Concerned about the European Commission’s delay on the issue of wage transparency (see EUROPE 12576/10), the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) is taking the lead. On Wednesday 4 November, the organisation presented a “model” proposal for a directive on wage transparency, drafted at its request by experts in European labour law.
In this proposal, the organisation advocates, among other things, that workers and trade unions be able to ask the employer for information on pay levels and that pay audits be carried out at least every 2 years in companies with at least 10 employees. It believes that national bodies for the promotion of equality should have the right to access such information and audits.
The ETUC would also like to see that employers would be required to negotiate an annual action plan to remedy the gap, if these audits reveal a gender pay gap. It also suggests prohibiting wage secrecy clauses in contracts.
The President of the Commission had initially promised to introduce binding measures on pay transparency within the first 100 days of her mandate. Then set for Wednesday 4 November, the initiative was finally postponed to 15 December. This is not certain, however, as the deadline is still “to be confirmed”.
The Commissioner for Equality, Helena Dalli, for her part, had pointed out in mid-October at a Council of Labour Ministers that the presentation remained on the Commission’s agenda (see EUROPE 12581/14). Questioned by EUROPE on this subject, the institution had not yet responded to our requests at the time of going to press.
“339 days after Ms von der Leyen took office, women are still waiting for the Commission’s proposal to tackle the 16% gender pay gap in the EU”, the ETUC regretted, determined to “get process back on track”.
According to calculations based on this European statistic, from this Wednesday at 4:16 pm, women “will work for free” until the end of the year.
This was pointed out in particular by the French feminist collective Les Glorieuses – which demands that companies’ access to public procurement contracts be made conditional on progress on equal pay – and the organisation PES Women, the branch of the Party of European Socialists working for gender equality. The European Commission has designated Wednesday 4 November as the “European Unequal Pay Day”.
See ETUC proposal: https://bit.ly/2TTWF7W (Original version in French by Agathe Cherki)