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

[IwantToRetire]

Equal pay claim timeline

• In 2012, 174 people who worked in traditionally-female roles won a ruling at the Supreme Court over the pay.

• In 2021, the GMB urged members to lodge tribunal claims with the council and unions.

• In 2023, the authority revealed it had to pay up to £760m to settle outstanding equal pay claims, relating to the previous under-payment of its female workers. It said that the pay dispute was a factor when it had to declare itself effectively bankrupt later that year.

• The council and unions reached a framework agreement in December 2024 and on Wednesday, claimants received individual payout notifications under the final settlement phase.

... "The journey, although it's one that does make you feel angry, it's sort of what we've gone through together as a team of women that's really empowering," she said.

"It just feels like a sisterhood where we can openly now discuss things like this."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c6233d12g8lo

Thank you for the timeline.

Honestly I thought this case, or a similar one with a different council, started much earlier e.g. 1970s or 1980s. I have often use the example of refuse workers jobs vs personal care jobs as a good example of where equal pay is likely to apply.

Part of the cost is the impact on pensions, it’s not just compensation for x years lower salary but on other benefits like pensions.

I think you are right, or rather I share the same memory.

I suspect this was the latest attempt to get an agreement.

When men complain to me about this, i say "well, the council decided to go with the level of men's pay. They could have said that they'd pay everyone the women's rates, right?"

and then they blether on about how the comparisons were done...

Law firm Leigh Day & Co, which represented the 174 women, said that in 2007 and 2008 tens of thousands of pounds were paid to other female ex-employees of the council to compensate them.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-birmingham-15935274

and then the win in 2012 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-birmingham-20294633

And as far as I can make out it has taken 13 years to agree how to actually pay the amount due following 2012 court case! (?)

So now all councils are going to go bust?

Not necessarily. It all depends on what they did in relation to equal pay from the 1970s.

If they took action and addressed the issue then they don’t have an issue.

A career and bin man isn't going to get paid the same?

Why not?

Cos the Binmen and Boilermakers said so.

Exactly. I presume that this is why it has taken so long to work out how to pay the money the Council cheated from their female employees.

And hopefully will make other Coucils or bureacracy think twice about thinking they can get away with treating women like second class citizens.

No, because most councils sorted it out years ago, as Birmingham should have done.

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.

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.

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’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!

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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/