Equal Pay is not just about the size of or even closing the Gap

Interest in equal pay has been given a temporary jump-start this month, with private sector organisations employing over 250 people in Great Britain being forced to publish details on their equal pay gaps.  Before applauding that as positive or as progress, keep in mind that legislation on equal pay has been in place since 1970, almost 50 years ago.

In Scotland a different approach was taken to implementing the terms of the 2010 Equality Act on equal pay.  The public sector has been required to publish equal pay gaps every two years, as between women and men, and more recently the equal pay gaps between disabled people and non-disabled people, and between BME people and non-BME people.  One of the problems in Scotland has been the inability of the public sector to agree a universal methodology for calculating the equal pay gap and publishing the findings.  The Equality & Human Rights Commission has chosen not to impose a common approach or to enforce the law, instead seeking to encourage employers to do the right thing.  The outcome is a dodgy dossier of data on equal pay which helps public sector bodies hide from real scrutiny and real accountability.  All the time the equal pay gaps remain stubbornly in place.

For example in NHS Scotland, research in 2017 showed that the equal pay gap between women and men employed there amounted to 19.99%, an increase on what research revealed in 2015 when data published by NHS Boards put the gap at 18.85% - in favour of men.  The findings of these research reports and the detail underpinning the sizes of the equal pay gaps have been shared with Scottish government.  

Both the Cabinet Secretary for Health and the Cabinet Secretary for Equalities have declined to intervene either with the EHRC or with Scotland's 22 NHS Boards.  Curiously, Scottish government Cabinet Secretaries have declined to act on suggestions that data on equal pay gaps [and equality data generally] be published on a central web site hosted by government.  This would allow everyone to easily access and compare equality data of interest to them and gives oxygen to the democratic principles of transparency and accountability.  Yet in Westminster, the equal pay gap data being gathered across the UK from the private sector, voluntary sector and England's public sector will be published on both the organisation's own web site as well as the government's gender pay gap reporting web site.

Angela Constance [left]
Cabinet Secretary for Communities, 
Social Security and Equalities

Shona Robison
Cabinet Secretary for Health and Sport

Part of the enduring mystery over the size of the equal pay gap in Scotland's NHS is that it operates a pay system which should, if scrupulously adhered to, eliminate or reduce to statistically insignificant levels any equal pay gap.

For this reason, additional research into pay in NHS Scotland was undertaken this year.  In simple terms, all of Scotland's NHS Boards were asked to split their workforce by earnings, either side of a pay point £25,806, which is close to Scotland's median pay point of £23,150.  As a benchmark test, Scottish government was asked to provide similar data around a split of £25,682 [they use different pay scales].  They were asked to do this for women and men, for disabled people and non-disabled people, and for Black Minority Ethnic [BME] people and non-BME people.

When the split was applied to all employees, it showed the NHS in Scotland has in-built pay inequality, with the majority of staff earning less than a minority of staff,

 In contrast, data on Scottish government staff shows the majority of staff earn more than the minority of staff.

The NHS data was reconfigured to show women and men in both pay cohorts.  This shows that 62.06% of women working in the NHS are in the lower paid cohort, while for men, just 49.16% of them are in the lower paid cohort.  It is the sheer scale of occupational segregation in NHS Scotland which creates and sustains the size of the equal pay gap.  

Until and unless the occupational segregation in the NHS and across the public sector is acknowledged and work led by government on eliminating occupational segregation is forced through at speed, women will continue to be expected to shore up the low paid end of the pay systems in the public sector so that men can continue to monopolise their hold on the better paid jobs.