Employment and Pensions
For all the latest news and comment on employment and pensions law.
A Collection is a selection of features, articles, comments and opinions on any given theme or topic. It allows you to stay up‑to‑date with what interests you most.
Equal pay and gender pay are issues all employers need to grapple with. The two concepts are often confused, but they are not the same thing. Employers might have a bigger than average gender pay gap, but no equal pay issue. Alternatively an organisation may have equal pay issues, but a limited gender pay gap. Getting your messages across to the workforce is a vital part of any employer's diversity strategy, in addition to reducing the likelihood of grievances and claims from employees.
Since the passing of the Equality Act 2010 reducing the gender pay gap has been very much on the Government's agenda. Initial steps included the introduction of a voluntary reporting regime, and a new power for tribunals to order employers found to have been in breach of equal pay law to carry out equal pay audits in certain circumstances. The most recent development is the creation of a new requirement for all commercial organisations with 250 or more employees to publish data about the impact of gender on its pay and bonus policies. The public sector already has a duty to report on equality issues, including pay and gender statistics, but gender pay reporting will be extended to them too.
DAC Beachcroft has been at the forefront of advising on, and litigating these matters over the past decade. We advised our financial services clients back in 2009 when the EHRC made enquiries about sex discrimination and the gender pay gap in their sector. We have successfully defended thousands of equal pay claims for our NHS clients, shaping that national litigation through the test cases we have run. We have also been working with the GEO to shape the gender pay reporting regulations.
The Gender Pay Regulations require organisations in scope to publish their mean and median gender pay gap, mean gender bonus gap and bonus information and the number of men and women in each quartile of the organisation’s pay distribution from April 2017 onwards.
We are working with clients to assist them with:
Our team has extensive experience of handling the 'sharp end' of pay equality issues for our clients. We provide pragmatic commercially-focused advice designed to keep our clients safe from legal challenge. We assist our clients by:
By Ceri Fuller
This month, the Court of Appeal held that workers on sleep in shifts are only entitled to the national minimum wage in respect of hours in which they…
By Joanne Bell
The Court of Appeal has today handed down its much anticipated judgment in the case of Royal Mencap Society v Tomlinson-Blake…
By Ceri Fuller
The EAT has held that a group of female employees' right to equal pay was not affected by the promotion of their comparator.
By Neil Bhan
The trustees of Box Clever's defined benefit pension scheme came under scrutiny for their decision-making during the course of an Upper Tribunal…
By Ceri Fuller
This month has seen some interesting case law on unfair dismissal…
By Ceri Fuller
If you offer enhanced maternity pay do you also have to enhance shared parental leave pay? On 11 April the Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) clarified…
By Ceri Fuller
Now that the first round of reporting gender pay and bonus gaps has been done, the next deadline looming in HR practitioners' minds is likely to be…
By Ceri Fuller
The Court of Appeal has confirmed that an expectation that a disabled employee would work long hours amounted to a provision, criterion or practice…
By Ceri Fuller
The Low Pay Commission has opened a consultation seeking views on existing national minimum wage and national living wages rates and the rates that…
By Ceri Fuller
This month, the world of employment law has produced a rich variety of cases, as covered in this alert…