Gender pay disputes will grow over the next year as new legislation forces large employers to reveal the average pay of their male and female staff.
Financial Times journalists voted to take industrial action yesterday over a 13 per cent gender pay gap at the title.
Staff at the FT who met on Wednesday afternoon agreed to potentially strike if the newspaper does not close the 13 per cent pay gap between male and female staff at the publication.
“Data provided by the managing editor show that the gender gap for most UK FT journalists is nearly 13 per cent, the widest it has been in a decade, and worse than the previous year.”
A statement from the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) chapel at the FT said this morning.
Following on the tail of revelations of a gender pay gap at the BBC, a further row has erupted at Irish state broadcaster RTÉ after it was revealed only three women made it into the company’s top ten earners.
The NUJ has called for an external pay review at the broadcaster and have said they’re “not prepared to give up on this long fight”.
If the revelations of gender pay inequality at the FT, BBC and RTÉ are anything to go by, disputes around pay inequality in the media and beyond will only grow over the next year.
New legislation introduced in March will force large employers to reveal the difference between average male and female earnings. The new law gives employers who have over 250 staff twelve months from March to publish their figures.
We already know from Office for National Statistics (ONS) figures that the gender pay gap between men and women generally sits at 18.1 per cent. The new law will, however, lead to the naming and shaming of individual employers.
If people want to tackle this resilient unfairness and structural inequality then the best option is to join a trade union and get organised”
Said Sarah Kavanagh, a campaigns and communications officer at the NUJ.
The disparities vary across workplaces and discrimination can be found to be based on gender, age, ethnicity, socio-economic status, sexuality and disability, having a real impact in terms of access to jobs, pay rates and employment status.
Kavanagh added, placing the issue of gender pay inequality within an intersectional context.
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One Response to “Financial Times staff vote for industrial action over gender pay gap”
patrick newman
Let’s hope this sets off a national debate on both gender based and social status based pay disparities not confined to the pay of the top 1% like John Humphrys or Mishal Husain. Let’s see Labour move some of the focus to the massive rewards enjoyed by board chairs and CEO’s some of whom receive 250 times the pay of many of their staff!