About 1,500 large British companies have broken the law by failing to report their gender pay gap in time and could now face legal action, the equality watchdog has said. Companies have been given 28 days to report their gender pay gap and those that fail to do so will be “named and shamed”, face court action and unlimited fines. Under legislation introduced last year all British companies, voluntary organisations and public sector bodies with more than 250 employees had to report the difference in average hourly pay between men and women by midnight on Wednesday. Companies also had to provide the gap in bonus pay and reveal the percentage of men and women in each quartile of their business. Analysis of the 10,014 employers who submitted data in time revealed that almost eight out of 10 pay men more than women. There was no sector that paid women more than men on average. The data showed that women were being paid a median hourly rate that, on average, was 9.7% less than that given their male colleagues. “Reporting gender pay gaps is not optional; it is a legal requirement, as well as being the right thing to do,” said Rebecca Hilsenrath, chief executive of the Equality and Human Rights Commission. “We will soon be starting enforcement against all employers that haven’t published.” The implications of the new requirement, which companies will have to adhere to every year, are already reverberating through the business community. At ITN, which produces news for ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5, chief executive John Hardie, told staff on Thursday that no bonuses would be paid out to any senior management even if financial goals are met unless “exacting gender and diversity targets” are also hit. “We will be introducing a new set of targets which will run alongside the financial goals and will be purely based on hitting strict gender and diversity objectives,” said Hardie, who was paid a £499,000 bonus in 2016. “Let me be clear, if ITN does not achieve these targets I will not receive a penny in bonus. To embed these objectives across the company, all senior management bonuses will also include exacting gender and diversity targets to help get us to where we need to be.” ITN reported a median gender pay gap of 18% and bonus gap of 50% – and revealed that 17 of the top 20 earners were men – prompting presenter Cathy Newman to criticise the “pervasive inequality” and glass ceiling at the organisation. It has pledged to reduce its gender pay gap by half within five years, and that 50% of the top 20 earners will be women within the same time period. Within three years, a third of the top 20 earners must be women, up from the current 15%. There was a scramble to report in the final hours before the deadline for gender pay gap reporting closed, with more than 1,100 companies reporting their figures in the 24 hours before the deadline – more than the total number of companies that had reported in the first 326 days of the scheme. Retailer Monsoon reported a 36.1% gap, pollsters YouGov reported a 28.7% gap and Rockstar North Limited (producers of console game Grand Theft Auto) filed a 31.8% gap. Body Shop were also among the stragglers, revealing a 38.9% median gap despite employing more women in every quartile of its business. Other data revealed on Thursday continued to shine a spotlight on the pervasive issue of the gender pay gap. In the public sector data, which used mean rather than median figures, revealed that female NHS staff in England earn nearly a quarter less than their male colleagues. The average full-time female worker is paid £28,702 a year in basic salary, compared with the £37,470 average pay for men – a gap of 23%. Meanwhile, analysis of HMRC data by Salisbury House Wealth has shown the gap between the amount of pension income received by men and women is widening. Women received just 37% of the total amount of income drawn from pensions last year, down from 39% in 2012-2013. Last year, women received £46.5bn in pension income, while men received £79.3bn. Among the advice offered to women about how to tackle the gender pay gap in their own places of work over the past few days has been the key suggestion that they should join a union. But as the deadline closed for employers to report their gender pay gaps it was revealed that several of the unions themselves had pay gaps above the national average of 18.4%. Unite, the UK’s biggest trade union, missed the deadline but on Thursday filed figures that revealed a median gender pay gap of 29.6% – meaning that when comparing hourly rates, for every £1 that a man earns on average, a woman is paid 70p. The teachers’ union NASUWT, revealed a pay gap of 42.7%, while at shop workers union Usdaw, the figure was 33.5%. None of the major unions reported a pay gap in favour of women, but the TUC – which appointed its first female leader, Frances O’Grady, in 2012 – reported that it had no gender pay gap. A spokesman from Unite said: “Unite is proud to be an equal pay employer and a leading force for equality in the workplace.”
Approximately 1,500 large UK businesses with over 250 employees failed to meet the 4 April deadline for gender pay gap reporting. Firms that have not provided the required information have been given 28 days to comply. If they fail to do so, they will be “named and shamed” and could face legal action and fines. The government has also announced a new £1bn fund aimed at tackling discrimination in pay, which is expected to start up next year.