterns. Equal pay audits are recommended in the Code of Practice on Equal Pay.
 
Another alternative would be to undertake a job evaluation process across an organisation to identify areas of weakness to review and correct. Job evaluation is the systematic evaluation of the worth of jobs in relation to other jobs in an organisation.
 
An analytical job evaluation scheme provides a good defence in an equal pay claim whereas a non-analytical scheme such as job ranking or job comparison would not provide the same defence as it is based on subjective opinion.
 
Therefore a factor comparison scheme such as National Joint Council’s job evaluation or Hay would provide robust defence.
Sandra Beale is director of HR consultancy, SJ Beale HR Consult.

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One Response

  1. How to deal with equal pay after the Birmingham ruling

     While it’s good to see employers being encouraged to take action, equal pay audits and analytical job evaluation are not alternatives, but complementary. A woman only has a right to equal pay if she is doing work that is equal to that being done by a male colleague and the surest way to assess equal work is to analyse job demands. The EHRC equal pay audit tool recommends job evaluation, as does the code of practice on equal pay. The law recognises the importance of job evaluation in that an analytical job evaluation scheme covering the jobs in question provides an employer with an automatic defence to an equal pay claim.

     

    Sheila Wild, http://www.equalpayportal.co.uk

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Sandra Beale

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