Trade Unions: part of the solution or part of the equal pay problem?

Tracing the roots of unequal pay shows that trade unions were partly responsible for workplace pay discrimination and recent court cases suggest they may not offer a solution now.

Discrimination against women in the workplace leading to the current equal pay problem was cause largely by cosy relationships between the Trade Unions and some local authority employers going back to the 1960s, ironically just ahead of the Equal Pay Act being introduced.

Facing Prices and Incomes policies designed to restrict pay rises, local authorities entered into side agreements with Trade Unions which were designed to benefit their core membership of (largely male) outdoor and manual workers. These agreements introduced numerous dubious packages designed to bring advantage to these workers to the detriment of (largely female) workers with whom they had nominal parity.

Devices used to boost male pay included:

• "bonus schemes" - when no targets needed to be reached
• "attendance allowances" - when no extra attendance was required
• "performance pay" - paid automatically without any measure of performance being put in place

For almost thirty years after the Equal Pay Act was introduced, Trade Union negotiators have sought to preserve the position of their male workers to the detriment of female staff and even when the Single Status agreement was reached in 1997, which set the terms for equal pay, an astonishing 10 years was allocated to achieve it.

Facing the deadline set by Single Status and ratified in the 2004 National Joint Council Pay Agreement (commonly referred to as the three year pay deal) of 31st March 2007, the Unions have failed to sufficiently hold employers to account to implement the arrangements as they believe it might adversely affect the incomes of a smaller number of workers which they admit have been overpaid for several years.

Once again women are largely the victims. Rather than pressing the Local Authorities to meet their obligations unions once again began to enter into cosy arrangements with local authorities, recommending settlements to their underpaid workers whereby, rather than receiving the six years discriminatory pay compensation to which they were entitled, they were urged to settle for 2-3 years back pay.

In return the disparity and unfairness was exacerbated as the often underpaid workers did not achieve true parity with their male colleagues but only nominal parity as the unions and councils agreed to ring-fence the enhanced benefits of the overpaid workers, often for up to five years.

A recent employment tribunal concluded that: "the [GMB] union collaborated with them [the council] in such a way that it applied practices which manipulated the members who had back pay claims into unwittingly sacrificing their rights to the benefit of other members and the council..." [Allan v GMB, June 2006].

Equal Pay Lawyer's legal team will conduct a free independent evaluation of your equal pay claim and if we believe you will be successful will work for you on a no-win-no-fee basis on your behalf.

Don't believe us?

Read The Guardian's Bea Campbell: An Embarrassment of Riches: what happened to the Unison branch which won thousands of pounds in compensation for each of its members, but you won't find any reference to their success on the Unison website.

Read The Independent's Joan Smith: How the unions betrayed women workers

Free legal advice direct to your inbox: Ask Law Answers your equal pay legal question.