EHRC calls for Equal Pay Act to be scrapped 

Trevor Phillips, Chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, has warned that the almost 40 year-old Equal Pay Act has ‘reached its sell-by date’ and should be scrapped in favour of modern legislation to get women a fair deal quickly. According to Mr Phillips, the equal pay crisis needs a new solution or it will become unmanageable.

The warning came as the EHRC announced another part of its strategic approach to ending the quagmire of equal pay in local government, i.e. that it would no longer be directly funding the equal pay cases of up to 800 women involved in the four year-old tribunal case of Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council v Bainbridge and others, heard in Court of Appeal last month. 

There are currently an estimated 50,000 equal pay cases being brought by underpaid local council workers. The Commission estimates the numbers will rise threefold to 150,000 this year, causing the already painfully slow employment tribunal system to seize up ‘like a blocked drain’. The EHRC believes that unless there is radical change, the tribunal system may come crashing down. Hundreds of thousands of women trying to get justice may be made to wait for an intolerably long time unless there is a fundamental change.   

The EHRC is concerned that a ruling by the Court of Appeal in the Redcar and Cleveland case on the controversial question of transitional arrangements – the extent to which employers can protect men’s pay for a limited period while they put in place measures to bring women up to the same level – could take away the freedom that would allow unions, employers and employees to resolve the problem. Instead, the Commission decided to take a different role in the case.  

Rather than fund the case, the EHRC made a submission to the Court of Appeal which argued that an employer may lawfully introduce temporary arrangements which protect the pay of existing employees, most often men in these circumstances, even if those arrangements prolong inequality for a limited time, provided the employer’s aim is to eliminate unequal pay as soon as possible and the method chosen disadvantages women as little, and for as short a period, as possible. 

This initiative follows the EHRC’s call last year for the introduction of representative actions, where hundreds of cases could be heard at the same time to unclog the tribunal system and reduce the number of cases by more than 90%.