When she took office, Ursula von der Leyen set herself 100 days to present binding measures for pay transparency. 400 days later, the proposal is still not on the table, irritating the European Parliament and trade unions.
Closing the gender pay gap cannot be achieved without pay transparency, as pay discrimination often goes undetected, preventing its victims from filing claims.
In the European Union, on average women are paid 14.1 per cent less per hour than men, with Austria, Czechia, Estonia and Germany above 20 per cent. This average equals almost two months of salary or, in other words, women earn 86 eurocents for every euro men earn.
Even as the situation improves, progress is sluggish in the bloc, with the gap only narrowing by just under two percentage points over the past eight years.
Socialist MEP Evelyn Regner, who authored a parliamentary resolution on the issue adopted a year ago, points out that the pandemic has exacerbated gender inequalities.
Evelyn Regner, MEP – S&D, Austria: The situation is worsening with the coronavirus pandemic (in English)
Click on the button to load the content from Soundcloud.
“With Coronavirus, everything is worsening. We see right now that we have really a big push back to the 50s of the last century. So the Coronavirus really sharpens the differences concerning the pay gap.”
According to Eurostat, 78 per cent of all health workers, including 4.1 million low-paid and highly-exposed personal caregivers, are indeed women.
Equal pay enshrined in EU treaties
Equal pay has been a principle enshrined in the European treaties since 1957. It appears in the 2006 legislation on equal opportunities and in a 2014 non-binding text on wage transparency. Nevertheless, the implementation of equal pay is not uniformly defined and guaranteed within the EU.
For Evelyn Regner, this must change.
Evelyn Regner, MEP – S&D, Austria: No more voluntary measures (in English)
Click on the button to load the content from Soundcloud.
“Thirteen member states – so really, many member states – have no pay transparency measure. So somehow most of so many of them have done nothing. The big issue is that we need at the European Union binding measures because otherwise the gender pay gap and the pension gap will take even more than 84 years to close.”
These member states are Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czechia, Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Latvia, Malta, Poland, Romania, Slovenia and Slovakia.
Impatient social partners
The resolution adopted by the European Parliament calls for binding measures on the gender pay gap and pay transparency, which they want to apply to both the private and public sector.
It supports clear criteria for assessing the value of work, a concept strongly championed by trade unions. As Juliane Bir, head of trade union policy at the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC), explains, this approach could be a game-changer.
Juliane Bir, Head of trade union policy at ETUC: value of work (in French)
Click on the button to load the content from Soundcloud.
“For us, work of equal value is work that would correspond in all respects to equivalent criteria in terms of skills, effort, responsibilities and working conditions. This shows that for jobs which are mainly occupied by women and comparable to jobs which are mainly occupied by men, according to these same criteria, women generally earn less.”
On Monday 18 January, industriAll, a member of ETUC, released the first figures of a series, which show that in Germany female manufacturing workers are paid about 20 per cent less than their male colleagues or, on average, 865 euros less per month.
The European federation of private employers BusinessEurope, for its part, considers it very difficult to determine work of equal value. Rebekah Smith, deputy director of social affairs for the lobby group, agrees that pay discrimination must be fought. But she thinks different salaries are normal.
Rebekah Smith, Deputy director of BusinessEurope: Different wages are normal (in English)
Click on the button to load the content from Soundcloud.
“People can be paid differently for many objective reasons here: their performance, their knowledge, their skills, their qualifications. And what we want to avoid is that companies that pay people differently for these objective reasons are somehow hampered in doing that because that’s a fairly normal practice.”
Generally speaking, Smith believes that Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president, should rather intervene on gender stereotypes and on segregation.
Rebekah Smith, Deputy director of BusinessEurope: Gender stereotypes and segregation (in English)
Click on the button to load the content from Soundcloud.
“For us, we would prefer that she focuses on issues of combating gender stereotypes and segregation in the labour market. We believe that these are really the root causes of the gender pay gap, and it will be better to tackle these issues rather than coming up with binding pay transparency measures.”
Had it sticked to its original calendar, the European Commission would have presented its proposal before March 2020.
But it did not, provoking ETUC’s ire. To remind the Commission of its commitments, the EU unions recently launched a poster campaign that parodies that of a lost cat.
Juliane Bir, Head of trade union policy of ETUC: Missing directive (in French)
Click on the button to load the content from Soundcloud.
“It is inspired by the “missing cat” model, obviously to draw attention. But, beyond the fun side, it is just because this directive was promised in the first 100 days of president von der Leyen’s mandate and now, more than a year after the start of her term, we still don’t see anything coming, nor any commitment on an effective date for this initiative.”
A leaked version of the Commission’s draft 2021 work programme, which dates from April 2020, claims that it “is questionable whether the autumn will really be the right time for this proposal” while highlighting the increase administrative burdens for companies currently struggling to survive the pandemic.
BusinessEurope’s Smith denies any implication with this delay.
Rebekah Smith, Deputy director of BusinessEurope: A constructive dialogue (in English)
Click on the button to load the content from Soundcloud.
“We have been constructively engaging with the Commission on the issue of pay transparency and gender equality in general. Of course, we have some concerns about possible administrative burdens. So, we need to make sure that whatever measures are proposed, they don’t put too much burden on companies and they actually make a difference on the ground.”
According to our information, the forthcoming proposal should be presented at the end of February, just before the International Women’s day on Monday 8 March. It will touch upon the definition of equal pay and attempt to improve access to information.
- Author: Sophie Petitjean, Euranet Plus News Agency
