TUC: Employment Rights Bill is “vital” for women’s pay and equality
TODAY (20 November) is Equal Pay Day 2024. That is two days earlier than last year when it fell on 22nd November. This means that, despite years of slow progress to close the UK’s mean Gender Pay Gap, it has definitively widened for the first time since 2013.
Equal Pay Day is a national campaign led by the Fawcett Society in the UK. It marks the day in the year when, based on the gender pay gap, women overall in the UK stop being paid compared to men.
The gender pay gap is the difference between the average pay of men and women within a particular group or population. Fawcett uses the mean, full-time, hourly gender pay gap for the UK to calculate the gender pay gap for Equal Pay Day which this year is 11.3%, up from 10.4% last year.
Jemima Olchawski, Chief Executive of the Fawcett Society, said: “It’s incredibly alarming to see the mean gender pay gap widen in 2024 and shows that without concerted effort most women won’t see equal pay in our working lifetime.
“Today’s data confirms that the Gender Pay Gap increases with age as women take on more and more unpaid care work for children and older people.
Tomorrow, at her first Budget, our first female Chancellor in history can right this wrong by investing to finally address the motherhood penalty and set the UK on a path to close the Gender Pay Gap for good.
“The draft Employment Rights Bill and commitments to close the gap are important steps but today’s data clearly shows more must urgently be done. Our government must commit to a cross-government strategy to shrink the gender pay gap by 2030 – women cannot wait any longer.”
Commenting on the Fawcett Society’s Equal Pay Day today (Wednesday), the day of the year women effectively stop getting paid because of the gender pay gap, TUC General Secretary Paul Nowak said: “Our economy isn’t working for women. At current rates of progress, it will still take 16 years to close the gender pay gap.
“This is why Labour’s Employment Rights Bill is so vital for women’s pay and equality.
“The Bill will require large employers to set out clear action plans on how they will close their gender pay gaps, rather than just report what they are.
“And we know women still take on the lion share of caring responsibilities – a key driver of the gender pay gap – so fixing care is critical to raising their pay.
“The Employment Rights Bill will also introduce a fair pay agreement in social care, to stop the race to the bottom on pay and conditions. This will help recruit and retain staff.”
The TUC says many of the other policies in the Employment Rights Bill – which begins its committee stage on Monday (25 November) – will help close the gender pay gap, including:
- Strengthening flexible working rights by introducing a day one right to work flexibly unless an employer can properly justify why this is not possible.
- Banning exploitative zero-hours contracts to help end the scourge of insecure work, which is particularly widespread in sectors like social care.
- Giving all employees day one rights on the job by scrapping qualifying time for basic rights, such as unfair dismissal, sick pay, and parental leave.
- Extending redundancy and unfair dismissal protections for pregnant women and new parents.
Read Fawcett’s explainer on the Gender Pay Gap here:
