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  • rick_chasey
    rick_chasey Posts: 72,216
    edited January 2020
    Stevo_666 said:

    Longshot said:

    So you think things like the persistent pay gap are justified? Just wanna make this crystal clear.


    On an aside, I'm staggered that this still seems to be a thing. How can any company decide to pay a woman less than a man for doing the same job as a practice?
    That's the thing - the gender pay gap that companies are reporting on is not looking at different pay rates for the same job. This is what it is:
    "The gender pay gap is the difference between the average hourly earnings of a company’s male and female employees. If an organisation has, for example, a 5% gender pay gap it means that women earn an average of 5% less per hour (excluding overtime) than men, or in other words the average female employee would earn 95p for every £1 earned by a male employee."

    So within an organisation (as I see it) any gap is mainly down to men being in more senior/better paid roles than women.
    So a) that in itself is often a result of sexism in the workplace. Things like being overlooked for promotion, lack of opportunities re childcare (and unwillingness of men to give uk their career instead) and a whole host of other things.

    b) women still regularly get paid less for the same job. Again this is often not bosses going “I shall pay women less” but is often to do with things like women tending to ask less often for pay rises, women typically moving between companies less often and the legacy of sexist pay practices and the practice of anchoring pay to previous pay (eg “we are not going to pay Mrs x alpha, despite alpha being market rate as it triples her current comp”)

    I see this occur regularly.
  • john80
    john80 Posts: 2,965

    So you think things like the persistent pay gap are justified? Just wanna make this crystal clear.

    Your pay against peers doing the same job is related to how good you are and then how agreeable you are. The agreeable person who does not ask for a payrise is less likely than the disagreeable person who asks assuming they are of equal value to the business. I laughed the other day when a group of staff were told they were not getting a payrise. The guy on his phone half the day delivering nothing was the biggest complainer. Lucky for him the rest of the staff did not realise that by bagging him they could have a raise and the company would be more efficient.
  • Stevo_666 said:

    Longshot said:

    So you think things like the persistent pay gap are justified? Just wanna make this crystal clear.


    On an aside, I'm staggered that this still seems to be a thing. How can any company decide to pay a woman less than a man for doing the same job as a practice?
    That's the thing - the gender pay gap that companies are reporting on is not looking at different pay rates for the same job. This is what it is:
    "The gender pay gap is the difference between the average hourly earnings of a company’s male and female employees. If an organisation has, for example, a 5% gender pay gap it means that women earn an average of 5% less per hour (excluding overtime) than men, or in other words the average female employee would earn 95p for every £1 earned by a male employee."

    So within an organisation (as I see it) any gap is mainly down to men being in more senior/better paid roles than women.
    So a) that in itself is often a result of sexism in the workplace. Things like being overlooked for promotion, lack of opportunities re childcare (and unwillingness of men to give uk their career instead) and a whole host of other things.

    b) women still regularly get paid less for the same job. Again this is often not bosses going “I shall pay women less” but is often to do with things like women tending to ask less often for pay rises, women typically moving between companies less often and the legacy of sexist pay practices and the practice of anchoring pay to previous pay (eg “we are not going to pay Mrs x alpha, despite alpha being market rate as it triples her current comp”)

    I see this occur regularly.
    In NYC, as I am sure you know, you can not ask what somebody is currently earning

  • rick_chasey
    rick_chasey Posts: 72,216
    edited January 2020
    Precisely for that reason!

    Does create some mild recruitment inefficiencies, mind.

    (For example, had a candidate to deep into a process only to chose that moment - as we couldn’t ask - to reveal their comp and it was double what the client would pay - the candidate had decided that our client had deep enough pockets so would pay up anyway on meeting him, despite our assurances on what they would and wouldn’t offer for the role)
  • Pross
    Pross Posts: 40,207

    Stevo_666 said:

    Longshot said:

    So you think things like the persistent pay gap are justified? Just wanna make this crystal clear.


    On an aside, I'm staggered that this still seems to be a thing. How can any company decide to pay a woman less than a man for doing the same job as a practice?
    That's the thing - the gender pay gap that companies are reporting on is not looking at different pay rates for the same job. This is what it is:
    "The gender pay gap is the difference between the average hourly earnings of a company’s male and female employees. If an organisation has, for example, a 5% gender pay gap it means that women earn an average of 5% less per hour (excluding overtime) than men, or in other words the average female employee would earn 95p for every £1 earned by a male employee."

    So within an organisation (as I see it) any gap is mainly down to men being in more senior/better paid roles than women.
    So a) that in itself is often a result of sexism in the workplace. Things like being overlooked for promotion, lack of opportunities re childcare (and unwillingness of men to give uk their career instead) and a whole host of other things.

    b) women still regularly get paid less for the same job. Again this is often not bosses going “I shall pay women less” but is often to do with things like women tending to ask less often for pay rises, women typically moving between companies less often and the legacy of sexist pay practices and the practice of anchoring pay to previous pay (eg “we are not going to pay Mrs x alpha, despite alpha being market rate as it triples her current comp”)

    I see this occur regularly.
    Don't you think that in many cases (I suspect the majority) a woman might choose to be the one who takes on the child care / 'home making' role in the family? Whether that is due entirely to nature / genetics or partly millennia of what is accepted as the norm I don't know but it is common across many species.

    Of course they should have the option but there seems to be a perception that there are hordes of women out there who want to leave their male partners to do the primary child care role while they return to work but that the gender pay gap prevents that happening. I'm not convinced and think that is cause and effect being the wrong way around. That seems to be backed up by Court decisions regarding alimony. I assume there are studies regarding pay difference in like for like roles before and after children come along?
  • TheBigBean
    TheBigBean Posts: 20,503
    Pross said:

    I assume there are studies regarding pay difference in like for like roles before and after children come along?

    Yes, women earn slightly more in their 20s and maybe 30s too. Childless women and men are very similar. Dads earn more than childless men/women who earn more than mums.
  • bompington
    bompington Posts: 7,674
    There is a strong trend that the more egalitarian the country (e.g. Scandinavia) the more women tend to choose "traditional female" careers and roles.
  • rick_chasey
    rick_chasey Posts: 72,216
    edited January 2020
    It's part of it but there's a host of other reasons. The pay gap (for the same roles...!) starts long before women typically have children.

    A small tangential point, to illustrate: the sexism hurts the flexibility on the male side too. Many firms will bend over backwards to offer working mums flexibility but don't think to offer it to the men; what means is if the family men want to work there they need the female support at home. That then impacts the woman's ability to get work.

    It's quite a complicated picture. For example, there's a lot of work going into stopping firms discriminating against women returning to work from mat leave. Often firms are snobby about breaks in careers and that really counts against women who, as they have to carry the bloody babies and are literally better equipped to feed them, more or less have to take time off.

    But as much of it is cultural; if senior management is male dominated, for example, the way it socialises could also be off-putting and that means the men are more often in management's line-of-sight, etc etc etc. There;s a whole host of things - easily a book's worth.

  • rjsterry
    rjsterry Posts: 27,483
    I think there is still a strong expectation that men will take 2 weeks off around the birth and then be straight back on it. The option to share paid parental leave only came in in 2015 and even paid paternity leave of two weeks only came in 2002.

    For a lot of people, child care costs are such that it doesn't make financial sense for both parents to work, so it is then a case of looking at who stands to lose least in terms of overall family income by stopping work and that is more commonly (but not always) the mother.
    1985 Mercian King of Mercia - work in progress (Hah! Who am I kidding?)
    Pinnacle Monzonite

    Part of the anti-growth coalition
  • rick_chasey
    rick_chasey Posts: 72,216
    Shared parental leave often doesn't make sense financially as it eats into the overall time one of you has off. It usually means you have to put your kids in nursery sooner.
  • TheBigBean
    TheBigBean Posts: 20,503
    rjsterry said:

    I think there is still a strong expectation that men will take 2 weeks off around the birth and then be straight back on it. The option to share paid parental leave only came in in 2015 and even paid paternity leave of two weeks only came in 2002.

    For a lot of people, child care costs are such that it doesn't make financial sense for both parents to work, so it is then a case of looking at who stands to lose least in terms of overall family income by stopping work and that is more commonly (but not always) the mother.

    Worth noting that the statutory weekly rate of paternity pay is £148.68, or 90% of average weekly earnings (whichever is lower) whereas maternity pay is 90% for six weeks, and then then the above. This means it is costly for firms to offer the same packages to both male and female employees.

    Also, a male client had one year off as his wife only had the minimum of two weeks. HR's first step, apparently, was legal advice. He was paid less than he would have been if he was a women in the same company.

  • rjsterry
    rjsterry Posts: 27,483
    It's still a bit of a mess.
    1985 Mercian King of Mercia - work in progress (Hah! Who am I kidding?)
    Pinnacle Monzonite

    Part of the anti-growth coalition
  • haydenm
    haydenm Posts: 2,997
    Do other people see that the louder and more arrogant you are the more you get paid? Even when everyone (including management) acknowledge that fact they still get rewarded. This doesn't only disadvantage women. I think a significant amount of the gender pay gap is down to subconscious bias rather than deliberate
  • Stevo_666
    Stevo_666 Posts: 58,149
    Pross said:

    Stevo_666 said:

    Longshot said:

    So you think things like the persistent pay gap are justified? Just wanna make this crystal clear.


    On an aside, I'm staggered that this still seems to be a thing. How can any company decide to pay a woman less than a man for doing the same job as a practice?
    That's the thing - the gender pay gap that companies are reporting on is not looking at different pay rates for the same job. This is what it is:
    "The gender pay gap is the difference between the average hourly earnings of a company’s male and female employees. If an organisation has, for example, a 5% gender pay gap it means that women earn an average of 5% less per hour (excluding overtime) than men, or in other words the average female employee would earn 95p for every £1 earned by a male employee."

    So within an organisation (as I see it) any gap is mainly down to men being in more senior/better paid roles than women.
    So a) that in itself is often a result of sexism in the workplace. Things like being overlooked for promotion, lack of opportunities re childcare (and unwillingness of men to give uk their career instead) and a whole host of other things.

    b) women still regularly get paid less for the same job. Again this is often not bosses going “I shall pay women less” but is often to do with things like women tending to ask less often for pay rises, women typically moving between companies less often and the legacy of sexist pay practices and the practice of anchoring pay to previous pay (eg “we are not going to pay Mrs x alpha, despite alpha being market rate as it triples her current comp”)

    I see this occur regularly.
    Don't you think that in many cases (I suspect the majority) a woman might choose to be the one who takes on the child care / 'home making' role in the family? Whether that is due entirely to nature / genetics or partly millennia of what is accepted as the norm I don't know but it is common across many species.

    Of course they should have the option but there seems to be a perception that there are hordes of women out there who want to leave their male partners to do the primary child care role while they return to work but that the gender pay gap prevents that happening. I'm not convinced and think that is cause and effect being the wrong way around. That seems to be backed up by Court decisions regarding alimony. I assume there are studies regarding pay difference in like for like roles before and after children come along?
    Good points.

    I don't recall being given any choice in the matter of who would give up work when junior arrived, although admittedly the financial maths meant it was the better decision all round.
    "I spent most of my money on birds, booze and fast cars: the rest of it I just squandered." [George Best]
  • rick_chasey
    rick_chasey Posts: 72,216
    haydenm said:

    Do other people see that the louder and more arrogant you are the more you get paid?e

    This is plainly not the case where I work, else I'd be a millionaire.
  • ballysmate
    ballysmate Posts: 15,921
    edited January 2020

    It's part of it but there's a host of other reasons. The pay gap (for the same roles...!) starts long before women typically have children.

    A small tangential point, to illustrate: the sexism hurts the flexibility on the male side too. Many firms will bend over backwards to offer working mums flexibility but don't think to offer it to the men; what means is if the family men want to work there they need the female support at home. That then impacts the woman's ability to get work.

    It's quite a complicated picture. For example, there's a lot of work going into stopping firms discriminating against women returning to work from mat leave. Often firms are snobby about breaks in careers and that really counts against women who, as they have to carry the bloody babies and are literally better equipped to feed them, more or less have to take time off.

    But as much of it is cultural; if senior management is male dominated, for example, the way it socialises could also be off-putting and that means the men are more often in management's line-of-sight, etc etc etc. There;s a whole host of things - easily a book's worth.

    A tangent to the tangent.
    I used to know a woman police officer who had remained single and childless.
    She was most p1ssed off at being expected to cover all the sh1tty shifts as her colleague had a new baby.
    Sometimes one person's flexible working impacts heavily on their colleagues more than their employer.
  • rick_chasey
    rick_chasey Posts: 72,216
    edited January 2020
    Yeah, heaven forbid people have children. What a f*cking liability.

    A lot of the challenges around immigration, economic stagnation, healthcare etc would be heavily mitigated if fertility was higher.

    As it stands, in the UK, as in the rest of the developed world, the current population isn't even replacing itself.

    That's a problem.
  • ballysmate
    ballysmate Posts: 15,921
    Yeah how selfish of her to be annoyed that her life had been disrupted because someone else had had a baybeee.
  • rick_chasey
    rick_chasey Posts: 72,216

    Yeah how selfish of her to be annoyed that her life had been disrupted because someone else had had a baybeee.

    Diddums.

    My boss regularly waits till the last minute to do things I have given him days to do which often means I have to stay late and not see my daughter.

    It’s work. You suck it up.
  • ballysmate
    ballysmate Posts: 15,921

    Yeah how selfish of her to be annoyed that her life had been disrupted because someone else had had a baybeee.

    Diddums.

    My boss regularly waits till the last minute to do things I have given him days to do which often means I have to stay late and not see my daughter.

    It’s work. You suck it up.
    Slightly different, no?
    You don't get to see daughter because of your job.
    Ie There is a link between your job and your child.
    In my friend's case, the link was between her job and somebody else child.
  • rick_chasey
    rick_chasey Posts: 72,216
    Only because that’s how the bosses run it.

    You don’t agree with offering up more flexible working to account for families?
  • Pross
    Pross Posts: 40,207
    Used to get that when I was single and worked in a local authority. When it came to someone needing to cover the office in that pointless period between Christmas and New Year it was us singletons that had to do it rather than those 'with families' which totally ignored the fact I had family that might like to see me!
  • rjsterry
    rjsterry Posts: 27,483
    Pross said:

    Used to get that when I was single and worked in a local authority. When it came to someone needing to cover the office in that pointless period between Christmas and New Year it was us singletons that had to do it rather than those 'with families' which totally ignored the fact I had family that might like to see me!

    Now I know you're making that up :D

    1985 Mercian King of Mercia - work in progress (Hah! Who am I kidding?)
    Pinnacle Monzonite

    Part of the anti-growth coalition
  • ballysmate
    ballysmate Posts: 15,921
    Just to set the scene. Rick arrives home where he is greeted by Mrs C in full Stepford Wife mode. Peck on the cheek, dinner on the table etc...

    Mrs C. Good day at work, dear?
    RC Funny you should mention that. I have a bit of news.For the foreseeable future I will be working permanent nights.
    Mrs C. Not on Tuesday's though, bridge club night?
    RC Sorry dear, we'll have to cancel.
    Mrs C Our Thursday dinners with Tarquin and Jeremy?
    RC Sorry dear. We have to cancel everything.
    Mrs C But why, has something major happened?
    RC No, nothing like that dear, it's just that the Ballys have had a baby and it's only right that we are the ones that have our lives disrupted. Bally will do all the day shifts.
    Mrs C Never mind, the extra money will be nice. You could get those new sandals you always wanted and perhaps a hair shirt.
    RC No extra money I'm afraid.
    Mrs C But we don't much care for the Ballys, why should we be the ones to suffer?
    RC It's work dear.
    Mrs C We'll just suck it up then. More tofu dear?
  • ballysmate
    ballysmate Posts: 15,921

    Only because that’s how the bosses run it.

    You don’t agree with offering up more flexible working to account for families?

    Where practicable, but where it impacts significantly on others, there should be a level of consent.
  • shortfall
    shortfall Posts: 3,288

    Just to set the scene. Rick arrives home where he is greeted by Mrs C in full Stepford Wife mode. Peck on the cheek, dinner on the table etc...

    Mrs C. Good day at work, dear?
    RC Funny you should mention that. I have a bit of news.For the foreseeable future I will be working permanent nights.
    Mrs C. Not on Tuesday's though, bridge club night?
    RC Sorry dear, we'll have to cancel.
    Mrs C Our Thursday dinners with Tarquin and Jeremy?
    RC Sorry dear. We have to cancel everything.
    Mrs C But why, has something major happened?
    RC No, nothing like that dear, it's just that the Ballys have had a baby and it's only right that we are the ones that have our lives disrupted. Bally will do all the day shifts.
    Mrs C Never mind, the extra money will be nice. You could get those new sandals you always wanted and perhaps a hair shirt.
    RC No extra money I'm afraid.
    Mrs C But we don't much care for the Ballys, why should we be the ones to suffer?
    RC It's work dear.
    Mrs C We'll just suck it up then. More tofu dear?

    P1ssed my pants laughing at that, you've missed your calling Bally.
  • TheBigBean
    TheBigBean Posts: 20,503

    Only because that’s how the bosses run it.

    You don’t agree with offering up more flexible working to account for families?

    Offering reasonable paternity/maternity conditions is an issue for the government as it is a benefit for society; however, a lot of the cost can fall on the private sector. Of course, private firms can also benefit from loyal long term staff too, but it is often hard for the short-term cost to be justified leading to complaints.

    For example, in a friend's law firm, there was a team of 12. Four of whom became pregnant at the same time. Nobody new was brought in to cover, so four of the remaining eight left as they didn't like the increased work load. The team was then unsustainable with the remaining four. So how should this team have been saved? A lot of people will blame the partners for not hiring more people, but the question is how much would that have cost in recruitment fees, short-term contract premiums, training costs and double benefits? And that assumes it is even possible.

    I don't have the solution, but I can see why people and businesses complain at times.
  • bompington
    bompington Posts: 7,674

    Only because that’s how the bosses run it.

    You don’t agree with offering up more flexible working to account for families?

    Where practicable, but where it impacts significantly on others, there should be a level of consent.

    Only because that’s how the bosses run it.

    You don’t agree with offering up more flexible working to account for families?

    Where practicable, but where it impacts significantly on others, there should be a level of consent.
    Yeah, only people who are actual stakeholders should be asked to adapt for the benefit of parents.
    It should strictly be limited to people who have been children at some point in their life.
  • rick_chasey
    rick_chasey Posts: 72,216

    Only because that’s how the bosses run it.

    You don’t agree with offering up more flexible working to account for families?

    Offering reasonable paternity/maternity conditions is an issue for the government as it is a benefit for society; however, a lot of the cost can fall on the private sector. Of course, private firms can also benefit from loyal long term staff too, but it is often hard for the short-term cost to be justified leading to complaints.

    For example, in a friend's law firm, there was a team of 12. Four of whom became pregnant at the same time. Nobody new was brought in to cover, so four of the remaining eight left as they didn't like the increased work load. The team was then unsustainable with the remaining four. So how should this team have been saved? A lot of people will blame the partners for not hiring more people, but the question is how much would that have cost in recruitment fees, short-term contract premiums, training costs and double benefits? And that assumes it is even possible.

    I don't have the solution, but I can see why people and businesses complain at times.
    Sure. It’s a bummer.

    Not sure there is a solution, as long as there is a recognition that children do have to be both born and brought up and it’s in the collective interest that that is done properly.

    That it is done in a way which doesn’t create economic inefficiencies that result in things like lack of women represents at senior levels is important.

    Not least because all the evidence suggests a diverse workforce and leadership is more profitable than those that aren’t.
  • ballysmate
    ballysmate Posts: 15,921

    Only because that’s how the bosses run it.

    You don’t agree with offering up more flexible working to account for families?

    Where practicable, but where it impacts significantly on others, there should be a level of consent.

    Only because that’s how the bosses run it.

    You don’t agree with offering up more flexible working to account for families?

    Where practicable, but where it impacts significantly on others, there should be a level of consent.
    Yeah, only people who are actual stakeholders should be asked to adapt for the benefit of parents.
    It should strictly be limited to people who have been children at some point in their life.
    So people should have their shifts arbitrarily changed to their detriment without negotiation or consent?