But enough about Hariet Harman, what do we think about her latest brainchild?
Many employers will be made to reveal how much male staff are paid compared with their female colleagues, under a bill being published later.
If this is to force employers to publish on a case by case basis then it will be hugely expensive. If it's just an average then it is totally pointless.
Ministers also want to tackle the fact that - 40 years after the introduction of the Equal Pay Act - women in the UK still earn on average 23% less per hour than men.
Yeah, yeah - but they also work shorter hours than men, tend to do mor part time work than men, take longer and more frequent career breaks than men and choose different and less financially rewarding career paths to men.
As a statistic it is next to useless. The only way you could make a comparison is to compare a man and a woman of the same age doing the same job for the same company for the same length of time with the same educational background and career achievements - and that will cost an awful lot of money to research and publish.
The law is not intended to address inequality - it is intended to act as a stick to bash men with. Just like it's instigator it is nasty, pointless and totally unnecessary.
5 comments:
"Yeah, yeah - but they also work shorter hours than men, tend to do mor part time work than men, take longer and more frequent career breaks than men and choose different and less financially rewarding career paths to men."
Do they? Do they really? and your evidence is .....?
Or is it just the normal rubbish spouted whenever this old chestnut raises its head. I would be interested in the research studies that came to this conclusion, and would appreciate a link to your evidence.
Otherwise it's just Ranting Stan! (and pardon the pun)
Well, it's my opinion that they do - and that is what this site is about; my opinion - and the evidence of my current workplace and thirty years in employment tends to confirm that opinion.
And why do you think this site is called "Ranting Stan"?
Demanding links to 'the evidence' for an opinion formed over years of observation, including many published official sources, is, in my experience (for which there is no link available), the response of a critic with no credible counter argument.
I've found that in most fields women rarely do the same work as men, which is presumably why the law describes work 'of the same value', rather than the same work. Incidentally, the law requires a woman to be paid 'at least as much' as men, suggesting that it is legal to pay her more than a man.
"Just like it's instigator it is nasty, pointless and totally unnecessary. "..........Exactamundo. It will allow employers to discriminate in favour of women. Of course with the new EU rules on maternity pay and leave I'm supprised any woman between the ages of 16 and 50 gets employed by a private sector SME.
"Do they? Do they really?"
There's a hell of a lot of circumstantial evidence. And that's just in MY office.
I expect the public sector is even worse...
"...with the new EU rules on maternity pay and leave I'm supprised any woman between the ages of 16 and 50 gets employed by a private sector SME."
I'm sure they have a plan in the wings for the occasions when they don't!
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