I'm racist!

rjsterry

Dinyull wrote:

rjsterry wrote:

Ballysmate wrote:

For me, the issue is that a body, funded by the public through what amounts to a poll tax is paying such eye watering salaries to its staff.
What is bizarre is having seen the figures that were published, people clamour for the 'poorer' paid staff to have their salaries increased to parity with the higher rewarded. My reaction was that salaries should have been slashed across the board.
AFAIK all the people on the list negotiated their own rewards with the BBC. As much as I dislike Lineker as a presenter, I blame the BBC management, not him, for his salary.

There are clearly some agents more pushy than others. There's competition between channels and private production companies to hire the big names so limited supply and high demand means high prices. Everyone except the BBC can spend what they like so unless you want a BBC entirely staffed by the people nobody else wants, the salaries are going to have to keep up. That said, this still doesn't explain the pretty massive differentials between, presenting MOTD and Strictly, let alone between presenters on the same show doing the same job.

But doesn't that explain exactly why Lineker is paid more then Winkleman.

If he wanted, he'd double his salary at Sky, and I bet he earns more from BT too. He's established himself over the past 20 years as THE presenter of football.

The problem the strictly presenters have is there is no alternative to negotiate against on a different channel.

But I'd have thought Winkleman could present pretty much any Saturday night talent show or other light entertainment format.

dinyull

Are those other entertainment formats worth anywhere near the Premier League TV money deal?

I'm not saying the BBC are paying fairly....I just think picking out Lineker or MOTD (Shearer is another earning shed loads despite not doing much) is wrong because of the money involved in football.

For eg. BBC pay £70m a year to show the highlights....how much does the BBC pay to show strictly?

rjsterry

Apparently the BBC have made £500M from licensing the Strictly format around the world, so it might not be Premier League, but it's not insignificant.

rick_chasey

Ballysmate wrote:

For me, the issue is that a body, funded by the public through what amounts to a poll tax is paying such eye watering salaries to its staff.
What is bizarre is having seen the figures that were published, people clamour for the 'poorer' paid staff to have their salaries increased to parity with the higher rewarded. My reaction was that salaries should have been slashed across the board.
AFAIK all the people on the list negotiated their own rewards with the BBC. As much as I dislike Lineker as a presenter, I blame the BBC management, not him, for his salary.

They're really not that eye watering.

These are people at the top of the entertainment game. Telly programmes are like mini businesses. The stars are the top of those businesses. They bring in the viewers. The fact that we all know who they are shows that.

And the BBC is in competition with the rest of the telly world. Travel to other countries and you'll see how terrible their telly is compared to the UK; the weird model whereby the BBC gets a lot of money from the state but still competes with commercial channels has bizarrely created a highly competitive, highly valuable, high output telly service that is basically unrivalled in concentration of quality. The commercial channels have had to raise their game, because quality is what the public expect now. That's why the BBC exports so much telly to the rest of the world; 'cos it's good quality.

I want my telly licence to produce good quality telly, and you're not gonna do that if you don't pay the rate for the talent that's needed to do so.

The talent goes where the money goes. (Why else is Sagan riding road bikes? It clearly bores the t!ts off him). Pay up, as far as I'm concerned. Just be ruthless with the money if they're sh!t. As long as it cuts both ways.

dinyull

rjsterry wrote:

Apparently the BBC have made £500M from licensing the Strictly format around the world, so it might not be Premier League, but it's not insignificant.

But that's the format. If Winkleman and Daly were imperative to it's success they'd present it over in america.....like Len Goodman was on the judging panel in america.

rjsterry

Dinyull wrote:

rjsterry wrote:

Apparently the BBC have made £500M from licensing the Strictly format around the world, so it might not be Premier League, but it's not insignificant.

But that's the format. If Winkleman and Daly were imperative to it's success they'd present it over in america.....like Len Goodman was on the judging panel in america.

Likewise, Lineker is not essential to MOTD, but he is good at it, as are Winkleman and Daly. There are other examples.

ballysmate

Rick Chasey wrote:

Ballysmate wrote:

For me, the issue is that a body, funded by the public through what amounts to a poll tax is paying such eye watering salaries to its staff.
What is bizarre is having seen the figures that were published, people clamour for the 'poorer' paid staff to have their salaries increased to parity with the higher rewarded. My reaction was that salaries should have been slashed across the board.
AFAIK all the people on the list negotiated their own rewards with the BBC. As much as I dislike Lineker as a presenter, I blame the BBC management, not him, for his salary.

They're really not that eye watering.

These are people at the top of the entertainment game. Telly programmes are like mini businesses. The stars are the top of those businesses. They bring in the viewers. The fact that we all know who they are shows that.

And the BBC is in competition with the rest of the telly world. Travel to other countries and you'll see how terrible their telly is compared to the UK; the weird model whereby the BBC gets a lot of money from the state but still competes with commercial channels has bizarrely created a highly competitive, highly valuable, high output telly service that is basically unrivalled in concentration of quality. The commercial channels have had to raise their game, because quality is what the public expect now. That's why the BBC exports so much telly to the rest of the world; 'cos it's good quality.

I want my telly licence to produce good quality telly, and you're not gonna do that if you don't pay the rate for the talent that's needed to do so.

The talent goes where the money goes. (Why else is Sagan riding road bikes? It clearly bores the t!ts off him). Pay up, as far as I'm concerned. Just be ruthless with the money if they're sh!t. As long as it cuts both ways.

Well perhaps we have a different view on what constitutes eye watering.
How many extra viewers does Gary Bland Lineker bring in to MOTD?
Likewise Winkleman on Strictly? My missus watches it in spite of Winkleman/Daly, not because of them.
I enjoy Ken Bruce on R2 but don't think he is worth 250k nor Steve Wright 450k

As I said above, people will negotiate what they can salary wise but my other point was concerning the clamour for female presenters to be paid more because they are being hard done by. Amazing.

rick_chasey

Female pay is a much bigger issue than telly stars and I deal with it a lot.

Transparency is a good route to take, but it needs to across the industry (otherwise certain firms get singled out unfairly; I'd be surprised if ITV or Sky are any more equal than the BBC, gender pay wise), and it needs to be formalised.

Only offering up the 'star pay' for newspapers isn't all that insightful; rather like anything, the distribution curve means that at the very high end pay is by its nature more erratic and less comparable.

On the other hand, there is a lot more that goes into deciding someone's comp than just the job they do (believe it or not), and that context is lost when it's a newspaper headline or an entry on a spreadie. In that sense, transparency can be counterproductive, because the context can't really be shown.

rick_chasey

Ballysmate wrote:

Well perhaps we have a different view on what constitutes eye watering.
How many extra viewers does Gary Bland Lineker bring in to MOTD?
Likewise Winkleman on Strictly? My missus watches it in spite of Winkleman/Daly, not because of them.
I enjoy Ken Bruce on R2 but don't think he is worth 250k nor Steve Wright 450k
.

It's not about what you think they're worth bally. It's about what the producers think they need to pay to get the quality of the programming. They get given the budget, and they spend it. Guess what, in TV, like any services company, the biggest costs are labour!

Would football fans watch MOTD without linkear? Probably.

Would they complain more with another presenter? Probably; I'm not a TV expert, but they're working to achieve a certain quality and I would imagine something around the familiarity, a level of credibility as a high level former pro, the enthusiasm, the lack of too much football baggage (no yellow cards in professional career), and his professionalism behind the scenes probably contributes a level that is difficult to match with other presenters.

If you compare that also with the fact that a) there's a lot of competition for football telly talent since it gets watched a lot and b) footballers already get paid a lot so you need to make it worth their while to get their asses off the sofa, you can see how they arrive at that number.

kingstongraham

Ballysmate wrote:

I enjoy Ken Bruce on R2 but don't think he is worth 250k

I didn't realise he was still alive. But for 8 million listeners, that's only 3p each. For the year.

ballysmate

Most people in this country are paid a set rate regardless of gender when employed in the same roles. Disparity between the sexes. like at the BBC seems to become evident when remuneration and salary packages are negotiable.
I blame the hardnoses in recruitment.

ballysmate

KingstonGraham wrote:

Ballysmate wrote:

I enjoy Ken Bruce on R2 but don't think he is worth 250k

I didn't realise he was still alive. But for 8 million listeners, that's only 3p each. For the year.

3p? As a canny Scotsman, I think Ken would begrudge paying so much over the odds.

rick_chasey

Ballysmate wrote:

Most people in this country are paid a set rate regardless of gender when employed in the same roles.

Nah.

Where's the evidence for this?

Because I sit through non-bias training and gender diversity talks and conferences from time to time and they all have the stats that say precisely the opposite to this.

rick_chasey

It does amuse me when recruiters get it in the neck when, certainly at the top end, recruiters have made a pretty penny by helping firms fulfil their diverse gender needs.

Indeed, diversity has become an industry in its own right and in bigger industries you'll find boutique and specialists search firms that focus on diverse recruitment.

Diversity in recruitment is easily the single biggest topic on the lips of all our clients; above Brexit even, and they're pretty bl00dy worried about that.

ballysmate

Rick Chasey wrote:

Ballysmate wrote:

Most people in this country are paid a set rate regardless of gender when employed in the same roles.

Nah.

Where's the evidence for this?

Because I sit through non-bias training and gender diversity talks and conferences from time to time and they all have the stats that say precisely the opposite to this.

Every factory floor, retail outlet and public sector job for a start. These are the biggest employers in the country.
I fully accept that there will be a disparity in incomes where the salaries are negotiated.

BTW, if I were a recruiter, given that there is no difference in abilities between the sexes regarding performance and that women generally can be employed for less money than men, why would I appoint any men?

rick_chasey

I don't see any evidence.

BBC is public sector for a start; and as we just saw, that ain't equal.

I know my wife got paid less than the boys in her Saturday job at DFS.

Where is your evidence for your assumption? Genuinely, it flies in the face of every stat I've seen on the issue.


And if you're paying for a recruiter, chances are the requirements for the role are not easy to find.

Certaintly at the level I work at no two people can be classed as "the same" anyway; there's always a compromise somewhere.

I can't obviously vouch for lower levels.

rick_chasey

I mean, Google "gender pay gap same job" and look at any reputable news site and there will be an article on the latest set of data.


Literally in 5 seconds I pulled up this: "pay gap is because of gender not jobs" https://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/04/24/u ... -jobs.html

And this: "men still earn more than women for the same job"
https://www.google.co.uk/amp/www.cnbc.c ... -jobs.html

ballysmate

Rick Chasey wrote:

I mean, Google "gender pay gap same job" and look at any reputable news site and there will be an article on the latest set of data.


Literally in 5 seconds I pulled up this: "pay gap is because of gender not jobs" https://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/04/24/u ... -jobs.html

And this: "men still earn more than women for the same job"
https://www.google.co.uk/amp/www.cnbc.c ... -jobs.html

CNBC and New York Times? I was thinking UK not worldwide.
NHS is the biggest employer in the UK and I am pretty sure its employees have pay bands.
Tesco is still probably No2 and there is no disparity in respect to gender for the majority of their workforce is there until you reach senior management perhaps, when salaries are negotiated.
Police, MoD, and every government department have paybands that are a matter of public record.

BBC?

http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/foi/classes/ ... grades.pdf

Graded again. No mention of gender at all. Again it appears that disparity is only evident when people are in a position to negotiate their salary.

rjsterry

Or in any SME without a formal pay structure. Sure they are all way smaller than Tesco but there are a lot of them.

rick_chasey

Let's look at actual pay rather than structures.

Structures are all fine in theory but in practice there is much more wiggle room that they would ever admit to.

Just because a pay structure doesn't break the law by defining gender as a reason to change pay does not remotely mean gender pay is the same.

ballysmate

rjsterry wrote:

Or in any SME without a formal pay structure.

You have evidence that SMEs in the UK pay men and women different rates for the same jobs?

ballysmate

Rick Chasey wrote:

Let's look at actual pay rather than structures.

Structures are all fine in theory but in practice there is much more wiggle room that they would ever admit to.

Just because a pay structure doesn't break the law by defining gender as a reason to change pay does not remotely mean gender pay is the same.

I realise that employment is your speciality much as tax is Stevo's, so a honest question. How can pay within a pay structure such as those used by the employers I previously mentioned be skewed according to gender?

rjsterry

Ballysmate wrote:

rjsterry wrote:

Or in any SME without a formal pay structure.

You have evidence that SMEs in the UK pay men and women different rates for the same jobs?

No. My point was that a large chunk of the workforce don't have pay grades to rely on. Discussing pay openly is slightly taboo, so there is plenty of opportunity for discriminatory pay that can be passed off as due to different levels of experience or competency if anyone asks. The opportunity is there: it would be naive to think people don't take it.

Ben6899

Ballysmate wrote:

Rick Chasey wrote:

Let's look at actual pay rather than structures.

Structures are all fine in theory but in practice there is much more wiggle room that they would ever admit to.

Just because a pay structure doesn't break the law by defining gender as a reason to change pay does not remotely mean gender pay is the same.

I realise that employment is your speciality much as tax is Stevo's, so a honest question. How can pay within a pay structure such as those used by the employers I previously mentioned be skewed according to gender?

Because pay structures tend to operate with bands? Employ women at the bottom, and men at the top, of the band?

rick_chasey

So my experience is towards the top end, but big corporates have pay bands that go all the way up to CEO.

This can in instances be problematic for the firm when the market rate for a certain hire is more expensive than the banding allows.

In my experience, if the will is there to pay, they can make it up in other ways; guarantees, LTIPs, benefits in kind, "relocation" costs, school fees, car leases, etc.

pblakeney

Rick Chasey wrote:

So my experience is towards the top end, but big corporates have pay bands that go all the way up to CEO.

This can in instances be problematic for the firm when the market rate for a certain hire is more expensive than the banding allows.

In my experience, if the will is there to pay, they can make it up in other ways; guarantees, LTIPs, benefits in kind, "relocation" costs, school fees, car leases, etc.

Which is why it is better to move, than to wait for promotion.

rick_chasey

Meh it's not that simple.

If your recruiter told ya that, s/he's got ulterior motives

pblakeney

Rick Chasey wrote:

Meh it's not that simple.

If your recruiter told ya that, s/he's got ulterior motives

Personal experience, viewing others, and as you said above...
Staying put leads to complacency both from the employee, and the employer.

rick_chasey

https://www.theguardian.com/small-busin ... %2Bg%3D%3D

So to bring it vaguely back to topic, the article highlights a few issues, though in practice the issues are harder to solve.

It’s broadly accepted that with regard to gender, there is definitely an issue, but the issue is widely understood across industries, and at a senior level, there has been good progress which, currently, looks set to continue.

So while it’s clearly not solved, things are moving in the right direction, and it’s tempting to stay positive.

Regarding the issue on ethnic diversity, the challenge is more complicated. Broadly speaking, discussing race is more complex and more taboo than discussing “female talent”. “who are the future female leaders that are coming up through your business, and how can we ensure traditional cultural barriers within the business are removed to help their trajectory?” is an easy conversation to have. If you asked “who are the future ethnically diverse leaders that are coming up through your business, and how can we ensure traditional cultural barriers within the business are removed to help their trajectory?” you’ll get shut down; not least because you get involved in rather difficult conversations around what defines ethnically diverse or not.
(FWIW, with gender, though also not binary, non-male is perfectly acceptable; non-white isn’t > it leads to rather bizarre conversations around “are they brown enough?” which is clearly not the right way to go about it).

I do think it’s wrong to suggest that because each person individually doesn’t think they behave in a discriminatory way to either ethnically diverse or female people in the workplace, doesn’t mean it doesn’t occur. Either it’s structural, or the pervasive culture does not engender those types of people to be as successful, and that needs to be addressed. Things like unconscious bias training can be quite enlightening. I think having more people from those backgrounds in leadership positions helps, because they are more likely to understand the barriers in that they’re more likely to have encountered them. Sitting there going “I’m not racist, so I don’t need to do anything” doesn’t really work, as the statistics across the UK demonstrate.

TheBigBean

I think there is much more of a racism problem than a sexism problem.