建立薪酬公平的基础设施

While equal pay has been protected in the United Kingdom sincethe Equal Pay Act 1970, local governments have been facingchallenges in delivering this, with mounting pressure and legalaction in recent years.UNDERSTANDING EQUAL PAYFalling foul of equal pay regulation canprove both damaging and costly, asnumerous entities ranging from citycouncils to retailers have found to theircost in recent months. Yet it is all too easyto come adrift of the law. Pay discriminationneed not be intentional for it to bedeemed discriminatory, as a recent UKEmployment Tribunal ruling makesclear.It is essential to understand what makesthe regulation tick to stay on the rightside of the law. The right to equal pay hasbeen protected by law in the UK sincethe introduction of the Equal Pay Act of1970. This right was further reinforced bythe Equality Act of 2010. The concept ofequal pay is predicated on the foundationthat all employees have a right to berewarded equally when they possessequal qualifications and work in rolesof equal value, irrespective of protectedcharacteristics, such as race andgender.Implementing equality regulation hasproved far from simple for local authoritiesand has resulted in numerous challengesand mounting financial pressures fromlegal action. More than 20 local authoritiesare engaged in various stages of equalpay disputes at the present time. Thesettlements awarded by the courts areoften very substantial, the largest awardto date reportedly totalling £770million.The challenges surrounding equal pay willonly increase following the implementationof the Employment Rights Bill 2024 andthe changes this brings to the Equality Actof 2010. An Equality Bill, to be introducedlater in the government’s term, promises toextend equal pay legislation to incorporateboth race and disability in payreporting. © MarshMcLennanPITFALLS IN ENSURING EQUAL PAY1OfficeforNationalStatistics,Census2021,ProportionofworkersemployedintheUKwastesectorbyagegroup,traveltoworkmethodandhouseholdandfamilytype(2020)2SkillsforCare,HeadlineSocialWorkInformation(Sep2024)It seems reasonable to assume that localauthorities today do not actively seek todiscriminate against their employees,paying different rates to different peoplefor doing exactly the same work. Moreoften than not councils fall victim topitfalls in interpreting the notion of the“equivalence” in different types of work,failing to pay the same rate for work thatis “similar, equivalent or of equal value.”Many such failures are historical in nature.This problem is often compounded by theauthority’s systems that do not providesufficient visibility on pay and grading, dueto the complexities of cross-organisationgovernance and data management. Forinstance, the legal notion of equivalencethat enables comparison across “associatedemployers” includes outsourced entitiesthat are under the umbrella of a localauthority tradingcompany.Ensuring conformity to the Equal Pay law isparticularly challenging for local authoritiesthat employ highly diverse workforces in adiverse range of roles. Almost inevitably, thisresults in differing rates of representationof people with particular protectedcharacteristics across the full range ofemployment. For example, men form 93%of the British waste collection workforce,while women form 83% of the social workworkforce.2This makes it essential toput in place cross-cutting governance on 1 © MarshMcLennanequal pay that ensures that a change inrewards or terms and conditions in onejob area is reflected accurately in all othersthat are deemed equivalent. Changesresulting, for instance, from agreementsmade with a particular trade union as aresult of negotiation can impact equalpay compliance across theauthority.3CountyCouncilsNetwork,WorkforceCapacityisOneoftheBiggestChallengesFacingCouncils(2024)4Some66.9%oflocalauthorityemployeesareagedbetween40and64.CountyCouncilsNetwork,WorkforceoftheFutureReport(2024)5NewLocal,OutsidetheBox:TheCouncilWorkforceofTomorrow(2016)IMPLICATIONS OF PAY INEQUALITYAs recent rulings by the courts havedemonstrated, implementing equalpay correctly can be costly for localauthorities. Equal pay legislationtherefore has implications for thefinancial sustainability ofcouncils.While it is the very large awards madeby the courts in resolution of equal paydisputes that grab the news headlines, inaddition to the direct financial challengesfacing local authorities, there are othersignificant resource implications resultingfrom equal payregulation.UK local authorities are already facingchallenges that result both from thedeclining size of their workforces and theiraging workforce. Over the past 12 years, thenumber of employees in England’s councilshas reduced by over half a million, a 31.5 per It is also incorrect to think of equal paygovernance as somehow static, somethingthat can be fixed once and for all. In oneexample, although a dispute with a councilover equal pay was seemingly resolved to thesatisfaction of all concerned in 2005, a secondmajor