Graphic: mind the gap

Forty years ago a group of women machinists at the Ford factory in Dagenham walked out when they discovered that they were being paid 15 per cent less than men for doing the same work stitching seats for Cortinas.

They had no idea at the time that their action was the starting point of a decades-long campaign for equal pay, with compulsory pay audits the latest legislative attempt to narrow the gap.

After a three-week strike in 1968, the women settled for a deal that brought them to within 8 per cent of male pay. Although a victory in itself, it was the presence during the negotiations of Barbara Castle, Labour’s Employment Minister, that was to prove decisive.

She had been so incensed by what she saw that she steered the Equal Pay Act past a reluctant Chancellor, unions and employers and into law in 1970.

That Act made it illegal to have different pay rates for men and women. In 1984, Margaret Thatcher was forced by the European Commission to pass “equal pay for work of equal value” into law. A totem for left wingers, it led to an explosion of claims as cleaners and carers argued that their work was just as important as that of dustmen and janitors.

But four decades on from the Ford strike, there is still a considerable way to go on equal pay. The gap has narrowed from 31 per cent in 1970 to 17 per cent, where it has stalled and even shows signs of widening again. In the private sector it has begun to open up and stands at 22 per cent. In areas such as banking, it is 45 per cent. The rise in the number of claims going to tribunals shows that many companies still choose to flout the law in the hope that no one will find out.

Last year 44,000 equal pay claims were brought before the courts, more than double the number in 2005.

Campaigners have been arguing for a decade that the only way to make fresh progress is to “name and shame” the worst-offending companies — and the only way to do that is to order them to reveal their pay gaps.

From 2013, all companies with 250 staff or more will face prosecution if they fail to do so. But Cabinet backing for the measure is the culmination of a battle dating back to Labour’s election victory in 1997.

Tony Blair dragged his heels when he was Prime Minister, but the gap was narrowing anyway in the early years thanks to the introduction of the national minimum wage, which disproportionately benefited women.

When progress started to stall, Mr Blair set up the Women and Work Commission, but made sure that it kicked the notion of compulsory pay audits into the long grass. He refused point-blank to order companies to publish details of how much they pay their staff. It was just not how new Labour operated.

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