About the Ethnicity Pay Gap Campaign
The Ethnicity Pay Gap (EPG) cost Black workers over £3.2 billion in lost wages in 2018 (Resolution Foundation). This gap is getting wider. The Ethnicity Pay varies across regions and sectors. In London the gap is over 23.8 per cent. The impact of this loss of pay pushes Black workers in precarious and privatised jobs into deep poverty. This is compounded by spiralling inflation, surging food and fuel prices, erosion of wages and the cost-of-living crisis caused by the highest inflation levels for 40 years.
The UNISON campaign around the issue of the ethnicity pay gap started in September 2021, in partnership with Dianne Greyson’s Ethnicity Pay Gap UK Campaign (#EthnicityPayGapUK) – centring on making ethnicity pay gap reporting mandatory. The aim of the Campaign is to ensure that the Conservative Government keeps the 2017 Manifesto commitment to introduce legislation on mandatory ethnicity pay reporting.
UNISON is calling for:
- Mandatory Ethnicity Pay Gap reporting
- Measures to implement a comprehensive National Race Equality Strategy across Government
- Employers to conduct pay audits, introduce measures on pay progression and collective bargaining to close EPG
In February 2022, the Women and Equalities Committee published a new report clearly stating that the EPG should be mandatory and urged the government to introduce mandatory ethnicity pay gap reporting by April 2023 for all organisations that currently report for gender. UNISON supports this recommendation.
In May 2022, the government published a response to the Womepay gap and Equalities Committee’s report stating that they would not bring ethnicity pay gap reporting into legislation, due to the difficulties they could foresee with collecting the data.
The chair of the Women and Equalities Committee, Caroline Nokes MP said ‘”The Government’s nonsensical response – which claims that gathering the necessary data would be too difficult, and then promptly outlines how this could easily be addressed – is disappointing. It makes clear that what is lacking in this administration is not resource or know-how, but the will or care to foster a fairer and more equal society.”
#EthnicityPayGapUK
Dianne Greyson, founder of #EthncityPayGapUK#, has gained support from major organisations and her petition gained over 130 thousand signatures. This saw a debate held in Westminster in September to raise awareness of the EPG
A report by the #EthncityPayGap campaign has revealed that Black (of African and/or Caribbean heritage) and Brown (Black and mixed heritage) women could miss out on £105,000 to £350,000 of earnings across a working lifetime spanning an average of 35 years.
What are we doing?
Our campaign is gaining traction in the houses of Westminster, where we held a successful drop- in session in May to raise awareness of the issue. MPs and Members of the Lords pledged their support.
Our motion to the TUC Black Workers Conference on the “Ethnicity Pay Gap” was selected to go to TUC Congress in September. This is a major campaign for the National Black Members Committee, UNISON and wider trade union movement.
