GMB calls for action on gender pay gap

GMB calls for action on gender pay gap

A leading union today called for urgent action to tackle the "chronic" job segregation and undervaluing of the work women do in a bid to close the gender pay gap.

The demand came as research carried out for the GMB showed that women in full-time employment worked around 92% of the hours worked by men, but only received 75% of the pay.

Once the difference in hours is taken into account, the national gender pay gap is 16.4%, although it is as high as 22% in London, and almost 19% in the east of England.

The union - which won the first ever 'equal pay for work of equal value' case - revealed examples of workplaces with particularly high levels of job segregation and undervaluing of women's work. They included a food factory where most shop floor workers were women and most managers were men, a supermarket where most checkout staff were women and the majority of managers and drivers were men, and a City of London financial services company, where most cleaners and caterers were women and most brokers and dealers were men.

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Debbie Coulter, GMB deputy general secretary, said that the analysis conclusively proved that "job segregation and the lack of equal pay for work of equal value accounts for the lion's share of the pay gap".

"Action is needed from employers and throughout the education and skills provision system to end the chronic job segregation and the undervaluing of the work that women do," she said. "This exists throughout British industry and is accepted as the norm in most of the private sector."

Ms Coulter added that there were ways of addressing the pay gap "imaginatively and progressively as is the case in areas of the public sector". She said that traditional barriers were already being dismantled and greater equity was occurring among professional groups such as doctors and solicitors.

"We would urge employers to work with unions to identify the reasons for the gender segregation within their workplace, to agree strategies for eradicating gender pay imbalances and for providing equality of opportunity for half of Britain's workforce," she said.

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