Equal Pay?

[hamiltoes]

Heres the scenario,

Me and colleauge, both do exactly the same job. Team leader agrees it is to the same standard. I've been in the company 1 year longer (6 years & 5 years), and been in the current job 2 years longer.

Three differences between us:

1. He is male, I am female
   
2. I've taken 2 Maternity leaves, both lasting 6 months.
   
3. I'm educated to HNC level, he is educated to HND level.
   
   He gets paid considerably more than I do. Would I have a case for an equal pay dispute here? Or would they fob me off and say its due to education?
   
   Any advise would be greatly appreciated, I don't want to bring it up to be knocked back...

[19lottie82]

I'm no expert, so please don't take this as gospel, but people doing the same jobs within a company often have large differences in their salaries. This is often due to negotiations when they took the job.

As I see it, to have any chance of being successful, you would need to be able to PROVE that your colleague is paid more BECAUSE he is male.
Can you do that?

[19lottie82]

Sorry, I meant if you were to take it further than your employer, in a legal sense then you would need proof.

You can ask but your employer is more than likely to deny you this raise, as chances are they prob have legit reasons for paying your colleague more.

[hamiltoes]

Hmm thanks for your replies so far..

We both started on the same salary, the difference being that when I took my maternity leave (and every year there after) I've always recieved less of a pay rise than he has. When I queried this in the passing with my manager after the first maternity why I got less of a payrise than him, I was told it was because he had a HND and I had a HNC.

Everything I've read on the internet seems to suggest that it shouldn't matter what your educational background is, i.e jenny and jill are both in the police force as constables, one has a masters the other a bachelors, jill and jenny do the same job and so should be paid equally for like work.

But I could be wrong about the education thing. So I would have to prove it was down to maternity (which I kind of suspect it is btw, its a very male dominant work force, i don't think they had a maternity leave in about 10+ years until I came along, they have called me an "anomoly" on countless occasions when I query things to do with mat leave), and not any other reason?

I just find it strange since my senior only has a HNC too, yet they are making quite a big deal about it

Also, we don't negotiate our pay, this is both our first proper job after studying and we both started on the same, the "current role" is due to the fact we go around depts for the first wee while before being choosen by our final placement, if that makes sense?

Its a structured sort of pay scheme where everyone who joined that year gets the same amount of pay rise. So literally the only thing they could have taken into consideration when deciding my pay is my gender (only female in intake) my maternity (only maternity in however many years) or my educational background (although less educated they still want me doing the same role as my supposed "peers"?

[worridmum]

But if hes move quaified as you are saying that is considered a fair reason for him to have higher pay. It would only normally switch into discrimation / equal pay thing if you were both roughly equal eg same qualification / level of experences

as to people might be doing the same job but someone doing it for 5+ years could possiblely be paid more than someone with less than 1 year experence etc

Did you start the same year as him? do you have more experence than him? have these being taken into account in your caculations if you are the same deffinitly start exploring equal pay dispute but if he has years more experence / been in the company might account for the pay differnces