Agenda item

Consideration was givento the report presented by the Assistant Director, Human Resources and Organisational Development, whichdetailed how the Gender Pay Reporting Legislation introduced in 2017 required employers with 250 or more employees to publish statutory calculations annually before 30^th March, 2019 showing how large the pay gap was between their male and female employees for the snapshot date of 31st March, 2018.

Gender pay gap reporting was a different requirement to carrying out an equal pay audit and showed the difference in the average pay between all men and women in a workforce.

These results were to be published on the Council’s website making them publicly available  to customers, employees and potential future recruits. 

The results were positive for Rotherham with the number of women in the top 5% of earners gradually increasing. As at 31st March, 2018 67% of the Council’s top 5% of earners were women, an increase of 7% from 2017.

The report also identified where the median gender pay gap for the Council at the end of March, 2018 increased to 13.3% from 12.5%, however the mean pay gap reduced from 11.5% to 9.9%.

This analysis showed the median increase to be attributable to thirty-one lower paid male seasonal Grounds Maintenance staff, employed in March 2017, not being employed in March, 2018 having a disproportional affect due to the lower number of men employed.

The Council’s pay gap showed that men were paid more than women, however, the figures compared favourably with the average UK gap 20.9% and EU average 16.2% (Eurostat figures published on the European Commission of Justice’s website).

Whilst there was no legislative requirement to publish information on other protected characteristics, analysis for BME employees showed the Council had a negative 17.6% median pay gap and negative 8.3% mean pay gap.  For disabled employees there was a negative 8.0% median and a negative 2.2% mean.  The negative pay gap indicated that both BME and disabled employees were paid more than non-BME/disabled employees.

At 74% female and 26% male, the gender distribution in the two middle quartiles was also broadly in line with the overall workforce representation. In the lower quartile, where the Council had a large number of female employees working in traditionally low-paid cleaning and catering roles, there was an over-representation of female workers.

When looking at the spread of female employees across the quartiles, the ideal would be to see a quarter (25%) of all females in each of the four quartiles; the same went for male employees. This had almost been achieved for female employees, however, for male employees there was a discrepancy of nine percentage points at the lower and upper quartiles.

Regionally, benchmarking for the period ending March, 2017 only had so far been published so it is not possible to compare against the 2018 figure.

However, against the 2017 figures the Council mean compared favourably with neighbouring authorities with only Sheffield, who have outsourced a number of services traditionally with lower paid women, coming in lower.

Discussion ensued on the challenges to lower paid workers in the education sector, particularly for schools who have become academies and looking to renegotiate competitive catering contracts.

Resolved:-  That the publication of the narrative at Appendix 1 be approved in accordance with the Gender Pay Reporting Legislation.