Thursday 30 June 2005

Equal Pay

The EAT has handed down its decision in Hope v SITA (UK) Ltd.

Mrs Hope was promoted to the position of Group Purchasing Manager, which a man had previously done, but not paid as much.

The tribunal found that this was 'like work', but also found that Mrs Hope in fact did more work than her predecessor because he had had a deputy to shoulder some of the workload (i.e. her), but she did not have a deputy and so was doing more work.

The EAT rejected the argument that there cannot be 'like work' when a woman is found, as a fact, to be doing more work than her male comparator (para. 13). HHJ Wakefield held:"On any purposive construction of the Act, the fact that a promoted woman undertakes more duties than her male predecessor cannot result in a conclusion that the two are not undertaking like work in order to justify her being paid less."

Sita UK Ltd v Hope EAT 2005

No comments: