Monday, September 22, 2008

Make Equality Happen – Mandatory Equal Pay Audits


Will you make history as a great reforming government, bringing equality law up to the standards of the 21st century?”

UNISON’s Director of Organising and membership, Bronwyn McKenna, posed this challenge today at the Labour Party conference.

See Press Release here

There is an Equality Bill going through Parliament and UNISON believes that this could finally deliver equal pay for women. What needs to happen is that the bill includes mandatory equal pay audits. At the moment the Government apparently favours a “voluntary approach” towards audits.

I think that the arguments Bronwyn presented demolish the case for any further voluntarily measures. Enough is enough, is this country really serious about getting rid of pay discrimination or is it just going to be leave things to further fester?

Bronwyn points out “Asking employers nicely will not tackle entrenched discrimination,”. Employers have had since 1970 to start paying women fairly. “They have not volunteered to do it yet and they will not volunteer now. The bill must make audits mandatory, along with sanctions that have real teeth if the law is not followed.”

“It is impossible to right historic injustice on the cheap,” Ms McKenna told the conference. “We welcome government measures to allow councils to release money for equal pay but really, nearly 40 years after Barbara Castle’s Equal Pay Act, it is unacceptable that we are still failing to find all the money needed to pay women – women who are core Labour voters – fairly.”

Current equal pay laws are complex, weak and ineffective, she said: “We know that women are paid 17p an hour less than men; 40p in the case of part-time women.” Yet only 126 won equal pay cases last year – “enough to fit comfortably onto two double-decker buses or one bendy bus in London.”

The legislation must be updated, Ms McKenna stressed. It must comply with European law, and it must allow hypothetical comparators. Equality is at the heart of everything UNISON does, Ms McKenna told the conference. And equal pay is an issue that really matters to the union’s one million women members, the members for whom it is taking tens of thousands of equal pay cases.

Labour governments have always led the way on equality legislation, she said, “and this government is no exception, bringing in life-changing civil partnerships, equality duties and other measures.”

Now it must act on equal pay.

Some of the usual suspects opposed to mandatory audits

4 comments:

Robert said...

Sadly the bloke in charge has better things to think about like Banks and naughty people after his job, running to America next week to try and talk to a twit Bush, so equal pay comes well down Gordon's list of important things to do sadly

Anonymous said...

Yes this is a good campaign
UNISON is running
its time we secured equal pay

Robert said...

Yes it;s always a good campaign but it's now time Labour did something about it.

John Gray said...

Crikey - for once I agree with Robert!