Equal Pay

[FrayedKnot]

Following the story today about the UK pay gap..

Do you think you are (or have been in the past) paid less than a male employee who does a similar job?

If you knew you were, would you do anything about it?

Just interested. Suspected for a long time in my former job that there was a discrepancy in pay, and the promised pay audit never happened.

But didn;t do anything about it.

never experienced this myself

but then my profession was female dominant

not much help then!

alicatg experienced exactly this!
I never have, despite working in a very male oriented environment

But NP don't you all to often find male nurses climb the ladder in nursing in leaps and bounds? Do you reckon it is because they are more ambitious, because they don't have children, or quite often don't have kids?

i think, floss, its because men are not really interested in day-to-day nursing. i think a lot of them start nursing with long term ambitions to be pen-pushers in the end

and they dont have things like babies and mat leave, which can change your view of your 'career' (the case with me anyway)

How depressing wanting to do nursing just not to have to nurse!!

and (controversially) they maybe want to be the better paid of their marriage, and everyone is better paid than a nurse, so they feel they have to go up the ladder for more money (unless their dw is a nurse too)

i dont think its anything to do with the establishment, i think its the men themselves

i dont think nursing discriminates

what do you think floss?

i am out of touch now

Its true men are just evil money hungry power grabbing monsters.

You are probably right. Like I said they often seem more ambitious. I love the fact now though that at work there are some straight, un bitchy chaps to work with. I tend to get on well with blokes. Not there for long now though!!

Yes I know I was paid less than men of the same grade
My employer would have argued the jobs weren't comparable or some other rubbish

Statistically my employer paid women less then men throughout the organisation and didn't publish pay scales

I raised this when I left and the foolish HR girl said "why do you think that?" durr I had access to the salary info!!!!!!!

Yes, I was definitely paid less than some male employees.

But more than others.

I worked in an industry which pretends that pay is "negotiated" on an individual level with each employee. No-one knows what anyone else is earning, so there is absolutely no transparency at all about pay. It's a recipe for discrimination.

Aberdeen City Council has just been successfully sued for millions b/c of this. Twits. I have to admit I'm ever-amazed by the level of outright mysogyny I've encountered here.

I get the impression most women (even with access to salary info) would never actually do anything about it, as would not want to be labelled as a trouble maker etc.

Correct me if I'm wrong NP & Floss but is there more transparency in a profession like nursing re knowing what other staff get paid? Does that make it easier (or harder?).

BIL did you mean you left for a better paid job? Hope so!

yes, its very easy to know what other people get paid in a profession like nursing.

some are really obvious, others you could find out easily if you wished to do so.

i think it makes it easier (but you would have to ask a pen-pusher/higher grade person too cos they may answer differently)

FrayedKnot - I left to become a SAHM

If there had been someone doing the same job as me I would have queried it
I felt that the fact that the most senior woman at the firm (on the board) was paid significantly less than the men said it all really

I once discovered that I was paid less than the men I was managing

Slug that's appalling. Did you do anything about it?

I just sometimes wonder why we put up with it, even though pretty obvious it goes on.

And wonder if there is any way of changing things.

Yeah, stormed in demanded a pay increase (got it) then found another job very quickly.

I work in a male dominated profession. I have both been made redundant (read: sacked) while pregnant and have received less in bonus than male colleagues eventhough I achieved as much if not even more than them throughout the year. It's very difficult to do anything about it. In my company it's illegal to discuss pay and bonuses (very clever), so if you do complain, you have done something "illegal" as you have talked about pay and can face a disciplinary.