Deputy General Secretary of the TUC, Frances O’Grady will today tell delegates at an equality law conference that progress in equal pay must be speeded up.
Calling for ‘real commitments in party manifestos’ O’Grady will say that ‘time is of the essence’ if pay parity is to become a reality.
It is 35 years since the Equal Pay Act was passed but, say the Trades Union Congress (TUC), equal pay for all is still a distant dream.
O’Grady is due to tell attendants that the law which stipulates that cases can only be brought by individuals is restrictive.
“So a tribunal hearing a case on behalf of 500 dinner ladies has to consider 500 separate applications. It’s not surprising that it can take years to win a case. Until unions are able to take group cases on behalf of female employees, the gender pay gap looks set to stay as wide as ever.”
The TUC claim that the pay differential between the sexes is in fact yawning.
According to their statistics, female full timers now earn 19.8% less than men working full time.
Looking at the way forward, the TUC say that compulsion to publish pay audits is the only way for employers to sit up and take note of the issues.
“Until employers are forced to publish pay audits of their workplaces, we won’t have pay transparency. Without more honesty over pay at work, employers will continue to hide behind the British obsession of not talking about salaries, and continue to pay their male and female employees who do the same or similar jobs differently. I call upon ministers to make 2005 the year that equal pay becomes a reality.”
