So much for equality! Unions among worst for gender pay gap

UNIONS were accused of double standards last night after it emerged they had among the worst gender pay gaps in the country.

Despite campaigning on equal pay for years, all of the largest unions pay men far more.

Worst-performing was teachers’ union NASUWT, where women’s median hourly rate – the pay level for the middle-ranking female worker – was 42.7 per cent lower than for the middle-ranking man. This means that, in the union which represents a femaledominated profession, women get 57p for every £1 men earn.

At shopworkers’ union Usdaw, women’s median hourly rate was 33.5 per cent lower.

And at GMB women earned 32.4 per cent less. Unite, run by hard-Left general secretary Len McCluskey, has a gender pay gap of 29.6 per cent. Only firms with more than 250 employees had to report pay gaps, meaning many well-known unions are not on the list.

Last night former Cabinet minister Priti Patel said: ‘Once again the hypocrisy and double standards of the unions has been exposed. They should end the blatant and unjustifiable pay discrimination they have shown to the thousands of women they employ – and pay their women fairly.’

The only organisation with a positive record was the Trades Union Congress, the federation of British unions. It has a 0 per cent median pay gap while its mean pay gap, taking the average of every employee’s pay, was 2.2 per cent. The union with the worst record on the mean measure was GMB, with 25.5 per cent, followed by NASUWT and Usdaw.The lowest gender pay gaps were in medical unions such as the Royal College of Nursing and the British Medical Association.

Despite its own appalling record, NASUWT has campaigned on eliminating the gender pay gap – calling on the Government not to allow 99 per cent of schools to be exempt as their staff numbers are too low.

NASUWT general secretary Chris Keates said the union had no issue with equal pay for work of equal value.

She added that the gender pay gap figures were affected by the high proportion of women in administrative roles and the union’s commitment to flexible and part-time working.