Pay Equality

One of the clear measures of equality is to be found in the profile, by protected characteristic , of those in employment. Being in employment can bring multiple, potentially positive, impacts on the lived experiences of many people who share particular protected characteristics. Being in work instead of being marginalised, excluded and discriminated against can also help start to slowly foster good relations between those who erect barriers and discriminate, and those who are discriminated against.

However, the common hierarchical model of workplaces can mean that while a simple test of proportionality suggests equality of employment opportunity may have been achieved or is within touching distance, data is lacking by which to cross-check if equality is being delivered vertically in the workplace as well as horizontally. Research from 2017 into the employment of Black Minority Ethnic people in the NHS in Scotland revealed that 2.44% of the workforce identified as BME. In simple, proportionate, terms, this can be deemed too low and evidence of discrimination along the horizontal axis of workforce data.

Equality Here, Now carried out research aimed at adding another dimension to that and other data sets published by checking the vertical distribution of BME people, disabled people, and women and men up and down the pay scales used by NHS Scotland as at April 2017. The scope of this report deals with the data made available by the NHS in Scotland early in 2018 in response to a Freedom of Information request.

The research concluded :

By examining the vertical axis [the distribution of people throughout pay hierarchies] of employment equality alongside the horizontal axis [the distribution of jobs themselves], it is possible to undertake an almost 3-dimensional testing of where in employment practices and cultures discrimination is most obviously present. This research, set alongside research from 2017 into the numbers of BME people, disabled people and men and women in NHS Scotland employment, provides us with that capacity – without the need to wear tinted spectacles.

In relation to BME people, we already know that in numerical terms, NHS Scotland struggles to evidence race discrimination has been eliminated. Adding data from the vertical axis appears to suggest that BME people secure better access – proportionately – to higher paid jobs than non-BME people. Both data sets are however in need of greater clarity in gathering, presentation and use, with the university sector showing that non-UK national staff cohorts have 28.3% identifying as BME while the UK national staff cohort has 8.5% identifying as BME. Until such times as NHS Scotland gathers and uses data on staff identifying as BME in a similar way, any conclusions on employment equality in terms of pay for BME people will need to be treated with caution.

In the case of disabled people employed by NHS Scotland, 2017 research into numbers of disabled people employed suggested that :

that if anything the roots of institutional discrimination against disabled people remain deep and undisturbed across much of the NHS

Viewed alongside the data from the vertical axis of pay, it is clear that while disabled people have markedly less than equal access to jobs in NHS Scotland this discrimination continues in disabled people gaining access to higher paid jobs in NHS Scotland. The Equality Act 2010, Scotland’s specific equality duties and government’s strategic direction on equality are together failing to make any impact on the institutional discrimination encountered by disabled people in NHS Scotland as an employer.

The rationale for including women and men in this research was to give added depth to the 2017 research into equal pay gaps in NHS Scotland. Using data published by NHS Boards themselves, the gap in 2017 showed women earning 19.99% less than men. When looked at alongside data from the vertical axis of pay structures and bearing in mind the ratio of women to men employed in the NHS is 4:1, the reason for the pay gap of 19.99% becomes much clearer, with just over half of all the men employed in higher paid jobs while it is only less than a 1/3rd of all women employed who are in the higher paid jobs of the NHS. This latest research suggests that equal pay gaps in NHS Scotland are rooted in occupational segregation. The 2017 research into equal pay gaps found that few of Scotland’s 22 NHS Boards had looked at occupational segregation and that none of the 22 NHS Boards had plans to eliminate it.

The Equality Act 2010, the specific equality duty regulations on equal pay and occupational segregation, the non-enforcement approach taken by the Equality & Human Rights Commission in Scotland, and government’s strategic direction on equality are together failing to end the pay discrimination experienced by women in NHS Scotland as an employer.

A fundamental re-think on how to eliminate discrimination in the lifetime of people directly affected by it is long overdue.