Glasgow Employment Law Blog

A recent study has revealed that the gender pay gap has barely changed in the last four years despite many initiatives to try and reduce the pay gap.

The data which comes from HMRC showed that women made up less than a quarter, 27%, of all higher-rate taxpayers in each of the past four financial years. Last year, this meant women made up 1.21m of the 4.47m higher-rate taxpayers despite a rise of at least one million high-end taxpayers in the same period.

The survey is a blow to the government and organisations who have launched policies to try and reduce inequality in the workplace and obtain equal pay for women. Some banks have aimed to make their senior management team consist of at least 40% females following a study that showed that less than a third of the senior staff in the industry were female with HSBC adding that females were “significantly underrepresented at a senior management level.”

The Government have also launched a number of new plans to try and reduce gender inequality. It was announced in the summer that organisations with 250 employees or more were to publish the difference between the average pay of their male and female employees. These rules were to apply to all sectors and were also to include bonuses and other payments to all members of staff.

A new study from ACAS has revealed that bullying in the workplace has increased across the UK with more people than ever suffering harassment.

Alarmingly, the study showed that while bullying in the workplace was increasing, more people than ever were unwilling to report the bullying with job insecurity and other factors resulting in people being afraid to speak up.
 
ACAS reported that they had received more than 20,000 calls regarding workplace harassment and bullying with the organisation calling for companies to take such complaints much more seriously than they currently do.

Female solicitors are effectively working for free from August to the end of the year in comparison to the salary received by male lawyers according to a recent study.

The findings, which come from a Law Society of Scotland showed that the female gender gap in Scotland could be as much as 42% with the average full-time and part-time salaries for males and females differing greatly, especially as careers progressed.

Employers are under an obligation to treat men and women equally under the terms and conditions of their employment contract if;