Men earn an average 29pc more than women at Ibec – new report

The report says the earnings difference reflects the “distribution of gender” across the organisation, which includes a large portion of women in lower and middle earning groups.

It says there is a 92pc concentration of females in administrative roles.

There is a 43pc average bonus gender pay gap and an average 38pc gender pay gap among temporary employees.

The gender pay gap is the difference between the average pay men and women earn per hour.

Ibec has a workforce of 257 people, of which 69pc are female and 31pc are male, with an average age of 42.

The report, signed by chief executive Danny McCoy, says Ibec is committed to narrowing its gender pay gap. It commits to measures including putting a career development framework, a new graduate programme and performance indicators in place to build a “strong pipeline of diverse talent”.

“Our gender pay gap and bonus gaps are primarily driven by the fact that 69pc of our workforce is female yet this is not reflected consistently at all levels in the organisation,” says the report.

It shows there is a higher portion of women than men on the executive director team, and among senior managers and executives. However, 91pc of administrative staff are female.

Siptu

Separately, there is a 13pc gender pay gap among workers at the country’s largest union according to its first report under new legislation. Siptu, which represents over 180,000 workers across the economy, says in its first report that the average gap between its own male and female employees is 13.6pc, while the median gap stands at 13pc.

In an introduction, general secretary Joe Cunningham, says there has been a transformation in terms of the roles occupied by men and women since the union was founded in 1990.

He says the number of women with roles as union organisers is steadily rising and now stands at 40pc, up from 6pc at its foundation.

“We are an employer in our own right – and we too, in this document, are reporting on our own gender pay gap,” he says.

“…We believe women in the workforce would benefit enormously if more of them joined unions. We know this is less likely to happen if unions are seen as male dominated environments.”

The report shows that 69pc of the lowest-earning Siptu staff are female, while 31pc are men.

This trend is reversed when it comes to the top roles in the union.

A total of 70pc of those in the highest-paid positions are men, compared with just under 30pc of women.

In terms of benefits in kind, men make up 78pc of those in receipt of non-cash benefits.

The report says in Siptu’s case this primarily concerns car insurance, which is received by staff whose roles require considerable amounts of travel.

Almost all staff receive vouchers, with a mean gender voucher gap of 21pc and a median gap of 50pc.

Mr Cunningham says the union is delighted to see the introduction of gender pay gap disclosure legislation.

He says it will be a useful tool in tackling the gender pay gap, which Siptu has been very active in campaigning for.

“Siptu has a gender pay gap today,” he says. “Measurements of this were not conducted in prior years – but we know that the gap today is far narrower than it was 10, 20 and 30 years ago.”

He says the gap does not arise from unequal pay in particular roles as the wage bands and increments set for roles apply equally to men and women.

“Rather the gap arises from different representation of men and women within different roles in Siptu,” he says.

“This is something that we have been actively addressing with success for some time.”

The report says its calculations cover its 258 employees, of whom 145 are men and 113 women.

It says it does not include separate figures for temporary workers as it does not have any, or part time workers, all of whom are women. It says these employees are working part-time by choice with the option to revert to full-time.

The report says there was a time when the upper levels of the union were overwhelmingly male dominated. It says that has changed and continues to change, but the change has not yet run its full course.

It says the union has a Gender Equality Working Group, chaired by the general secretary to discuss strategies to improve gender equality outcomes. The union also runs an internship programme to enable administrators to get training to become union organisers.

The report says Siptu provides gender bias training to interview boards and looks for balance in the gender of interviewees. “This can be challenging: it remains the case that for union official roles, we tend to see more male applicants than female,” it says.

Iarnród Eireann

Meanwhile, women earn 6pc more per hour than men at Iarnród Eireann.

Iarnród Éireann’s Gender Pay Gap report published today says the organisation is male-dominated and just 11pc of its workforce are women.

It says the pay gap of minus 6.3pc is the reverse of the rail industry in the UK, where gender pay gap data significantly favours men.

The report says the figure is likely to narrow in future years as the proportion of women working at the company increases.

“Our headline gender pay gap shows women earn, per hour, 6.32pc more than men in Iarnród Eireann,” says chief executive Jim Meade in the report.

“In this report, however, as an organisation that is committed to championing diversity and inclusion, we want to thoroughly examine the statistics to understand where we can and need to improve.

“Iarnród Éireann is committed to not only ensuring the gender pay gap does not disadvantage any gender, but more crucially perhaps to significantly increasing female representation across all levels of the business – currently, 11.2pc of our employees are women.”