Top story News and analysis
Female BBC journalist
wins equal pay tribunal
The case may encourage other women to raise issues, as there
are around 20 similar cases in the tribunal system. By EMMA GREEDY
Samira Ahmed was paid six times less than a male colleague for similar work at the BBC
Figure
it out
The gender pay
gap among
full-time employees
stands at
8.9%
The gender pay
gap among all
employees fell from
17.8%
in 2018 to
17.3%
in 2019
The largest gender
pay gap among all
employees is
in carpenters
and joiners
44%
Office for
National Statistics
Photography: Foreign and Commonwealth Office - Week of Women
BBC presenter Samira Ahmed
recently won an equal pay tribunal
against the British public service
broadcaster, in which she claimed to
have been underpaid by £700,000.
Ahmed’s case began in 2018 and
grabbed both the public’s and
HR’s attention.
At the tribunal Ahmed claimed
the BBC underpaid her for hosting
audience feedback show Newswatch.
The presenter said that Jeremy Vine
was being paid £3,000 per episode
for hosting a similar programme,
Points of View, while she was paid
£440 per episode.
She told the tribunal: “I could
not understand how pay for me, a
woman, could be so much lower than
Jeremy Vine, a man, for presenting
very similar programmes and doing
very similar work.”
Ahmed won her case as the
tribunal’s judge ruled that the BBC
had failed to prove the pay gap
between her and Vine wasn’t due to
sex discrimination.
The broadcaster has additional
obligations than those of a regular
employer or organisation. Being a
public sector company funded by
licence fees, the BBC’s equality duty
will have to go through extensive
audits to look at its pay schemes.
Danielle Crawford, senior associate
at law firm Winckworth Sherwood,
said that the BBC’s HR team is going
to have to ensure that the broadcaster
has a proper process in order to
justify its pay packets.
Crawford told HR magazine the
trial’s key takeaway for HR should
be to ensure it is helping organisations
properly assess pay.
“HR has to have a clear and
methodical process of assessing both
an individual’s pay and pay grades
as a whole; it needs to be able to
justify these with non-discriminatory
purposes,” she said.
Emphasising the necessity for
regular policy review, Crawford
added: “HR must ensure it is
compliant with the law and especially
with equal pay legislation”.
Julien Cox, head of employment
law at iLaw, agreed. “HR departments
need to review their current paysetting
procedures to ensure that
they clearly evidence why different
individuals are paid more or less,”
he said.
“This should start at the beginning
of an employee’s relationship from
when they are recruited and
continue throughout.”
Cox said that all employees
should, as near as can be, receive
equal pay for equal work. “If two
employees have similar experience,
responsibilities and work schedules
then they should be paid roughly
the same.”
It may be worth conducting a full
pay review within your organisation
to ensure that you are not falling foul
of the rules, suggested Cox.
Matt Jenkin, partner and head of
employment at Moorcrofts, told HR
magazine that in his experience
there has been a tendency to view
equal pay claims as an issue only for
large-scale public sector and retail
employers. As such, many employees
at smaller companies won’t pursue
what can be a complex and costly
claim at the tribunal.
“Ahmed’s case, along with others,
showed that individuals are now
more prepared to pursue these
claims before the tribunal and are
being successful in those claims,
resulting in large payouts by way of
compensation,” Jenkin said.
If HR does not treat equal pay
claims seriously, Jenkin anticipated
that they could find themselves in
the same position as the BBC. He
advised examining gender pay gaps
to be a good starting point.
“While a gender pay gap does
not in itself mean that there is an
equal pay issue, it does assist in
highlighting potential issues that
may need further investigation.
Once an equal pay issue is identified
HR needs to act to resolve that
rather than leaving it to the tribunal
to make that assessment. Assuming
that an employee won’t pursue the
issue shouldn’t be an option.”
The #MeTooPay movement, led
by former chief executive of Royal
Mail Moya Greene, was prompted by
City banker Stacey Macken’s equal
pay tribunal against BNP Paribas in
September 2019. The movement
gained significant traction once
well-known actors began sharing
their own stories on social media,
supporting the movement and
promoting it to their millions
of followers. HR
hrmagazine.co.uk February 2020 HR 7
/hrmagazine.co.uk