Examination of Witnesses (Questions 40-59)
EQUAL OPPORTUNITIES
COMMISSION
2 FEBRUARY 2005
Q40 Linda Perham: Generally, you would
not want to make it mandatory for employers to have to offer flexible
or part-time work?
Ms Slocock: We do not think it
is workable.
Q41 Linda Perham: The other thing I wanted
to ask is that a significant proportion of women working part-time
previously held highly skilled and responsible jobs, and you attributed
this, largely, to limited opportunities for part-time work in
such highly skilled jobs and a lack of support to women to retain
their status (in paragraph 35 of your memorandum). However, is
there any thinking that actually women might be choosing to do
this—this kind of work/life balance position—and downsizing
to make that a choice rather than something in which they were
excluded from the workplace because there are not opportunities?
Have you managed to find out what that balance is?
Ms Wild: The research that we
are referring to is a European Social Fund project, for which
we are co-sponsors. The research report will be coming out in
a couple of months' time, and we will be happy to send that to
you. We are doing some further research as a back-up, to drill
down beneath the findings of the initial project. What the initial
project has found is that women are taking under-demanding work.
When we say "under-demanding", that is their definition;
they are saying that in previous jobs either they had more managerial
responsibility or they were in a more technical role or something
like that, in comparison to what they are doing as part-time working.
The research has found four reasons: because of their child-caring
responsibilities, because there are few or no opportunities for
advancement in the workplace (perhaps, because they are, for example,
in the home care sector or childcare sector where there are not
yet clear career paths, particularly if you are in a part-time
position); because they are in a period of transition (in other
words, they recognise that they are working below their potential
so they are taking on educational training to get themselves out
of that) and, lastly, because they are seeking a better work/life
balance. I suppose you could say, in that last category, it is
a question of choice, but I think we have to ask ourselves what
we actually mean by "choice". If you are a qualified
teacher working in rural Shropshire and you want or need to work
part-time but the only part-time post you can get is as a classroom
assistant, are you really choosing that or is it the labour market
conditions that are forcing it on you? It is to listen to that
kind of question that we have commissioned an omnibus survey and
we have the results and are currently analysing these, first of
all, to give us a feel for the numbers of women in each of these
categories and, also, a better feel for are they actually making
a choice or is it something that the labour market structure is
imposing on them? It feels, for most women, like it is actually
a compromise between what they would really like to do and the
hours. I think, for most women, they are choosing to work part-time;
they are not choosing to work below their potential.
Q42 Linda Perham: Just something general
which occurred to me looking at your evidence, I am mindful that
the European Union Directive on equality in employment is probably
the only reason why the Government is taking action on age discrimination
in employment, on which I tried to get a Bill through some years
ago. Do you think there are any European Union initiatives which
impact on this whole gender pay gap and occupational segregation
coming on stream in the near future?
Ms Wild: Interestingly I think
the measures around consulting the workforce are, perhaps, the
most effective. If we could mainstream gender into those discussions
then we could get some changes within the workplace.
Q43 Judy Mallaber: You mentioned classroom
assistants, which has stimulated another question in my mind.
I was at a meeting with 20 heads with my neighbouring MP last
week when we were talking about remodelling the workforce agreement
in schools, which is also looking at the potential role of classroom
assistants, which made me wonder whether you have done any work
at all on not getting just women into traditional male jobs but
at the whole question of enhancing and giving greater value and
looking at the skills within the jobs that women tend to be in
at the moment.
Ms Madden: That has not been the
focus of our investigation into modern apprentices, but there
are some very real issues here which we would like to do some
further work on in future to look at what you might call the under-valuing
of the work that women tend to do, and looking at ways in which
you could build career paths which allow people to move from lower
levels into higher levels. I believe that this is something that
has actually been considered—the particular example you
are talking about—by the Department for Education and Skills
(they have a School Workforce Unit, I think it is called), and
they are very much looking at the development of the whole sector
and career routes, for example, through childminding and classroom
assistants into teaching. A lot of those routes do not exist at
the moment.
Q44 Mr Clapham: Could we just look at
the Equal Pay Act? There is a part in your submission that does,
in fact, take us through the Equal Pay Act, and you do list its
shortcomings. We have had the legislation since 1970 and made
little headway. I say that because in 1983, in my previous job
with the trade unions, I kicked off an equal pay claim for canteen
workers and, believe it or not, 19 years after kicking that off
it still had not been resolved and was only resolved by the Government
intervening and deciding to settle the claim. It just seemed to
me that, as we moved into that area of equal value, because you
are looking at features of comparison, an employer can go on forever
adding features, changing features and you never get to a resolution.
What do we need to do to get legislation that is going to be meaningful
in its application?
Ms Slocock: Yes, I very much agree
with you, the Equal Pay Act has been in place for 30 years and
we still have a major pay gap. If you look at the part-time pay
gap, the difference in earnings per hour for women working part-time
and men working full-time it is 40%, which is the same as 30 years
ago, so it has not had any impact on that. Obviously, there are
shortcomings just in relation to trying to make the law work.
So, in relation to equal pay for equal value, you have to have
the same employer, which is not often the case. If you have local
authorities you do have quite diverse employment and you can make
comparisons, but in many other areas of work you cannot. It is
a tool that (a) does not appear to have worked when you look at
the broader picture and (b) when you think about it, it has its
built-in limitations; it is focusing on pay discrimination, and
the pay gap is caused by a range of things, of which pay discrimination
is one. Other forms of discrimination are another. Today we have
been launching a report which shows that 30,000 women a year are
losing their job and being made redundant or feel they have to
leave work because they are pregnant—30,000 women a year;
a totally shocking figure. So there are other forms of discrimination
as well, which lead to the pay gap. Occupational segregation is
not just about the under-valuing of work that women do, which
tends to be focused in very low paid areas. It is also about opening
up access to new areas of work which involve higher pay, and lack
of flexible working is a major influence both on occupational
segregation because flexible working is not available, often,
in these areas where women are not working, and also in rising
up to higher levels and getting higher level work. These factors
in relation to flexible working and occupational segregation—do
not lend themselves to making it against the law. The reason being
that you have to get employers to do it in practice; it has to
work for them, it has to work with the grain of the business.
So what we do need? I think the time is right for fresh thinking
here. The Government has established the Women in Work Commission,
involving a range of players, including the CBI and the TUC. Our
Chair, Julie Mellor, is also on the Women in Work Commission.
I think there is a need for the various parties to get together
and have a deep look at where we are and what we can do about
it. That Commission will be coming up with recommendations, I
think, in October. The other thing which is happening, which,
I think, is part of this picture (which means that it is a particularly
good moment to be thinking about this) is that the Government
is going to create a Commission for Equality on Human Rights,
and that is probably going to happen in the next few years. We
and many others are calling for a fundamental look at equalities
legislation to see if we can make it work better. It is partly
about consistency across the different strands but it is also
about taking, almost, a kind of process engineering look at this.
If you want to achieve these objectives of closing the pay gap,
what is it that you really need to do in order to make it happen
on the ground? I think that the model which we have under the
existing Equal Pay Act and also the Sex Discrimination Act of
relying on women to take individual cases to tribunals is just
one that is flawed; it does not work. We know, for example, from
our pregnancy research that less than half of women even go so
far as to raise the issue with their employer because they are
anxious they will lose their job if they do so and there may be
other reasons as well. Only 2% go so far as to start proceedings
towards an employment tribunal. So there are huge numbers not
accessing justice; we found that half of pregnant women at work,
in our survey, say they have experienced discrimination, and tiny,
tiny proportions are taking that forward. When the cases go to
employment tribunal I do not think that anyone feels that they
have won; whoever wins, the solution is not there: the woman,
normally, will not get her job back. We would like to move to
something which is more proactive which encourages employers to
think about how to achieve the objective of closing the pay gap.
It is in their interest to do so because it is good for business
as well as being good for the women. At this moment, we are still
thinking about our options ourselves so we are not in a position
to put forward a particular model to you.
Q45 Mr Clapham: So, really, you are waiting
on the Women in Work Commission coming up with some recommendations
that you may be able to use?
Ms Slocock: Yes. We will be putting
our evidence into the Women in Work Commission and we are still
considering ourselves what that evidence will be. We certainly
do think it is important not just to have our own view on it but
to have a view which is discussed with employers and trade unions
as well, so that it is something that works for all the parties
and has got ownership and will be taken forward to achieve real
change.
Q46 Mr Clapham: Are there any European
models or models in other countries that are more helpful?
Ms Slocock: There are different
models. For example, I think in Canada, probably, and the Federal
Government as well.
Ms Wild: The two clearest examples
are Ontario and Australia where they have much more prescriptive
legislation for the role of employers in respect of equal pay.
Basically, both say you have to carry out equal pay reviews. However,
those labour markets are very different to the UK labour market;
they are much more public-sector-dominated, and there is much
more centralised collective bargaining—just an ethos where
employers are used to doing as they are told, in a way that we
do not have in the labour market here. Also, they do not have
the substantial smaller business sector that we have here, and
the presence of the small business sector introduces a great deal
of variety into the labour market which we have to take into account,
and it is one of the reasons why we need to think very carefully
about what we need to recommend around equal pay.
Chairman: As a Committee, we are going
to Copenhagen on Monday to look at flexible labour markets and
security of employment, which is a parallel inquiry we are conducting
but, I am sure, we will stray into your area while we are there.
Q47 Judy Mallaber: I certainly hope (to
put a plug in here) that our Committee or a successor committee
will want to look at the outcome of the Women in Work Commission.
One of the areas, obviously, where you are trying to encourage
action is trying to encourage employers to undertake pay reviews.
Is there any evidence that they take helpful action or, indeed,
any action at all as a result of doing the reviews?
Ms Wild: The evidence is quite
mixed. We first recommended that employers carry out equal pay
reviews in 2001, so we have had four or five years' experience
of it. We have carried out monitoring research every year since
we made that recommendation, and we have just completed and will
shortly be releasing the latest round of monitoring research.
Monitoring research has been looking at the incidence of employers
carrying out equal pay reviews—are they doing it, which
sectors are doing it, and so on. There has been a slow and steady
increase over the four years in the number of organisations doing
it—predominantly in the public sector and predominantly
larger organisations. This year we have also commissioned some
case study research to find out, as you say, what they are actually
doing. In addition to that, for the last three years, jointly
with Opportunity Now, we have run an equal pay forum for employers
who want to or intend to or have just carried out equal pay reviews.
That gives organisations a confidential forum where they can come
and talk about what they are doing. The forum particularly has
been a useful driver to get organisations to do pay reviews. Where
organisations do them well (in other words, they know what they
are doing: they give it to the right people within the organisation;
they give it to a team comprising their compensation and benefits
people and their equality people) then they are very, very satisfied
with the outcome, because an equal pay review is not just about
looking for the equality issues and the pay gaps, it is a very
useful way of smartening up your pay systems. As one leading businessman
said: "Well, why wouldn't you want to know what you are paying
people?" That, basically, is what it does. What we found
is that the experience of doing pay reviews is a bit mixed. As
I say, if people do them well then they may well find small pay
gaps, of 5% or so, but some organisations have found larger pay
gaps, up to 45%. It is then a case of starting to negotiate with
your workforce how you actually change that, because to plug a
45% pay gap is quite a tall order. One of the shortcomings of
the Equal Pay Act is that, in theory, once you have found a pay
gap you have to plug it immediately. In practice, as anyone who
has had any dealings with pay negotiations and pay systems knows,
you cannot just change one person's pay, you have to align that
with everybody else's, so it can take some time. Most organisations
that have done equal pay reviews have found them useful, and we
are encouraged by that.
Q48 Linda Perham: What size of company
would you expect to undertake pay reviews? Obviously not somebody
only employing a few people.
Ms Wild: It is actually much easier
to do it if you have got only a few people. We have two versions
of our equal pay review kit: we have the main one and then we
produced a smaller employer kit which actually has a CD Rom in
it. I have tried this myself and it takes two minutes per employee
to work out if you have got a problem. We are aware of a few small
employers who have done it. They are very enthusiastic about it.
For example, one small company in Wales found that they had a
man, as it happened, who was about to leave because when they
did the pay review they found that for some reason they were paying
him less than they thought they were paying him. When they went
and raised that with him he said: "I am glad you have raised
this because I was about to go." So this helps in terms of
just servicing the issues you have in your pay system. These may
not be gender issues (from our point of view we hope that they
are gender issues); what organisations usually find is a mix of
gender issues and other anomalies that they would be quite happy
to get rid of. So for small businesses it is not that difficult.
The area where it is difficult is where you have a medium-sized
firm, say, with 200-300 employees and you probably do not have
the HR expertise and you may not know where to start. Obviously,
almost all of our guidance is aimed at that particular group.
For big organisations, again, it is easy because they have got
the people and they have got the know-how. It is the middle group,
actually, that find it difficult.
Q49 Chairman: One of the things we have
been finding, looking at flexible labour markets, is that employers
are forever wringing their hands about regulation, and all the
rest of it. This is something which is available without regulation,
without legislative requirement. Are you engaging with British
Chambers of Commerce or the FSB and people like that? Are they
interested in the message that you are evangelically marching
around with?
Ms Wild: Yes, we have had a lot
of success. First of all, when we developed the equal pay review
kit, which is our model process, we piloted it with 26 organisations
of different sizes in different sectors across the country. When
we had done that we went to the Better Regulation Taskforce and
said "This is what we have done. What do you think of it?"
They have endorsed it and said it is a marvellous alternative
to regulation. Our primary vehicle for roll-out was through ACAS,
which has a much wider regional network than we do and a lot of
contact with employers. We trained all their advisers on how to
do this. Yes, we have engaged with the small business associations
and, so far as we are able to, with the CBI, who are not enthusiastic
about equal pay reviews. However, we do not stop, as you say,
evangelising on this, but not just evangelising, also answering
people's queries and helping people to learn from each other because
there is good practice building up not just in how to do equal
pay reviews but there are some common problems. Almost every organisation
that does an equal pay review will find it has got a starting
pay problem; it is bringing women in at the bottom of the range
and it is bringing men in at mid-point or top-point. How do you
solve that? You can ask somebody else who has already done it.
Ms Slocock: I guess we feel that
we have made some good progress (we have given you the statistics
in our evidence) but there is still a long way to go and most
employers are not doing pay reviews. The progress is much better
in the public sector, I think it is fair to say, than in the private
sector. The Government has taken a lead by all civil service departments
doing pay reviews, and we would like to see pay reviews right
across the public sector, but it is the private sector as well
where we need to make more progress. Also, a pay review should
not just be looking at pay discrimination—important though
that is—the ideal employer would be using it to tackle all
three causes of the pay gap.
Q50 Judy Mallaber: Is there an argument
for looking at whether pay reviews should be mandatory?
Ms Slocock: I think that is very
much part of the fresh look that I was talking about earlier on,
looking at the legislation. I think it is certainly something
that needs to be considered as one of the options on the table.
It may be that a broader approach than simply advocating one particular
mechanism might be more effective—for example, something
which is more focused on getting employers to close the pay gap
and find the right tools themselves. They may not find this is
the right tool for them but it needs further consideration. Whatever
steps are taken needs very careful thought because it has got
to work. We do not want to make the same mistakes as, arguably,
were made 30 years ago in that we did something that was reasonably
good but it was not good enough to do the job.
Q51 Judy Mallaber: You mentioned pay
reviews across government departments, and obviously the Government
and public agencies are massive employers. How do you view the
progress on those? It was ironic that ACAS itself turned out to
have a problem when they started. How enthusiastically and competently
do you think those reviews have been carried out within departments,
and are there lessons to be learned from the progress they have
or have not made?
Ms Wild: Again, the picture is
mixed. One of the best reports of an equal pay review (and from
that I conclude that the exercise itself was very good) is from
a public sector body in Scotland, but I have also seen some pretty
dismal ones as well. An equal pay review is only as good as the
people carrying it out, and if the expertise is there. If I can
give you a public sector example: local government, where expertise
is spread far too thin. All the structures are there, all the
frameworks are in place and there is a new national pay agreement
which says it will happen, but it is not happening, and I think
it is not happening because the expertise to carry it out is not
there. So that is a rather vague answer to a very big question.
The picture is mixed.
Q52 Judy Mallaber: The local government
issue is very complex, I would suggest, with pay and equal pay
claims being taken, and so on, as well. Moving on to the Government's
procurement strategy, how do you think it could use that, and
what should it be doing through its procurement strategy to discourage
segregation?
Ms Slocock: More, I think, is
the answer. We would certainly like to see procurement used as
a tool. It is a very powerful lever for change, potentially, and
it has been raised both by our own advisory group to the Occupational
Segregation Report—we put it in our recommendations—and
it was also raised at a recent summit we had at No 11, chaired
by the Chancellor. We had a number of speakers there and BT, for
example, called for this, as did a number of other private sector
organisations, from the floor. I think the Government is moving
on race issues to give clear advice that race can be taken into
account in contracts, and we would like to see it moving on gender
in a similar way. There is already some basis for doing this,
I think, in the best value requirements and ODPM guidance which
actually do allow (and we put this in our evidence) for equal
opportunities to be taken into account, but the Government is
not actively pushing this at the moment, and we would like to
see it pushed because we think that if through contracts employers
were encouraged to look at occupational segregation we could have
quite a lot of impact.
Q53 Judy Mallaber: Would there be an
argument for making it more clearly a requirement, in terms of
whether people got contracts or not?
Ms Slocock: It cannot be an absolute
requirement, I am advised, but it can be a consideration. That
is what we are looking for. It cannot be the determining factor
but it should be a consideration in the awarding of those contracts.
That is what we would like to see.
Q54 Judy Mallaber: So how would you suggest
that that should work out in practice? What are the mechanisms,
the tools?
Ms Wild: We are just in the process
of consulting on some draft guidance for the local authority sector
on this because of the concept of best value which allows workforce
considerations to be taken into account when considering contracts.
We believe it is possible to move forward on this, so we have
put together some guidance. That looks at the whole process, from
the going out to tender to considering those tenders, to selecting
and then your relationship with that contractor once you have
awarded the contract. We think it is possible to build in gender
equality considerations throughout the whole process. It is very
clear guidance is needed because, as you will know, procurement
is governed by European regulations, so it is important that the
principle of competitiveness is not impeded. So, as Caroline has
said, it cannot be a deciding factor but it is something that
can be taken into account. We think that with good guidance and
strong leadership procurement could be a very effective mechanism
for promoting gender equality.
Q55 Judy Mallaber: Have you any idea
how that could work? Some of us, on this Committee, in our constituencies
come up against difficulties on public procurement, in trying
to get, in our case, contracts awarded to UK companies, let alone
tackling this even more difficult issue of persuading them to
go down the issue of looking at equalities as well.
Ms Wild: I think it is the leadership
that is required. We think, on a practical basis, it can be done
in certain circumstances, and that is why we have produced the
guidance, but the guidance will not be worth the paper it is written
on unless that enabling leadership is there which says: "We
want this to happen." There are some good examples around
race of it having happened, so it can do, but it is quite difficult
to make it happen when there is not the leadership and the will
that it should happen from above.
Q56 Judy Mallaber: On issues like this,
what would be the impact of a duty on public bodies to promote
gender equality?
Ms Wild: The cleanest and quickest
way of doing it is to have a public sector duty on gender, and
then gender equality would be on a par with race equality, and
the situation would be clearer. The race duty means that across
the board the race dimension can be taken into account. The position,
at the moment, with gender equality is that you can only do it
in relation to the NHS and local government, where the concept
of best value applies, which is one of the causes of confusion
because people think: "Can I do this or can't I?" So
a public sector duty would make it very much clearer. What we
are doing is we are pushing ahead in two directions: yes, we would
like the public sector duty which would make it very clear that
you could use procurement, but, in the meantime, can we get on
and apply best value in such a way that it encourages contractors
to promote gender equality?
Ms Slocock: I think it is fair
to say that the Government could decide to promote it more generally,
it does not need a public sector duty to require it to promote
it more generally; it could decide to do that as active leadership,
if it wished, but once the public duty is in place then there
is much more of an understanding that it should do that.
Q57 Judy Mallaber: Finally, just to come
back to an area that we touched on earlier, when you were talking
about the rules for apprenticeship programmes, obviously another
big area of government intervention is around employment programmes,
training programmes, etc. I was just interested in whether you
have any particular views on the way in which some of those programmes
are working—for example, New Deal programmes and the rules
around that and the practice around those programmes; whether
there are any suggestions for improvements in those areas or changes
that are needed?
Ms Madden: We have not actually,
as part of the investigation, looked at New Deal. I think what
people have told us is that some of the programmes are not actually
enabling them to access on traditional work—it is not helping,
in a sense. However, in terms of the way in which the particular
regulations play against each other, I do not think we have actually
done the research on that. We are hoping to move into this area
and do some research next looking at the sort of routes into work,
re-entry routes, new types of training, that might actually help
women to access a wider range of work, and throughout their lives
as well as at an early age. I think it is quite clear from the
women we have talked to, though, that they do not see that there
are particular training routes in place that can help them; they
do not see that schemes, at the moment, are actually enabling
them to access these opportunities. So I do think it is important
that we do take a fresh look at training opportunities. I know
that we did have a discussion with the DfES about the skills passport,
for example, that they are developing and I think this is a very
interesting area where you actually try and unpick the skills
that are needed for particular types of employment in different
ways, new ways, and you also look at the skills that people bring
when they come into the workforce—for example, with women
they will have a whole range of skills which they have acquired
through unpaid work in the home—and try and better match
what people are offering with what skills are really needed in
the workplace. That is a very new way of looking at access routes
and access, but I do think that is an important way forward because,
at the moment, it is very traditional; it is about what the woman
brings as a woman rather than what the job requires and the broader
range of skills that she has.
Q58 Judy Mallaber: A previous Select
Committee I was on visited America and they had one very imaginative
programme we saw where they were taking what employers needed
in the banking industry and actually then looking at the skills
of women on welfare and trying to match those to the banking industry.
Those projects have been around but you do not see particular
evidence of some of those positive examples and practices.
Ms Madden: There is one particular
scheme, Ambition Energy, which is a scheme for lone parents championed
by Centrica, where they actually trained lone parents to become
gas fitters, and that was seen to be a very positive scheme. It
worked for everybody. The point is that actually it is a fairly
small-scale scheme, and what we would like to see is more of that
kind of thing happening.
Q59 Chairman: Thank you very much. Good
luck in your endeavours with the kind of Guardian-reading
agenda that you seem to be advancing, which many of us have sympathy
with but which tends to fall into second place behind the Daily
Mail-reading Cabinet Ministers that we sometimes have to try
and persuade of the deservability of social progress. We will
be in touch with you because there are probably loose ends we
will want to tie up, or there are tantalising questions we did
not ask that we think we should have done, but thank you very
much for your evidence.
Ms Slocock: Thank you.
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