[ganked verbatim from zarabee]
This is fucking awesome: a Cumbrian equal pay claim based on an EU directive of equal value, which “allows different jobs to be compared for skill, complexity and responsibility; it focuses on the work, not the job.”
The healthcare workers involved won a settlement for 300 million pounds.
“Doyle had found men willing to stand as comparators: a wall-washer earning £3,000 a year more – and working 104 fewer hours a year – than a seamstress and sterile services staff; a plumber earning more than a nurse; a specialised nurse on a cancer ward, at the top of her scale, earning £8,000 a year less than a plant maintenance man; a nurse on £9,000 less than an engineer.”
The women involved in the claim were stunned when they realised how much backpay (dating, at most, to 1991, despite some of them having worked more than 20 years in their jobs) they would get. It’s a fantastic win, and a fantastic landmark decision for female workers at the lowest pay scales.
The downside? No-one wants to know because of the implications for equal pay across the workforce.
“The reaction from others who spend their lives working for equality and fair pay was also strangely muted. “Off the record, it’s brilliant,” said an Equal Opportunities Commission insider. “It’s brilliant – and potentially devastating,” said a senior union official who won’t be using the case as a template for the rest of the public sector. “It could destroy the union” and, worse, the government could use it to “destroy the public sector”, he added.”
Go read it. Be alternately horrified at how little we value “women’s work” and thrilled at the decision made for these women.