Mind the gap

According to the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE), the pay gap in Scotland in 2013 was 13.3 per cent, when comparing men’s full-time hourly earnings with women’s, and 33.7 per cent when comparing men’s full-time hourly earnings with women’s part-time hourly earnings.

 

ASHE is the source for calculating the pay gap and it reports this using the mean and median hourly earnings of men working full time compared to women working full time and women working part time. In Scotland, the gender pay gap is reported using the mean, as the median figures underplay the fact there are a few extremely high earning staff, most of whom are men, and that many women are clustered in the lowest paid professions. 

 

The Scottish Government said although the power to legislate about equal pay is reserved to the Westminster Parliament, it is continuing to work in partnership with a range of organisations representing employers and employees, to support the Close the Gap campaign, which was launched in March 2001. The campaign aims to raise awareness about the pay gap between women and men in Scotland and encourage activity to close the gap, such as employers carrying out equal pay audits or reviews.

 

The public sector Equality Duty in the Equality Act 2010 came into force in April 2011 and is often referred to as the general duty. According to the duty, Scottish public authorities must have ‘due regard’ to the need to eliminate unlawful discrimination, advance equality of opportunity and foster good relations. Scottish ministers made regulations in May 2012 placing specific duties on Scottish public authorities to enable the better performance of the Public Sector Equality Duty. These are also known as the Scottish Specific Duties.

 

Close the Gap is a partnership project which works to encourage and enable action to address the gender pay gap. The organisation works with employers and employees providing information, guidance and support and its main partners are the Scottish Government, Scottish Enterprise, Highlands and Islands Enterprise, Skills Development Scotland, Equality and Human Rights Commission, and the Scottish Trades Union Congress (STUC).

 

Close the Gap’s project manager Anna Ritchie Allan told Holyrood the gender pay gap is still a big issue. This is also the case in local authorities, despite the introduction of the single status agreement which was introduced to move all local government employees to a single pay structure. 

 

She said: “We work in both the public and private sectors and also with affiliated trade unions. Across the public sector, our main focus is the Public Sector Equality Duty and before that, we worked on the Gender Equality Duty as well. We provide support to public sector employers to help them better report on gender and employment, the gender pay gap and occupational segregation. We have also worked with individual public sector organisations on work they are undertaking around equal pay, for example, if they’re conducting an equal pay review or they may be looking at specific initiatives around flexible working or women’s progression.

 

“We work with a range of different groups who work with employers, and we work with policymakers and also trade unions affiliated to the STUC on the causes of the gender pay gap. We are also trying to promote activity to tackle unequal pay and to increase women’s participation in the labour market. 

 

“Occupation segregation is one of the main causes which contributes to the gender pay gap. This is when we see men and women doing different types of work at different levels. Women tend to be clustered into lower paid occupations which are traditionally seen as ‘women’s work’. So cooking, caring, cashiering, cleaning and clerical work, and men tend to be segregated into other types of work which are deemed to be more technical. These are generally better paid. 

 

“We also see women having difficulty reaching senior positions, so it’s men who are clustered in management and senior roles. The result of this is in order to combine caring responsibilities; women often have to look for part-time work. Part-time work is generally in lower paid occupations so it is more difficult to work flexibly at a senior level. Another reason is pay discrimination which in itself isn’t always deliberate. It’s often based on value judgements, and assumptions and stereotypes of what men and women are capable of. 

 

“There have been moves to address this within the public sector, particularly in councils with single status, where the issue was around men having disproportionate access to bonus schemes. That is very much still ongoing and what we see in Scotland is a backlog of up to 50,000 equal pay tribunal cases clogging the system and women waiting years to get equal pay. That situation is far from resolved.”

 

In April, UNISON Scotland wrote to 6,000 members who work in South Lanarkshire Council to give them another opportunity to make a new claim for equal pay. The trade union believes some staff may not be receiving the same pay as those in other job groups who do work of equal value. If that proves to be the case, UNISON said it will argue their pay should be increased now, and any shortfall over the past five years should be paid as back pay.

 

Staff who may be eligible include home carers, caterers, cleaners, nursery nurses and school support assistants. South Lanarkshire was the first council in Scotland to bring women and men together under a single status pay system, however, UNISON’s experts believe the South Lanarkshire scheme does not comply fully with subsequent advances in equality law.

Mike Kirby, UNISON Scottish secretary, said: “UNISON wants a long-term settlement that is fair to all. We recognise it’s a difficult task to compare very different jobs; that is why legal claims take so many years to decide. However, UNISON is committed to negotiating improvements with the council so that our members do not have to wait years for pay equality. The South Lanarkshire single status scheme, as it presently exists and is being applied, cannot reliably deliver pay equality between men and women. We are supporting UNISON members to take legal action and will continue to support new claims until we are fully satisfied that pay inequality has been properly addressed and we will try and resolve cases as quickly as we can.”

 

Anna Ritchie Allan added: “The gender pay gap across all of Scotland is 13 per cent when we compare women’s full-time hours with men’s full-time hours; and 34 per cent when you compare women’s part-time hours with men’s full-time hours. Within the public sector, the pay gap is lower than it is in the private sector but there are still significant issues. Last year, under the Public Sector Equality Duty, listed authorities had to publish their gender pay gap information and also an equal pay statement which included information on occupational segregation within their organisation. That’s information on the different types of work men and women are doing and the different levels. 

 

“We did an assessment of a sample of public authorities and looked at the information they had published which was quite disquieting in many ways. Looking at local government in particular, there is a quite a wide variety of pay gap figures, ranging from 0.9 per cent to 19 per cent, which suggests that there’s a big issue with calculating the pay gap. It suggests that the council, which has a 0.9 per cent, has not calculated correctly because it’s highly unlikely that that is the case and the 19 per cent is probably more likely.

“There is still a big issue with the pay gap in spite of the introduction of single status, and other pay modernisation agreements across the public sector.”