Scumbag 'nasty party' doesn't believe in equal pay !!!

Yet again the scumbags have abandoned the scheme wherein larger emlpoyers were being forced to reveal statistics on the gender pay gap.


Scrapping Gender Pay Gap Reporting Once Again Reveals The Government’s True Colours
2020 was supposed to be a year of great progress and change. We ended up with far worse than a nice, round number, writes Rachael Revesz.

• 
  By Rachael Revesz

AFP via Getty Images
There is no expectation for companies to report their gender pay gap figures this year as the government tackles Covid-19.
During the pandemic, many anniversaries and life milestones have been lost. Among them was Equal Pay day on 31 March.


And in another parallel world, 4 April would have been the deadline for companies with over 250 employees to report their annual gender pay gap figures.

But with companies being granted ‘breathing space’ by the government to tackle Covid-19, there will be no expectation for companies to report this year.

Some companies will still do it or have done it — for example, Verizon Media, the parent company of Huffington Post. But others won’t. The government called off obligatory reporting this year on 24th March, and only around a quarter of firms had already submitted their data. So what would the feet-draggers’ incentive be now?

Data shows that companies are only transparent, by and large, when they are forced to be. The UK claims to have among the highest numbers of companies who report their gender pay gaps — then again, the UK is one of the only countries in the world to make companies publish that information. France has the world’s highest percentage of women on boards (44%) thanks to a 40% quota. Regulation works.

Five years ago, the proposal for pay gap reporting was merely percolating in the mind of former Minister for Women and Equalities Jo Swinson. Now her successor, Liz Truss, who pursues deregulation with religious zeal, seems to want to smash it to bits.

“We recognise that employers across the country are facing unprecedented uncertainty and pressure at this time,” she said in a joint statement with Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) Chair David Isaac. “Because of this we feel it is only right to suspend enforcement of gender pay gap reporting this year.”

So, what is the great burden on companies that the government wants to avoid?

The EHRC online portal asks for 14 data points, including the mean and median gender pay gap in hourly pay, and the bonus gender pay gap.

It’s the kind of information companies would be tracking anyway as 2020 marks the third year of the legislation. It only takes a few minutes to plug the numbers into the government portal.

It seems that removing the obligation to report just over a week before the deadline is more a question of re-prioritising and, dare I suggest it, advancing a certain agenda, rather than scrapping a relatively simple exercise for any company’s HR department.

Dropping the obligation to report also reinforces the view that gender equality is last on a long list of priorities. Don’t even get me started on the fact that women’s work is fundamentally undervalued — just look at wages in nursing, teaching, pre-school education, cleaning, cashiers and retail workers. The allowance for carers, often a 24/7 job, is £66.15 a week.

It seems that removing the obligation to report just over a week before the deadline is more a question of re-prioritising and, dare I suggest it, advancing a certain agenda, rather than scrapping a relatively simple exercise for any company’s HR department.
Against that backdrop, the biggest effort the UK has made in recent years to reinforce the importance of equal pay — gender pay gap reporting — has now been thrown out the window.

Perhaps the rather dire financial straits of the EHRC are relevant here? Even before Boris Johnson had to go into self-isolation, the equalities body was underfunded: its budget has been slashed by two thirds since 2010. As a result, the EHRC had as many sharp teeth as a 17-year-old cat on a diet of meat paste to punish companies that filed after the deadline or submitted inaccurate or misleading data.

Very few companies have a strategy to close their pay gap. Some chuck money at the problem, hoping the gap will disappear, if only for a short while. Campaigners have long talked about turning data into action, but now we don’t even have the data.

The absence of pay gap reporting might seem like a tiny blip compared to the bigger consequences of a global pandemic. “Furloughed” was not a word in most people’s vocabularies a few weeks ago. We have dashed hopes, and dreams, and paycheques. If we are lucky, the pandemic will only have stolen a year from our lives, but we will spend far longer making up for it, clawing back what we had already fought for and won.

Companies and governments touted 2020 as a year of great progress in the realm of gender equality. The cynics thought that it would be no more than a nice, round number. What we’ve ended up with is much worse, and we will all pay for this in the long term.

 

Don't know why this seems to be a surprise - The Party as a history of a 'Ole Boy's club' mentality

 

I know that, I'm just bringing it to every one else's attention !!!

 

2020 was supposed to be a year of great progress and change

Lolz, change yes, progress not so much

 

I don't have a problem with people and by that I mean men and women getting the same wage for doing the same job, what I do have a problem with is this constant desire to increase the national living wage without increasing everone's wages. You cannot have someone stacking shelves in a supermarket earning say a tenner an hour and expect me, an electrician to do my job for a pound or so more, it's not going to happen.
A shelf stacker needs very little training, to become a proper electrician requires a 5 year apprenticeship, regular training updates, and the purchase of some very expensive equipment.
A shelf stacker makes a mistake, worst case scenario, they damage some stock and at worst will lose their job, I make a mistake potentially someone loses their life, I end up in court, and could be sent to jail!
If people are going to keep raising the living wage without increasing the wage of tradespeople etc then pretty soon everyone will just want to be a shelf stacker, and who could blame them. I have to buy all my own tools, power tools, hand tools and test equipment, so a new tester costs say £800, a new drilling machine costs £200, that's a £1000 I have to recover, before I earn any money, so if we work say 40 weeks a year and divide that £1000 by 40 weeks, we see that works out at £25 a week, and that's just the start, everything needs replacing at some point, pliers, cutters, screwdrivers, drill bits, so lets say that replacing tools works out at £40 a week, now if the shelf stacker earns £250 a week and the electrician earns, £300 a week, then after tooling costs we're down to a tenner a week more for the electrician, yet he has a lot more responsibility. Considering we are constantly being told we need more tradesmen, surely we should be making it worthwhile, I remember when I was an apprentice, there were lads working in supermarkets and menial jobs earning a lot more than me, but I knew that once I'd qualified, it would be me earning the higher wage, now they're trying to do away with this.

 

As, what appears to be a self-employed trades-person, its up to you to negotiate higher pay with your main contractor, like Trade Unions do on behalf of their members.

 

Not so, this applies even if you are cards in with a firm these days, you still have to supply your own tools and pay for your own training. the last job I was on I was in charge of several other members of staff, the buck stopped with me if anything went wrong, I was getting paid technicians rate and this was only £18 an hour, not a lot when you consider the level of responsibility, I'm sure you'll agree.

 

Then as I said earlier, its down to you to negotiate a higher rate of pay. The fact that you were supervising others, then you need a supervisors rate of pay, simple as that !!!

 

VG munches popcorn watching Phil trying to explain free market enterprise to a communist

 

You can't though, if the wage is agreed at national level then you can't alter it, if the governing body say that doing a specific job gets you £10 an hour, then nobody is going to give you a higher rate, and that's the problem, you either take it or you don't, quite a lot of people are choosing not to take it and it's putting lives at risk, Why should someone have a load of responsibility for an extra couple of quid an hour, it's not worth it.
It's a bit like petrol, if it's £1.20 a litre and you don't want to pay it then you either find a cheaper garage, or you pay up, but what do you do if it's a set price everywhere, you either pay that price, or don't use the car. in our industry people are walking away from the jobs with the responsibility and this is leading people who are not really qualified taking up the job, with the inherent dangers. One of the last big sites I worked on we had a site safety officer who was in charge of safety across the whole site, they stopped the electricians working as the scaffolding had been 'painted yellow', and you're not supposed to paint scaffolding. In actual fact the scaffold was yellow because it was GRP, the only scaffolding allowed to be used by the electricians. Two days work was lost whilst it was sorted out, all because an inexperienced person was put in charge of safety.

 

It does sound like you are severely underpaid, @phil1965 . Electrician is one of the highest paid trades in the States.

 

Over here it's not, well not any more, they've killed it, a proper apprenticeship has long gone, now they do a short course, often a matter of weeks and they can call themselves an electrician, the trouble is they know nothing about 3 phase, or industrial, or fault finding, all they can do is wire houses, I believe you have people called 'wiremen' who do this in the states?
The problem comes with people like me, I'm a time served electrician, I can work on anything from heavy industry, hospitals, schools houses etc, trained on power, data, fire and security alarms, basically everything a 'proper' electrician is expected to do, however a lot of employers want to pay me tha same wage as the monkey who've done the short course despite me having a higher skill level.

 

I think people already know that without having a dead horse flogged

 

So why isn't anyone else mentioning it ???

 

Because, they already know the way it is.
Some are being pro-active in/through the Courts, and some have just accept it - that's human nature

 

No, I meant on here - on the forum !!!

 

equal pay! thats bloody bullshit. why should some shit kicking laborer earn the same amount of money as a tradesfolk?

 

Oh so you haven't heard of 'work of equal value' !!!

 

What's that like some shit kicking labourers or something?

 

(Sigh) seems ignorance is bliss !!!