Women don’t want to ‘burn down’ BBC but deserve fair pay

ANUMBER of women are waiting more keenly than most for the result of Samira Ahmed’s equal pay claim against the BBC. I am one of them. I could be reluctantly following in Samira’s wake and taking my employer to court.

I am not a household name, but I have dedicated my career to the BBC and, I suspect, have been underpaid for most of it.

I earn a modest salary, and less than my male counterparts. In challenging that, like many other women, I’ve been put through a long, gruelling internal grievance process that cost me sleepless nights and affected my health but still BBC managers refuse to pay me the same as the men who do the same work as me.

Director General Tony Hall has said that if any woman had to litigate over equal pay, he would see that as a failure by the BBC, and yet Samira was left with no option but to go to tribunal.

The pay differences are eyewateringly large in Samira’s case.

Many onlookers will be baffled by how this even got to court. Samira presents a programme called Newswatch. In a nutshell, she alleges that the BBC pays her a sixth of what Jeremy Vine receives for doing “very similar work” by hosting Points Ofview.

THE BBC says that her programme is classed as news and his is as entertainment. During the tribunal hearing, we have witnessed the unedifying contortions of BBC managers slagging off one of their own programmes and presenters to back up their argument.

Caught silently in the middle of this flak is our colleague Jeremy Vine, who’s had his career and pay pored over in public.

Jeremy has helped Samira with her case, and many women at the BBC are grateful to him and the other men for supporting us when they don’t need to.

The pay disparities in cases like mine are much smaller but in my view just as unlawful.

Winning equality would make a difference to me for the rest of my life.

For it is this that is the most unequal and unjust part – that a woman does the same job as her male colleague, but because he is paid more than her, he will enjoy a better pension in the future and a better quality of life.

If Samira wins her case, the financial cost to the BBC in the long run could be existential because many more women will feel emboldened to seek pay equality and the corrections to their pensions that go with it. The bill could run into many millions of pounds.

None of us wanted this mess to come out in court. None of us want to burn down the house.

Even if Samira loses her case, plenty of damage will have been done to the BBC.

The evidence that came to light during her hearing spoke of dubious pay practices, where agents acting for presenters have pushed the BBC to pay ever higher salaries.

It seems the BBC would rather air its dirty linen in public and spend hundreds of thousands of pounds of the licence fee on expensive lawyers to defend the indefensible than pay women equally, in line with the law.

The BBC tactic has been to obfuscate during every stage of the internal pay grievance procedure, to confuse the women and eventually wear them down so they give up – and several have.

One questions the wisdom of doing this; of paying out huge amounts of public funds on hiring external lawyers and socalled independent consultants to fight the BBC’S corner – people who have little understanding of the jobs we do and often confuse themselves in the process.

SINCE the first highpay list was published in July 2017, BBC bosses have continued to insist that there is no equal pay problem. They’ve said it so often that they now seem unable do an about-turn and admit they’ve got it wrong.

If only they would stop listening to so many lawyers and instead do the right thing. In a report last month by the broadcasting regulator Ofcom, some viewers said the trust they have in the BBC had been damaged by issues such as how managers have dealt with the gender pay dispute.

As Samira once tweeted: “Never mind the ethics – what about the optics….”

In the end they might not have a choice but to reconsider their assertion.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission is investigating the BBC’S pay practices and has the power to force BBC managers to change their ways if it finds anything unlawful.

MPS are still asking difficult questions about equal pay and how the cases are being resolved.

And in the next few weeks, a judge sitting in a tribunal in central London just might rule against the BBC.

‘Equality would make a difference to me for the rest of my life’