Jun/090
Equal Pay
It is now almost 40 years since the introduction of the Equal Pay Act, which was meant to close the gender pay gap.
In 1988 Julie Hayward had a historic victory when she took on her employers Cammel Laird in what was seen as the first significant challenge under the Equal Pay Act. Her case took 10 years and £50,000 of public money, and the GMB her union were triumphant believing that her victory would open the floodgates to similar claims from low paid women.
In spite of the legislation being in force for almost 40 years statistics have identified that across the UK women are still paid on average 17.1% less per hour than men, and 36.6% in the part time sector. The reasons for this are complex and include historical notions about men being the’ breadwinner’ in a family, but this is only a small part of a complex jigsaw.
Local Authorities have known that they have been in breach of the Equal Pay Act by making bonus payments to male employees. As a consequence they made settlement payments to the female staff employed at the time and those that had left within 6 months. Some women who had worked for the Local Authority for many years and came outside this period have not received any compensation.
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