One out, all out

Posted by Barbara on July 17, 2023 in Blog, Europe, Human rights, Law, Politics, Sport, Women's equality issues | 2 comments

Remember the Match Girls?  In 1888 over 200 girls and women went on strike to protest the exploitative working conditions at the Bryant & May match factory in Bow in London. They took a brave stand against the dangerous demands  which endangered their health with very little remuneration.  After growing discontent over the poor working conditions, the final straw came in July 1888 when one female worker was wrongfully dismissed. This was the result of a newspaper article which exposed the brutal conditions of the factory, prompting the management to force signatures from its workers refuting the claims. However, many workers refused to sign and one such woman was dismissed, triggering off outrage and the strike that followed. That same year the TUC passed a resolution calling for women to be paid at the same rate as men for the same work.

The principle of equal pay was set out in the International Labour Organisation’s Equal Remuneration Convention in 1951 and in the Treaty of Rome in 1957.  Well surely that sorted it all out, you may think?  Sadly no.  In 1968 at the Ford factory in Dagenham 850 female sewing machinists went on a lengthy strike because they were paid 15% less than their male colleagues, despite doing the same work. If you have never seen the film Made in Dagenham I urge you to watch it.

The Labour Employment Minister Barbara Castle, who had backed the Ford sewing machinists, introduced the Equal Pay Act in 1970. Despite receiving Royal Assent that same year, it did not come into force until 29 December 1975, the same day as the Sex Discrimination Act. 

You would think that would have resolved this aspect of inequality between the sexes. Think again. The Equal Pay Act provided a contract-based solution to the issue of unequal pay. All employment contracts would be taken to include an ‘equality clause’. Where any part of a woman’s contract was less favourable than the contract of a male comparator who did the same work or work rated as equal, the clause would automatically modify her contract to bring it in line with his. So a claim for equal pay was actually a claim for back pay because the modification was taken to have already happened. Under the Act, women could only claim for pay going back two years.

The UK’s membership of the EU had a significant impact on equal pay law. Following legal action by the EU Commission, the UK had to amend the Act so that it also applied to cases where men and women did work ‘of equal value’.  The Equality Act of 2010 consolidated the various pieces of equality legislation – another ‘good thing’, except that the rules are based on a ‘sex equality clause’. If you wish to claim, you need to identify a real comparator of the opposite sex in the same employment whose contract is more favourable than yours. All well and good, but I wonder how many employees in a firm actually know how much their colleagues are paid. In my experience it is very few.

And if you think this only applies to salaried staff, you are wrong. Having just bid farewell to Wimbledon, I have learned that the world of international professional tennis is riddled with inequalities. The men earned $8.5 million compared to $3.9 million for the women in Rome in May, while the Western & Southern Open in Cincinnati paid men $6.28 and women $2.53 million last August; the National Bank Open in Canada offered the men $5.9 million last year, compared with $2.53 million for the women in 2022.

So it’s still game. set and match to the men. There is still some way to go…