UK bosses, unions urge narrowing of ethnic pay gap

LONDON: Britain’s Trades Union Congress (TUC) and the largest organisation representing business leaders, the CBI, on Friday called for mandatory ethnicity pay reporting to reduce the salary gap for minority workers.

The measure would “transform our understanding of race inequality at work and most importantly, drive action to tackle it where we find it,” the groups said in a letter to senior government minister Michael Gove and co-signed by the Equality and Human Rights Commission.

“Even today race still plays a significant role in determining people’s pay and career progression,” TUC General Secretary Frances O’Grady said. “This problem isn’t going to magic itself away. Without robust and urgent action many BAME (black, Asian and minority ethnic) workers will continue to be held back.

“Mandatory ethnicity pay gap reporting is an obvious first step in helping to improve transparency and bring about change.” In a report published in April, a government commission on ethnic disparities recommended further investigation into the causes of pay gaps but did not call for the publication of data. The commission outlined in 2019 that ethnic pay disparities, taking the median hourly earnings of all ethnic minority groups and the white group, was at a level of 2.3 percent—and that this marked progress on the issue in recent decades.

Its report found that before the Covid-19 pandemic the majority of young people—those under 25 — from minority backgrounds were more likely to be unemployed or in very insecure jobs.

Young white males from “economically disadvantaged backgrounds”, particularly those from industrial towns or coastal cities were in the most disadvantaged demographic group, the report said.

Companies are under increasing pressure to end discrimination against women and minority groups in Britain. A report published last week by corporate women’s advocacy group Women on Boards pointed out that only 48 percent of the smallest companies listed on the London Stock Exchange had met a government target to increase the proportion of women on company boards to a third.

The study also found that only three percent of directors from FTSE All-Share companies outside the 350 largest companies were from ethnic minorities.

The asset manager Legal & General Investment Management warned at the end of 2020 that it would vote against managers and boards of companies that do not do enough to open up to ethnic minorities.