A new Centre for Policy Studies report warns that stretched ‘equal value’ rulings at employment tribunals are forcing councils and businesses to make enormous payments to female claimants. Birmingham was driven to effective bankruptcy by a bill of at least £1.3 billion, while Asda faces a possible £1.2 billion payout on similar grounds. The Telegraph has the story:
Equal pay for equal work. Who could possibly object to this? It clearly is not acceptable that women are paid less for doing the same job as men. And ensuring this did not happen was why the 1970 Equal Pay Act was passed.
But the equal pay claims which come before tribunals today are rarely based on blatant discrimination. Rather, they argue that the work done for an employer by a predominantly female workforce is of equal value to different jobs performed for the same employer by a predominantly male workforce. And some of these judgments seem to be based on rather stretching the notion of equal value.
The 1970 act was one of the very last moves of the first Harold Wilson government. It was given Royal Assent on the very day Parliament dissolved for that year’s general election, which Labour lost.
The party’s winning manifesto in 1964 had pledged to legislate for “equal pay for equal work”, but the Wilson government procrastinated and initially had other priorities. What brought matters to a head was the 1968 Ford sewing machinists strike, since immortalised in the 2010 film Made in Dagenham and its subsequent adaptation as a West End musical.
The strike ended after three weeks, with agreement that the women’s pay would be raised to the rates of predominantly male jobs over two years. The Ford strikers galvanised other women who were equally hard-done-by and ensured the traditionally male-dominated trade union movement finally pushed for equal pay legislation.
Trade unions had not always been this enlightened. NASUWT – with more than 250,000 members, one of the two main teaching unions – is now impeccably Left-wing. Its general secretary Matt Wrack, a fireman rather than a teacher, is a former member of the Trotskyist Militant Tendency.
But its origins over a century ago are rather different. It started as the National Association of Men Teachers and was an explicitly sexist campaign, as the history of the union by Nigel de Gruchy, its former general secretary, makes clear.
During the First World War, more women became teachers when men went to fight. The union was set up to demand that the returning men should not have female superiors and that pay differentials between the sexes be maintained. Only when that battle was lost was a sister union set up for women teachers.
The history of the teaching union is far from the only case of historical institutionalised sexism in the union movement, but this has faded with time as more women joined the workforce.
As Suffocated by Tribunals – a new report for the Centre for Policy Studies by Alan Hibben and Robert Colvile – shows, today’s world is radically different from that faced by the 1960s Dagenham women, let alone 1920s female teachers.
In 2024, employment tribunals found that more than 3,500 employees working for the retailer Next deserved a total of £30 million in compensation on the grounds of gender discrimination. These were not women who were paid less for doing the same jobs as men. Rather, it was that Next was paying more to its warehouse staff (53% of whom were male) than to its retail staff (77% female).
The tribunal accepted that, with changing retail patterns, there was an increase in demand for warehouse staff and a fall in that for retail staff. It further accepted that the vacancy rates for warehouse staff were double that for retail staff. This alone suggests that one job is more desirable than the other, and to fill those vacancies extra pay needs to be offered. But the tribunal nevertheless ruled against Next, under the principle of the work being of “equal value”.
It is this nostrum which underpins nearly all the recent major equal pay rulings. Birmingham council was driven to effective bankruptcy due to having to pay out at least £1.3 billion to predominantly female cleaners and clerical staff for being paid less than overwhelmingly male dustmen. Asda is facing a possible payout of £1.2 billion on similar grounds.
Worth reading in full.
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At a social gathering there were a load of lefties who were incredulous that in Birmingham Council office cleaners were going to be paid the same as bin men and the discrepancy backdated to provide handouts of thousands. Personally I would have made the cleaners interchangeable with those on the lorries.
My national level company solved this problem FORTY YEARS AGO. We engaged consultant who helped us devise a scheme covering all level from field fitter to warehouseman to accounts clerk to sales manager. No excuse for this mess.
Ahh, but when the lawyers dispute the framework that is when the fun starts.
So supermarkets could simply deploy their checkout staff in the warehouse and vice versa…the same with local authorities: send the dinner ladies on the refuse collection shift. I don’t see how anyone could complain.
Cut everyone’s pay to recover the money and if they’re doing the same work rotate the women into the warehouse and onto the bin lorries.
Surely they cannot complain?
Stop making sense, none of the people complaining about pay are.
I don’t even get the rationale behind this or how they’ve gotten themselves into such a pickle. In what realm would you expect warehouse staff to be on the same wage as retail staff, two completely different jobs, just because these people are employed by the same company? Unless I’ve missed something that doesn’t even make sense. I don’t get how somebody could cry ‘discrimination’ based on that and be entitled to compensation.
If the staff in the warehouse are all getting the same wage regardless of their sex and all the retail staff the same, where’s the problem? There’d only be an issue if there was a disparity in pay between employees of the same grade doing exactly the same work. They’re comparing apples with oranges.
It boils down I think to communist activist lawyers and judges, plus the usual feeble response from HMG.
“It clearly is not acceptable that women are paid less for doing the same job as men.”
Clearly?
Not acceptable to whom? What about a woman or a school leaver for whom it IS acceptable to work for less because “equal pay” is no effing use to them if they can’t get a job because their labour isn’t worth the mandated rate!
When an individual has no power to decide for themselves how they will dispose of and sell their labour, the term for that is slavery. The biggest advantage anyone can have competing with others for a job is: “I’ll work for less”.
What kind of rotter would take that away from someone trying to get a job?
Should a bus driver in Devon be paid the same as a bus driver in Durham: they are doing the same job? How about a shop assistant in Clackhuddersfax, doing the same job as a shop assistant in Little Piddle On The Ooze?
I had an office in North London. Getting office staff was not so easy because businesses in the City were paying higher rates.
“Clearly” it was not acceptable that my office staff… Read more »
Most surgeons are male. Most nurses are female. Gosh how unequal, nurses must immediately be paid the same as surgeons. After all they all work in medicine.
This nonsense is part of the left agenda to eliminate meritocracy and competitive free markets. By eliminating meritocracy we will eliminate aspiration, effort, conscientiousness and destroy all human progress.
Perhaps ASDA’s response should be to tell all workers that thanks to case brought by female workers there will be no pay rises for anyone until the £1.2bn loss is recouped.
Like most other socialist ideas, the initial presentation of it seems reasonable to many. But it never stops there. How about letting employers decide what they are willing to pay and employees decide what they are willing to accept.
Because – that would take power and control away from the political slimeballs.
Here’s an idea, if they don’t like the pay, leave and go and work as bond traders in the City or something, set up an only fans channel – the world is full of possibilities.