The Equality and Human Rights Commission last week produced a report on equal pay in conjunction with the Fawcett Society, the TUC and Unison to mark Equal Pay Day.
“Equal Pay: Where Next?” builds on a conference held earlier in the year and explores four key aspects of addressing the gender pay gap and makes a series of recommendations around those four themes.
The themes are:
- Establishing an effective business case for uniformly implementing equal pay practices: The report recommends, among other things, publicising equal pay systems that employers and trade unions have implemented; and connecting the positive effects that closing the pay gap will have on the economy as a whole.
- Changing the way work is organised in order to reflect a changing workplace landscape and to support equal pay measures: The report recommends extending the right to request flexible working to all employees and involving trade unions in negotiating and bargaining for an extension of their members’ opportunities for well paid, high quality work.
- Improving the law to implement a framework that makes unequal pay practices unlawful and holds organisations to account: The recommendations include a root and branch review of equal pay law to ensure that it operates in the interests of women and employers; and implementing the Equality Act 2010 in full to encourage workplaces to undertake and publish gender pay audits, among other things.
- Changing attitudes, beliefs and stereotypes that perpetuate the gender pay gap: The recommendations include working with schools to incorporate gender equality education in the relevant aspects of the National Curriculum; and undertaking more public education work in order to challenge stereotypical and limited ideas of women’s and men’s respective roles and abilities.
To read the full report, go to: http://www.equalityhumanrights.com