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

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.

I find it hard to believe that on a forum that is titled Feminism, that some basic points about how women, and what is seen as women's work, has been traditionally under paid.

To have to spend time going through these basics, rather than looking at ways to make sure that in the future sexist practices like this dont happen.

As well as consider how this happen. Just a Council that is badly run and no committment to equality. Or, as I have heard suggested, that Unions were complicit in this discrimination.

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.

Splitter !

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.

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.

Usually pathetic response to say an opinion is being scolded.

If that's how you experience it, it says much more about your than anything.

Why not start a thread about how Equal Pay isn't really a feminist position to take if you dont want to deal with the reality of what these women campaigners have done.

Dumbing everything down to being a "talking point" means nothing has any value other than being to take a virtual position.

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.

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?

@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 😂

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.