- Conference
- 2024 Local Government Service Group Conference
- Date
- 20 February 2024
- Decision
- Carried as Amended
Women face low pay at work and low pension in retirement and the gap just doesn’t seem to decrease.
The Financial Times reported in September 2023 that hundreds of councils face equal pay claims. Many of the biggest unitary authorities are facing equal pay claims. Women workers are lodging claims because their employers are failing to pay women equally to men. Further, few employers carry out equal pay audits to see whether their pay structures are still equality proof.
According to the Local Government Association (LGA), the gender pay gap in 2019 was approximately 5% across local government. The LGA said that “three-quarters of our workforce are women. And one key concern in this is that the main reason given by councils for this pay gap is that our predominantly female workforce is concentrated in more junior, lower paid jobs. This under-representation of women at senior level jobs at our organisations is a real problem for us and our communities in many ways.”
The gap gets even greater for women who are Black; the Office for National Statistics published the fact that in 2022 Black, African, Caribbean or Black British employees earned less (£13.53) median gross hourly pay than white employees (£14.35), which has been consistent since 2012. The Office for National Statistics also said that when looking at the cumulative effect of pay-determining characteristics, the factors that had the greatest impact were occupation, qualifications, geography, age and sex.
The difference between men and women’s accrued benefits in the Local Government Pension Scheme is 34.7% for benefits in the reformed CARE scheme and 46.4% for benefits in the legacy final salary scheme. Work carried out by the England & Wales Local Government Pension Scheme Advisory Board has identified that the gender pension gap in the LGPS is 40%.
The Equal Pay Act was passed in 1970, over 50 years ago. The Equality Act was passed in 2010, some 14 years ago and yet women have still not achieved equality in pay with men. It is time to end the disparity for women who work equally as hard as male colleagues. Time to break the glass ceilings into higher management and to ensure that women get the pay justice they deserve.
Conference calls on the Local Government Service Group Executive to:
1) Call on employers to end the gender pay gap as part of annual pay claims;
2) Work with the National Women’s Committee to refresh and relaunch the “Bridge the Gap” campaign;
3) Work with the National Women’s Committee & Learning & Organising Services team (LAOS) to develop bitesize training on understanding the gender pay gap and how to develop meaningful action plans to close the pay gap;
4) Consider submitting a bid to the Campaign Fund to commission research to fully understand the causes of the gender pension gap and identify potential ways in which this could be narrowed;
5) Develop and promote negotiating guidelines to support branches and regions to negotiate local action plans to close the gender pay gap;
6) Develop and promote negotiating guidelines to support branches and regions to recognise equal pay cases;
7) Develop and promote negotiating guidelines to support branches and regions to encourage employers to carry out equal pay audits on a regular basis.