Is this pay in equality?

[sameagain]

I work in a sector that has been one of the hardest hit in the downturn - my role was disbanded and I was going to be redundant.

Luckily (or as I prefer it, hard earned through determination and being good at my job ) I secured another position in the organisation.

It's a really good job, high profile, running a project that is material to the survival of the organisation (large multinational) It was also a promotion, so from looking really bad, things turned out very well. They also agreed that I can do it on flexible hours 70% of full time, so I can work around school hols, so it really does feel like I've got it made. Except...

Because of "the current economic climate" all promotions carry only sufficient pay rise to take you to the bottom of the scale. I was only £40 off it before, so I have taken on this huge new job for 70%x£40 pa. Until recently all promotions carries a payrise of at least 5% provided that didn;t take you outside the scale.

There were 5 new positions created to cover this nationally and I met the others yesterday. All of them moved sideways into the job. 2 are on £10k more than me (that's 30% more) and the only man is on £25k more than me !!!! Is that right, or does it just reflect their greater experience? We are all similar ages, but I had a break while my DCs were small.

Perfectly usual where there are defined salary bands for different levels of job to have people promoted into a band automatically starting at the bottom of the new band, there's nothing unusual in that.

Presumably if the others were all sideways moves, they have I imagine had no payrise at all under the new current economic climate rule. If they are already £10k higher than the bottom of the band presumably they do also have significant experience at this level already which you don't have.

Whether it's justified for the man to be on £65k, £25k more than you and £15k more than the others, I've no idea without more knowledge of the situation and of him. But that's a very wide salary band to go from £40k to at least £65k! Presumably there is therefore very little room for him to get payrises and move up the band, whereas you obviously can, economic climate permitting.