Gender Pay Gap means women working for free until Jan 2019
The Labour Party Seanad Leader Ivana Bacik, has called on the Government to use Labour Party legislation which has already passed all stages in the Seanad to introduce Gender Pay Gap reporting mechanisms.
Senator Bacik said:
“At around 14%, the pay gap also means that Irish women work for free for around one month of every year. From today Irish women are essentially working for free for the rest of the year.
“Despite passing equal pay legislation in Ireland more than 40 years ago, in 1974, women have still not achieved anything close to pay parity with our male colleagues.
“The rate of change in pay levels has become stagnant – over the past 11 years, the pay gap has narrowed by only four percentage points.
“It is high time we now addressed this issue.
“The Government have been promising for over a year that they will introduce legislation to tackle this problem. During this time, the Labour Party has progressed legislation through all stages of the Seanad. We are happy to work with Government through all stages in the Dáil to make sure this legislation goes through swiftly.
“If enacted, the Labour Party’s Gender Pay Gap Information Bill would require medium to large-sized companies to regularly publish wage transparency surveys that would highlight any difference in pay between their male and female workers.
“This has worked in other countries and we believe it will have a significant impact in driving down the gender pay gap here, by shining the spotlight on any gender based pay discrepancies and enabling companies to address and remedy such inequalities where they exist.
“It’s not enough to simply rely on organisations to volunteer this information, legislation is required.
“Ireland has made significant strides toward gender equality- but we are not there yet, and in the year when we celebrate the centenary of women’s suffrage, we must prioritise tackling our unsustainable gender pay gap.”