Equal pay claims for up to 1.5 million public sector workers could cost the
taxpayer more than £10 billion and mean that hundreds of thousands of men
will lose up to 40 per cent of their salary.
Town halls are struggling to pay compensation bills totalling £3 billion to
fund up to six years’ back pay for women workers after equal wage
settlements. But now employers are finding it too expensive to finance pay
rises for up to 700,000 women.
Employers told The Times that up to 250,000 men and some white-collar
women could have their salaries cut, in some cases by £15,000 a year, as
jobs are reevaluated. The new pay structures, due to be completed by the end
of this month, are likely to lead to strikes and court cases.
“We are trying to keep the pay bill rise across the country to 4 per cent,
which will cost us £1 billion,” one employers’ official said. “If we paid
the rises in full without cutting any salaries it would cost us nearer £4
billion. This is the inevitable outcome of job reevaluation. Existing
employees will face pay cuts. We may be able to protect them for two or
three years, but even this may breach sex discrimination laws. There may be
personal unfairness but the Equal Pay Act is the ace of spades and trumps
everyone else.”
In real terms, workers’ pay could be reduced by between £2,000 and £15,000.
Those most likely to lose out will be earning between £18,000 and £50,000,
ranging from street cleaners to electricians and administration staff.
Both employers and unions claim that cutting male salaries is not in breach of
existing legislation provided a new contract is signed. In some cases
salaries are protected for two to three years until female pay reaches the
same level, or the men are given different job titles to get round the
problem.
Birmingham City Council, the biggest authority in the country, has announced
that 40 per cent of its 40,000 staff will have their pay increased, 40 per
cent will have no change and 20 per cent will have their pay cut. Senior
social work assistants and even press officers are facing cuts of up to 50
per cent as they have been regraded on the same level as street cleaners. A
social work assistant on more than £35,000 will have his or her pay cut by
£15,000 to bring it in line with a street cleaner, according to union
officials.
The problem is now spreading to the NHS, where tens of thousands of men may
have their pay frozen for two or three years while female workers catch up,
although no pay cuts have been announced yet.
More than 50,000 male NHS workers, including porters, maintenance staff and
clerical staff, could have static salaries for the next three or four years.
Equal pay claims are being pursued by women clerical workers at the Ministry
of Defence and by teaching assistants. Public sector unions, such as the
GMB, T&G and Unison, are finding themselves in the difficult position of
trying to protect male workers while boosting the pay of women staff. They
are fighting more than 10,000 cases in England and Wales to get better deals
for women.
But no-win, no-fee lawyers, leafleting town halls and NHS trusts, are also
persuading women to sue unions for striking compromise agreements to protect
male salaries for several years. If lawyers such as Stefan Cross, already
representing 7,000 women in the North East, keep winning cases, more men may
face pay cuts. Most of the 1.2 million council employees are having their
jobs reevaluated, bar top officials who earn more than £70,000. Although in
lower-pay grades almost all the workers facing cuts are men, that is not the
case in clerical groups, where women have also been told that they will lose
pay.
“So far around 20 per cent of staff have been told they will lose pay, which
would be equal to about 250,000 staff nationally,” Jon Sutcliffe, the policy
officer for the Local Government Employers, said.
Council workers are threatening strike action and some are expected to take
their cases to industrial tribunals. A spokesman for the Local Government
Employers said that, provided staff signed new contracts, employers are
legally entitled to cut pay.
The crisis has come to a head this month because, under an agreement struck by
the unions in 2004, all town halls have to evaluate jobs and have new pay
structures in place by April 1.
Only a third have done so to date, but until now the focus has been on
back-pay settlements of equal-pay agreements. Although tens of thousands of
women are entitled to six years’ back pay of up to £30,000, unions are
sometimes striking deals with employers to try to protect male staff.
Mr Cross, and solicitors such as Carvers in the West Midlands and Leigh Day in
the North West, are all said to be winning extra money for claimants by
unpicking union agreements. Last night Mr Cross, who represents only women,
said that unions were protecting 10 per cent of the workforce at the expense
of 90 per cent of women eligible for pay rises.
In many cases councils have reached a deal with unions to agree to an equal
pay structure in return for funding only three or four years’ back pay in
compensation.
In the money
Millicent Venson, 38, went on strike despite getting a rise when her salary
was adjusted.
The support worker used to earn £11,000 but that rose to £14,000 after
Coventry City Council implemented “single status”, which supposedly ensures
pay equality for men and women.
Miss Venson, who cares for elderly residents at a home in the Hillfields area,
has worked for the council for six years in various roles.
She said: “I am obviously really pleased that I got the pay rise but the
situation is very complex. It is difficult getting more money yourself and
seeing colleagues who work really hard having their salary reduced.
“There still needs to be a lot of work done to make things fair. For many
people, this is just the beginning of the battle.
The city council is meant to be giving us back pay and there is a large number
of women who are actually taking it to court to get what they are owed.
“People just want to be appreciated for what they do. It has affected almost
every single person in the council one way or another and created a lot of
bad feeling.
“At the moment the council and the unions all need to get back round the
negotiating table and try and move things forward.”
Miss Venson, who is single, went on strike alongside colleagues. She said: “It
is the binmen I feel sorry for. They have lost a lot. You hear these horror
stories of people who have had to sell their homes because they cannot
afford the mortgage. Single status has opened a can of worms.”
The most recent strike over pay, last month, involved support staff at a city
primary school and half the parking attendants in Coventry.
Losing out
Mark Butcher, 30, went on strike after being told by Coventry City Council,
which implemented “single status” in 2005, that his pay would be cut from
£15,300 to £11,500. The street sweeper had to retrain as a driver-sweeper to
keep his original salary.
He said: “I think most of us were actually pleased when we heard single status
would be introduced because we thought we would get more money. We were
completely stunned when we heard we were actually going to get less.
“I was initially told my salary would be cut to £10,500 and then they looked
at it again and came back with a figure of £11,500. We were just disgusted.
“Our jobs include cleaning up human excrement and dog mess. We deal with the
safe disposal of syringes.”
Mr Butcher, who is single and has a four-year-old daughter, has worked for the
council since 1998. He said: “The atmosphere has been terrible. Any good
will there was has gone. I will be paid that amount until 2009 but none of
us have any clue what happens then.
“I guess a lot will be voting with their feet.”
I have been working for birmingham city council for over seventeen years - part time and full time. Under the pay and grading review I am loosing nearly £7,000 a year. This will bring my household income down couple of thouands below the national average. With a family of five to support and running cost of a house surely I will be better off in the benefit system. There are a lot of loosers in the Birmingham City Council. Only full information obtained under FOIA will reveal the true story. Just in my team staffs have lost between 6,000 and 11,500. Morale is all time low. Everyone is stressed with job evaluation information worried about loosing their homes.
Never seen anything like it before. Council is banning non union members from attending union meetings and managers are discouraging even union members attending meetings to find out information about this nasty paycut. I would urge other public sector colleagues not to complete the job evaluation in the first place.
R, Birmingham, UK
Manchester City Council are starting to go through job evaluation for it's workers. They have started in a school where my mother works. Several staff have gone through job eval and almost every one of them that is losing money . The unions seem to be hiding and not giving the support that the members are paying for and bowing down to the council after agreements that have been made in 'smoke filled dingy rooms'. The loses range from 15% to 55% of their salaries with 3 years protection at their current salary.
Whilst I agree that we women should be paid the same as men surely, in the present economic climate, councils and, more over, the unions can't expect people to take these sort of cuts to their salaries and get their support when it is needed. All the people facing the cuts have families and mortages etc that keep going up and up. Surely, women's pay should be going up to the same as a man's and not the other way round. Then we would all benefit and everything would be equal.
Concerned, Manchester,
as a bin man myself i am appalled at the idea of being on less money with a family to look after let alone a mortgage.also i wish some of the people behind this idea would try the job out for a week then im sure their oppinions would change yours mick great barr.
michael, birmingham, england
How Wonderful. A Man Tax. This is the thinking in the UK? Tax those who are working to fund those who are less productive. Good luck with that nonsense. To our British Friends across the pond. Look back in US History. We had us a little Boston Tea Party when nonsense like this was tried. Maybe you all need one now.
Khankrumthebulgar, Dallas Metroplex, USA, Texas
My god, are Birmingham City Council really paying street cleaners 20K p/a? I know of architectural graduates who earn less than that. Local authority pay on the whole is bloated - not even taking into account their unfunded final salary pension schemes.
Paul Turnbull, Tynemouth, UK
This is what you get when you try to please everyone -- you end up pleasing no one. Equality through socialistic means is not equality at all. For everyone who wins; someone else loses.
Why is it that the typical liberal ideology always ends up lowering everyone to the lowest common denominator while they puff themselves up bragging that they have "uplifted" those at the bottom?
What a tragicomic joke this is.
James Peel, Longmont,, CO, USA
Pay can also be cut if the unions agree on the workers' behalf, Phil of Falmouth. That, despite having promised that "nobody should lose" is exactly what the national unions are doing on the basis of dubious legal advice that indefinite pay protection would always be illegal, even in the unique context of these pay reviews. Phasing in the pay cuts over as little as three years is somehow supposed to make them acceptable.
Councils can, by exploiting a loophole in the Employment Rights Act, also impose pay cuts by firing workers (giving the appropriate notice) and offering re-engagement on the inferior terms. They are increasingly resorting to this form of unfair dismissal because local unions, often including members who stand to gain, are rejecting the pay cuts.
John Fricker, ST AUSTELL, Cornwall
"Evaluating" a job to determine pay is bogus. Only the market can tell you what a job is worth. If an electrician can make $70K in the private sector, local governments are kidding themselves if they think they can pay less.
Doug, Wheeling, USA
Finally! But where is the control office for salary dumping? I was employed for a salary 30% lower than another girl on the same position, with less education, the only difference was that I was Polish, and she was British. Maybe British governent should look closer to this problem?
Justyna Wilaszek, Lausanne, Switzerland
The Local Government Employers have said that, provided staff signed new contracts, employers are legally entitled to cut pay. Surely no one will sign a new contract to reduce their pay by these swinging amounts? Would the employer then be entitled to dismiss and would it be a redundancy or is 'reasonable' alternative employment on offer? Surely a drop of £'000's p a is not reasonable? This will bring LA's to their knees as staff tell them where to put their jobs - and rightly so!
Phil, Falmouth, Cornwall, UK
So we should still be paying women less money for roughly the same job?
This has nothing to do with Wimbledon.
Sarah, Gillingham,
Where are the voices of condemnation of these life-altering pay cuts from the local government leaders of the GMB, TGWU and Unison? Are they still sticking to their 'equal pay at any cost' idealogy and viewing Single Status through rose-tinted glasses, despite the personal disasters they have created for many of their members?
The Equal Pay Act doesn't require pay to be 'equalised' down. The unions could have achieved pay equalisation without pay cuts by pursuing multiple equal pay claims, just as the predatory lawyers are now doing.
John Fricker, ST AUSTELL, Cornwall
"could cost the taxpayer more than 10 billion"
3 billion of which is pocketed by lawyers. Surely this alone justifies our animosity towards the legal profession.
Pete, Cov,
The people who didn't see this coming should be the ones paying the price with their jobs. More incompetence from council and government officials is going to mean more cost for citizens. When will idiots with no foresight be given the chop, instead of rewarding people with the culture of 'we'll sort it out later and damn the cost' that seems to be rife amoungst the people spending our tax money? Minimum short term spend in budgets is undermining people thinking ahead to safeguard the future. The British taxpayer cannot keep on bailing out public sector incompetence.
Alistair Kipling, Birmingham,
Gobsmacking that any government could have allowed such a mess to arise. Our government wants equal pay for tennis players, but not for male models, nor does it want equality regarding car insurance. I suggest someone should take a long look at the policies that have brought on this situation and the criteria that define one job as "equal" to another
John Ledbury, Kings Lynn, England
Here in PC Britain we are all equal.
With the exception of women, ethnic minorities, sexually 'special' groups, chronically sick groups and government ministers, -- who are more equal.
ALAN BOND, LANCASTER, ENGLAND
Equal pay for equal work?
Not always the case......
Take Tennis as an typical example
Women play 3 sets! Men 5!! equal?
"Animal Farm" some are more equal than others....
Make equal mean equal then there is no problem!
But at present in the UK that is far from the case.
Here in Thailand when women work on the roads they do the same work as the men, not less just as hard!!
They dig the roads and work the same machines.
That is equal work
Chris Eddy, Korat, Thailand