Employment: The Justification of Unequal Pay

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Employment: The Justification of unequal pay As it is apparent, the law requires employers to pay men and women equally for like work, work of equal value or work rated as equivalent, though they are not required to provide justification of a difference in pay if it is due to a length of service. However, the recent decisions in Cadman and Wilson changed this, and the Court of Appeal held that employers may be required to justify the use of a length of service criterion “as well as its adoption in the first place”. Article 141 of the EC Treaty, requires each European Union member state to ensure that both sexes receive equal pay for equal work. Article 141, implemented in Great Britain by the Equal Pay Act (EPA) 1970 enforced the principle that men and women should receive the same pay. An employer who fails to abide by article 141, will be held liable for unequal pay unless he can show under s.1 (3) EPA that the difference in pay is explained by something that has nothing to do with sex. If he can show this, then the claim will fail. There appear to be a few cases where a length of service has come under the Genuine Material Factor heading to explain the difference in pay. In the case of Danfoss it was held that an employer did not have to provide special justification for recourse to a length of service criterion. This was because length of service goes hand in hand with experience and since experience enables the employee to perform his duties better, the employer is thus free to reward it without having to establish the importance it has in the performance of specific tasks entrusted to the employee”(where is the beginning of this quotation).2 Danfoss was followed by Cadman in 2006 which confirmed the above, however the... ... middle of paper ... ...-related pay’. When solicitors in practice advice employers, they will advise them that they will find it harder to defend a claim for service-related pay in jobs where employees learn the main skills required quickly, and there is in these cases little or no evidence that longer service has a positive impact on performance. Furthermore, employers will be advised now to review pay schemes rewarding length of service and consider whether they genuinely reflect experience-related performance improvements. However, when advising employees in such a claim, they will be told that they only need to cross a lower threshold in order to require the employer to justify the existence of the service-related pay scheme and its adoption. This is because the test was merely a sensible evidential requirement to ensure that the complaint in question had some prospect of success.

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