The Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU) has launched guidance to help unions close the gender pay gap and put the issue on the collective bargaining agenda.

Currently in Ireland the gender pay gap stands at 11.3%, based on average gross hourly earnings.

The guide builds on the Gender Pay Gap Information Act 2021 and related regulations, which oblige organisations with over 250 employees to publish an annual report on their gender pay gap from this year. Introduced by equality minister Roderic O’Gorman, the legislation was the result of campaigning by Fórsa and other unions.

The obligation to report is to be extended to organisations with over 150 employees in 2024, and to those with over 50 the following year. Plans are also in place for an online reporting system for the 2023 reporting cycle.

The ICTU guide sets out ways in which unions can help and lead proactively through consultation and their own reporting.

The toolkit calls on unions to bargain to end the gender pay gap and send a strong message of the importance of unions to women’s working lives. This is increasingly the case in Ireland as more and more women join unions and take union leadership positions.

ICTU says the gender pay gap has remained persistently high in Ireland and strategies are needed to close it. It also recommends that unions commence negotiations with employers to ensure that there is a comprehensive implementation of the regulations, and use this as an opportunity to go beyond what is in the regulations and address many of the structural causes of the gap.

An outline of the report states women are most likely to work in lower paid jobs, jobs that undervalue their work and in jobs that do not provide them with the same opportunities at work because of their care responsibilities.

It also adds that the gender pay gap widens with age, particularly after women have children and have care responsibilities. This leads to a “motherhood pay gap.” When hourly wages of mothers and non-mothers are compared, mothers experience a wage penalty as high as 30%. The gap is highest in the private sector, particularly in the financial and insurance services sectors.

Speaking at the launch of the guide earlier this week, Fórsa general secretary Kevin Callinan said unions want engagement with employers when the first set of audit reports are published in December, in order to agree a set of measures to be taken by the employer to eliminate or reduce any gaps identified.

He also added that a deficit in the legislation, in his view, was the lack of requirement around having conversations with workers and representatives on reasons for the gap to get their views on it.

The current legislation only requires employers to accompany a statement along with their ‘snapshot’ results, setting out the reasons, according to them, for the existence of a gap and the steps they are taking to address it.

Minister O’Gorman, said he encouraged the guide’s uptake by unions as it had “the potential to positively impact on the success of gender pay gap reporting and achieving real change to gender equality in the workplace.”

The author of the guide Jane Pillinger described the toolkit as essential to building union strategies and actions on gender pay gap reporting and the wider structural causes of unequal pay.

“Pay transparency is the critical aspect. If we don’t know what people are being paid, we can’t negotiate with employers,” she said.

In addition to the Irish gender pay gap reporting, a new EU Pay Transparency Directive is currently being finalised in Brussels. This is expected to go further than the Irish gender pay gap reporting, as it includes protection of trade union rights for women workers, ensuring they can bargain collectively for equal pay, measures to deliver on the principle of equal pay for work of equal value, and a ban on pay secrecy clauses.

Read the gender pay gap guide HERE.

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