Equal pay – just go for itMany women NUJ members stand to lose tens of thousands of pounds because they don’t use the laws that are there to protect them. Ninety years since the NUJ won its first equal pay deal, and 38 years since the Equal Pay Act was passed, women in the UK still earn 17% less than men, which amounts to a staggering £300,000 on average over a working life.
With her feet barely installed under the deputy general secretary’s desk, Michelle Stanistreet, recently elected as the first woman ever to hold that post, has now launched a campaign to encourage chapels to find out about unfair pay disparities in their workplace and take action.
A proud track record
The NUJ won one of the country’s first equal pay agreements, getting pay parity for women journalists on Fleet Street in 1918, in a groundbreaking deal with the Newspapers Proprietors’ Association. Since the Equal Pay Act of 1970, the NUJ has won thousands of pounds in future and back payments for women members found to have been underpaid relative to male colleagues doing similar work.
Racing Post journalist Fleur Cushman is one of them. Last year she was awarded an £8000 a year salary increase, with £26,000 in back pay. She tells her story on a video clip available on the NUJ website (www.nuj.org.uk) in order to encourage other women members who feel they have a case to take action. Fleur’s advice is: “If you’re armed with the facts and have the law behind you, there’s no reason not to go for it.” The advice is valid far beyond the male-dominated world of the Racing Post. Indeed, a survey in the Bookseller a few years ago revealed that book publishing, traditionally dominated by women (and not coincidentally traditionally the lowest paid media sector) is as guilty of pay discrimination as any other sector.
Secret salaries
But how do you arm yourself with the facts when companies insist on keeping secret the data on how much they are paying to whom? This has been a stumbling block for some of our chapels in Oxford. Revealing ones salary is sometimes prohibited under the heading ‘gross misconduct’, while the absence of transparent salary scales give companies huge leeway for unfair pay discrepancies that are very hard to expose. But the same law that gives women the right to equal pay also protects the right of women to have access to the information they need to exercise that right, and the NUJ and other unions have been able to force companies to reveal the necessary data.
Don’t be put off
If you feel you have a case under the Equal Pay Act, or that the overall pattern of pay in your workplace may be discriminating against women employees, you have the right to find out the facts, and if necessary to right the wrong, and do your bit to help close the 17% pay gap between men and women in this country. With Michelle at the helm of the NUJ’s equal pay campaign, every chapel should be putting this issue on their agenda, and if you feel you have a case, follow the advice of Fleur and just go for it.
DID YOU KNOW?...
Direct discrimination is the biggest single factor accounting for the 17% pay gap between women and men. The pay gap is not just down to women working in lower paid sectors, taking career breaks or being more often in part-time employment, though these are all contributing factors.
The number of equal pay complaints received by ACAS in the past year (2007-2008) reached 53,513 – that’s 15,000 more than the complaints received for the traditionally most popular complaint, unfair dismissal.
If you win your equal pay tribunal you could receive compensation as well as the equal pay you deserve. You will also have the added satisfaction of persuading your company to improve their equal pay policy, which may help your colleagues.
Much more on the union’s equal pay campaign can be found on www.nuj.org.uk. This includes a nice account of the debates within the union’s NEC, 90 years ago, which led to the NUJ adopting its policy on equal pay.
AW 2008-11-05
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