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Persons employed are for the purposes of the Act
defined so as to include persons employed "under a
contract personally to execute any work or labour" as
well as persons employed under a contract of service.
It became clear in Committee that this measure was
intended to prevent avoidance of the Act by the use of
labour-only sub-contracting, a rather wise move. The
Government's claim is that by their three basic prin-
ciples they have avoided the controversy between "equal
pay for the same work"—the concept adopted by the
Treaty of Rome—and "equal pay for work of equal
value"—that of the ILO Convention. It has been fairly
suggested, however, that the same dispute will reproduce
itself when the concept of "equally favourable condi-
tions for like work" comes to be applied.
Expanding on the three principles :
Definition of "like work"
(1) A woman is to be regarded as in "like work" if
her work and men's is of the same or a broadly-similar
nature and the differences (if any) between the things
she does and the things they do are not of practical
importance in relation to terms and conditions of em-
ployment; and accordingly comparing her work with
theirs regard is to be had to the frequency or otherwise
with which any such differences occur in practice, as
well as to the nature and extent of their differences.
How will the tribunals cope with all this particularly
as comparison is to be made with all persons employed
by the same employer in any establishment at which
common terms and conditions are observed? How many
and what terms and conditions must be common ones?
The Committee on the Bill instanced a case where a
man is employed in London at £20 p.w., a woman in
London at £16 p.w., a man in Scotland at £16 p.w.,
and a woman in Scotland at £12 p.w., all by the same
employer on the same work. Will the Act bring the
woman in Scotland up to £20 p.w.? Or is it more
likely that employers by concentrating all the women in
the area which has the regional differential against it
will evade the Act, thus giving rise to discriminatory
job allocation. Further will the provision entitle all
women to the minimum non-skilled male rate in e.g.
the engineering industry, where no men are doing the
lowest grade of the work done by women?
Definition of "equivalent work"
(2) A woman's work is "equivalent" to men's if her
job and theirs have been given an equal value in terms
of the demand made on a worker under various head-
ings (for instance, effort, skill, decision) on a study
undertaken with a view to evaluating in those terms
the jobs to be done by all or any of the employees in
an undertaking or group of undertakings, or would have
been given equal value but for the evaluation being
made on a system setting different values for men and
women on the same demand under any heading.
The provision does not impose an obligation on the
employer to have a job evaluation done, it just says
that when it has been done, there shall be no discrim-
ination. We do not know if it matters how long ago the
work was rated as equivalent. Since all employers con-
duct their own evaluations in one way or another, how
sophisticated is the evaluation in the Act to be? No
particular method is preferred and there are significant
shifts in emphasis in the various recognised methods,
job-ranking, grade-description or classification, factor
comparison or points rating. Discrimination could very
easily be built into job evaluation, since the Act does
not deal with discrimination built in to the relative
weighting of factors, for example, if a job evaluation
scheme gives relatively high weight to strength and rela-
tively low weight to dexterity, would this not be discrim-
ination? This sort of indirect discrimination was noted
as one of three major insufficiencies still existent in the
original EEC member countries in the Commission's
Report on 31 December 1968. (Particular reference
might be made to German practice in this regard.)
There are instances of "reorganisation" of work in
Northern Ireland following the Equal Pay Act, women
have now been described as "equal but separate" (see
a report in
The Irish Press
8 October 1972).
J o b
evaluation
It will be important to clarify the question of job
evaluation. If no duty is imposed upon an employer to
carry out such a scheme, then the number of women in
Ireland who will be forced to rely on the first principle
will be proportionately as great as the English figure.
In discussions on the English Bill, the suggestion was
launched that one-third of all employees (approx.) were
covered by job evaluation schemes. The National Board
for Prices and Incomes published a report on Job
Evaluation in 1968, based on a survey of the use of
evaluation in the UK. "Although" the report says
"most establishments have made no use of job evalua-
tion some 7£ per cent of establishments covered by the
survey not using job evaluation were actively consid-
ering its application. If these establishments too apply
job evaluation to an again nearly 60 per cent of their
workers the coverage of such techniques will rise over
the next few years from nearly 25 per cent of the
employees in our sample to about a third." However,
taking into acctunt that the survey covered only those
concerns employing twenty-five or more employees while
many women work in concerns employing less than that
number, and also remembering that industries tending
to use job evaluation show a marked difference in the
low figures of female employees, it has been estimated
that no more than 1 million women employees in the
UK and probably no more than 500,000 are covered
by job evaluation schemes. With a total female labour
force in the UK of 9 million, 1 million of which are in
receipt of equal pay, this leaves roughly 7 million who
will not be in a position to benefit from this part of the
Act. Clearly such a result must be avoided in Ireland.
(3) A collective agreement under the Equal Pay Act
can be referred to the Industrial Court by the parties
to the agreement o rby the Secretary of State. The
parties to the agreement in England no less than in
Ireland will usually be men and this may prove unfor-
tunate for the referral of collective agreements for
amendment to the Court. Women trade unionists will
simply have to become alert. In Ireland there are seven
full-time women officials out of a total of 230. The pro-
portion of tEade union members was last ascertained in
1966 to be, among women, two out of every five, and
among men, two out of every three. In the UK, density
of unionisation is approx. 60 per cent for males as
opposed to 28 per cent for females.
There is a rather strong case for equal pay in Ireland
in the private as well as in the public sector. Women
constitute approx. one quarter of the Irish labour force,
Continued on p. 98
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