The Equality Trust have launched the “Achieving Equal Pay in your Workplace” website, the result of over a year of collaborative work with academics and 12 unions including health unions the CSP and the PDA. The website brings together the expertise of those with lived and learned experiences of tackling equal pay issues in their workplaces to be used by workers across the UK.
The website was launched a week before Equal Pay Day, this year calculated by The Fawcett Society to fall on the 20 November 2022. Equal Pay Day marks the day where women effectively on average, stop earning relative to men because of the gender pay gap. The gender pay gap is the difference between the average pay of men and women within a particular group or population. The gender pay gap based on the average full-time salary is 11.3%. The gap is wider for those who work part time, and may be even worse for women of colour, disabled women and those who experience other intersectional inequalities. Pay discrimination is a driver of the gender pay gap.
The website was developed as part of the trust’s Equal Pay 50 campaign, recognising that more than 50 years after the Equal Pay Act 1970 there are still nearly 30,000 equal pay claims a year. This demonstrates that there is a real need for workers to have the tools that they need to uncover and challenge possible pay discrimination.
Jo Wittams, Co-Executive Director of The Equality Trust said, “Pay discrimination is a key driver of the gender pay gap, and income inequality as a whole. Our ambition is that this toolkit will become a key method of dismantling structural pay inequalities within workplaces. For too long the onus has been on the individual to prove pay discrimination and this website enables collaborative working to hold employers to account and resolve issues over unequal pay.”
Dr Ian Manborde, Equalities Education Officer at the performers’ union, Equity said, “As the UK’s leading trade union for self-employed workers we understand the central role of equal pay in the fight for fair pay. We are proud to have contributed to the development of the Achieving Equal Pay at Work website as a key instrument in the struggle to gain economic justice for workers. We wholeheartedly encourage the trade union movement to utilise this unique, valuable resource as part of their strategic efforts to eradicate inequalities in pay.”
Ayah Abbas, President of the PDA NAWP Network added, “The National Association of Women Pharmacists (NAWP) is delighted with the development of the Equal Pay Toolkit and the new website. We are proud that PDA have been involved in their creation. This is another example of the practical work that the PDA and its four EDI networks undertake to fight inequality not just in pharmacy, but across our society. Living in an equal world should be simple and the foundation to our lives.”
The toolkit was funded by Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust.
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