Equal Pay - the good, the bad and the downright ugly

Scotland's public bodies have had plenty of notice that by end-April 2013, they should publish data on their gender pay gaps. The regulations published by government, better known as the specific equality duties, could not have been clearer:

.... a listed authority must publish information on the percentage difference among its employees between men's average hourly pay [excluding overtime] and women's average hourly pay [excluding overtime] ....

Even the only idiot in the village would get what was needed.  You would have thought.

But then the public sector in Scotland has had years of practice in ducking and diving away from the delivery of what it should have been doing.  Equal pay for women has been a legal obligation for over 40 years now, and still it remains out of reach for most women.

Recent research shows that out of 92 public bodies scrutinised, at 10^th May 2013, 74 had published gender pay gap data.  This represents an 80% compliance rate.

At January 2013, the results of previous research into councils, health boards, universities and other public bodies showed that out of 91 public bodies surveyed, 29 had published gender pay gap data.  This represented a compliance rate of 31.8%.

One might conclude on this part of the evidence that the introduction of a specific duty to publish gender pay gap data has had a positive effect.  Not when you go on to examine what has been reported - more on that in another blog.

What is astonishing is that 18 public bodies had ignored their legal duty to publish by 30th April.  Two-fingers were waved at the law.  The Equality & Human Rights Commission [EHRC] reaction when advised of the research outcomes ?  A sucking of teeth and a sniffy dismiss to the research, claiming that they could only act on research they had commissioned and that if any public body was found to be non-compliant details "would be passed to legal".  

It beggars belief.  Elsewhere in the real world, more and more credibility is being given to the role of whistle-blowers in calling time on bad/illegal/unsafe/unlawful practices.  Not in the EHRC apparently.  More time must be allowed to pass, more scarce public funding to be spent, more sucking of corporate teeth before deciding if non-compliance should result in a big stick being wielded, as against a nice, friendly, informal word on the quiet in the drawing and dining rooms of suburbia where Scotland's middle-class state apparatchiks regularly meet and decide how 'people like us' will continue to portray a vivid picture of reform and action which, when the smoke clears, presents a picture of equality for and power-sharing with 'people not like us' which is not significantly different from that of 30 years ago.