Birmingham City Council's equal pay dispute with female staff ends 13 years after a landmark court ruling

The issue is that they were on the same pay grade.

Council roles are graded based on level of responsibility, skills required etc. So two roles of the same grade should be fairly equal to each other.

Roles generally done by men, on the same grade as roles generally done by women, so bin man vs carer, were graded the same. But some bin men were ending up with more than twice as much pay once bonuses etc had been factored in, even though their job had been judged as equivalent to being a carer.

Its not that one role was paid on grade A and another was paid on grade B, they were both on the same pay grade but with unequal pay.

@OnAShooglyPeg we are coming from very different perspectives. I have a pay and reward background, undertaken equal pay audits and pay restructures etc. I acknowledge I am looking at this from a whole organisation perspective where, if done right it should work.

I can understand your perspective as the inequalities you talk about at an individual level do happen. For example job descriptions don’t accurately reflect a job or based on an individuals capability they are expected to work out of grade etc. There are many reasons why this happens without it meaning job evaluation doesn’t work. It’s the human factor 😂

I don't think anyone has said anything about equal pay not being a feminist position, have they? The matter of bin men vs dinner ladies wasn't quite as straight forward as the media sometimes likes to put across, but looking simply on the face of it, I don't think it's unreasonable to suggest that those job roles aren't equal.

I think a starting point of equal pay for equal work is a feminist position. In what way is it not?

Hmmm, that hasn't been my experience in both Civil Service and local authority! Although I agree it probably protects them from an equal pay claim, but probably for different reasons.

I'm aware that I'm coming at this from a personal view, which has definitely been coloured by my experiences of these grading structures. I have been the person doing part of the role normally reserved for management (two/three grades above) when those on the grade above have no expectation of having to do it. When it was challenged as part of the grading review, the person challenging it was sidelined. I have been part of the low-ranking staff in the civil service who are getting just above minimum wage whilst needing to make life-changing decisions, when in other CS departments decision making is reserved to at least the next grade up.

The whole point of an analytical job evaluation is that it does work for the extreme variations in job role you describe.

It is also an employers best defence in an equal pay claim. If they have done proper Job Evaluation it’s hard for an individual to show they are doing work of equal value if the job evaluation disagrees.

Edited to add it’s why NHS, Councils, Civil Service etc all use it.

I agree that it's the job that gets evaluated, not the person. However, in my local authority, within ONE grade there are at least 12 different services across the council, and those services run the gamut from bin men, to care services, to benefit advisors, to legal teams, to landscapers, etc.

My one department has seven or eight different job roles all being paid the same grade (and therefore, the same wage) and all, technically, coming under the same 'role' branding. They are not in any way comparable. Some will require extensive periods of outdoor working with and without driving responsibility, some will require presentation to council committees, some will require extensive public-facing engagement, some will be more office-based, some may require occasional out-of-hours attendance for no extra financial compensation.

This might remove the more obviously gendered role differences across different services, but I very much doubt that it will end up with a fairer system overall in the long-term.

Splitter !

Well, I guess we all do Feminism differently. And should be allowed to do so without being scolded for being the wrong sort of feminist.

Usually jobs fall within a range rather than at exactly the same point. It’s also important to remember it’s the job that is evaluated not the person.

Birmingham repeatedly ignored advice in the 70s that led to the original equal pay claim.

They then went on to ignore the advice to ensure pensions were included.

They then ignored advice to settle when the first retirees realised their pensions were short.

They then ignored advice to accept the judgement and pursued it to the Supreme Court - who handed them their arse on a plate.

Luckily we don't do accountability in the UK. I mean nobody wants that.

In other news Birmingham has spunked hundreds of millions of pounds on a computer system that the suppliers advised was not going to work (can anyone spot a pattern here ?) and are now having to pay the same again to hopefully get it working for 2040.

https://www.theregister.com/2025/09/24/ukmegacouncildelaysfix/

No. My local council cracked on with equal pay at the time because they try not to be misogynistic dinosaurs

Unions are still more than happy to ignore the law (including a Supreme Court ruling) and to adopt bizarre ways of thinking in order to shit all over women and their rights.

Let’s not pretend otherwise. Unions, even those led by women, are not for the benefit of women.

Do we really want all the nurses to go on strike?

To be successful you need to work in an industry where you cause enough disruption that people will take notice, but not so much disruption that people are harmed. I think many badly paid women work in the latter sector. You also need spare time to be active in a union.

I don't believe any broad brush grading system can be truly fair. In my experience, grades within the same department are not doing equal work, never mind trying to evaluate across multiple different disciplines, each with their own complexities, I'm sure.

There will always be winners and losers in any job evaluation process, and no one wants to end up losing money.

Obviously women should be paid and treated equally, but I think it's far too simplistic (and incredibly divisive) to simply say this comes down to men vs women.

Structural misogyny/sexism means you need an analytical job evaluation scheme to fairly compare jobs.

No, if you want the pay of a binman, be a binman or agitate to get the pay scale for your job changed.

that is what they did though. Added to the equal pay legislation. And unions have been involved in the grading.

This is men being cunts to women. For a change. (and councils dragging their heels in the hope of kicking the can so far down the road that someone else has to deal with it)

Perhaps people working in care homes and other women employed by the councils should strike as long and effectively as the refuse collectors.

there have been many many councils who did just this. IIRC including Birmingham.

There is no reason a job like "binman" and carer can't be compared. Being a carer can be hard physically, and show me a "binman" who would swap changing adult nappies 15 times a day on someone who is immobile, possibly overweight and possibly violent, over emptying bins wearing protective gear and gloves.

Councils could have saved themselves a lot of shit in the 70s if they had done the equivalency checks (done with unions and time and motion people etc) and then rated everything on the women's scales. But i bet the "binmen" wouldn't have wanted that.

On the other, jobs that have been predominantly carried out by women - teaching, nursing, caring - are often underpaid because of the historical assumption that women only need pin money and skills associated with women are undervalued.
Then it's up to their unions to negotiate better pay for those roles.

I’d heard that it was cheaper for Birmingham council to keep fighting in the courts, that way some of the women owed money would have died by the time they came to an agreement!

I think it's not straightforward.

On one hand, I can see that for efficiency, employers need to be able to pay the market rate to fill vacancies, and it may be easier to recruit an office cleaner than a refuge collector.

On the other, jobs that have been predominantly carried out by women - teaching, nursing, caring - are often underpaid because of the historical assumption that women only need pin money and skills associated with women are undervalued.

I believe that men and women who do the same job should be paid the same.
But not that completely different jobs should be assessed as having the same value and paid accordingly.
I'm sure this view will be unpopular on here, and I know that Birmingham CC have handled this badly.

Councils cannot go bankrupt in the normal sense. Instead they have to issue a Section 114 notice, declaring they can't meet their expected expenses. Birmingham have already done this a couple of years ago. More info here: https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/what-happens-if-a-council-goes-bankrupt/

However, affected Councils are far from having sorted the issues. The issues stemmed from the grading structure, and re-grading is a long and winding process that's nowhere near finished, and it's simply impossible to effectively and accurately capture the nuances of different roles.