THE promotion of equal pay must be a central component of any new national agreement, the chief executive of the Employment Equality Agency said yesterday.
Ms Carmel Foley was speaking at a conference to mark the introduction of a new EU Code of Practice on Equal Pay for Work of Equal Value at the European Foundation in Loughlinstown, Co Dublin. At the same conference, the Social Affairs Commissioner, Mr Padraig Flynn, said that 20 years after the principle of equal pay had been accepted in Europe, women were still earning between 69 per cent and 90 per cent of the male rate in many industries.
The non binding code has been agreed by the social partners. It outlines procedures for identifying and tackling pay discrimination in the workplace. Neither the Maastricht Treaty nor the equal pay directives provide criteria for job evaluation. Decisions of the European Court in equal pay cases give only incomplete guidance.
Mr Flynn said negotiated settlements, using the code, were preferable to costly and uncertain litigation. Equal pay was a cornerstone of equal opportunity throughout the Union.
The code proposes that employer and union representatives within companies should meet and collect all relevant information on pay structures. It sets out criteria which can then be used to identify potential discrimination. There was an 8.5 per cent increase in employment between 1991 and 1995, but the number of women at work had increased by 20 per cent, the Minister for Labour Affairs, Ms Eithne Fitzgerald, told the conference. She said that the code, like the new Working Time Bill, were efforts to deal with new trends in the workplace and make work more family friendly for men as well as women.
Welcoming the code, Mr Peter Flood of IBEC told the conference it could help firms develop anti discriminatory policies "rather than react to claims".
The conference also heard a report on how one company in Ireland, Organon Ltd, has tried to tackle sex discrimination. Between 1990 and 1994 it managed to increase the number of women in the workforce from 33 to 90. This was largely possible because of an increase in overall employment from 146 to 255.
It also increased the proportion of women employed at all levels of the workforce. For instance, there were no women among the six senior managers at the firm in 1990 and now there are two. The number of women middle managers has doubled to eight, or half of the total, and the number of women junior managers has increased from two to 12 compared with 12 male junior managers.