EU Pay Transparency: Companies will have to disclose how they pay employees

Publicerad denFörfattareScoop Editorial

Women in the EU continue to be paid less than men. Not only because they tend to work in lower-paid jobs, but also for the same work in the same sector, women are paid less on average than their male colleagues. Most of the time, women don’t even know how much they are paid less because the wages are not publicly visible. This is now to change: The EU Pay Transparency Directive obliges companies to disclose how they pay their employees. This is to uncover and prevent a possible pay gap between men and women.
On 30 March, the EU Parliament adopted new directives in the fight against salary differences between men and women. The regulations oblige EU companies to be transparent about salaries. In future, all salaries paid by a company must be disclosed. This will allow workers to compare their salaries and identify differences. 
In the EU, women still earn on average 13 per cent less per hour than men. However, the gender pay gap varies greatly from country to country: while it is less than 4 per cent in Slovenia, Romania and Luxembourg, the pay gap is highest in Estonia and Latvia, at around 22 per cent. Austria and Germany are right behind with 18.9 and 18.1 percent respectively.
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Gender pay gap has mainly structural causes
The gender pay gap has mainly structural causes, as women in the EU are more often employed part-time and are less likely to hold management positions. On the other hand, they do unpaid care work more often. Professions in which more women tend to work than men, such as nursing, are also less well paid. But even if one disregards these structural causes, the gender pay gap remains: In Germany, for example, women with comparable qualifications in the same industry earn on average six percent less than their male colleagues.
Companies with more than 100 employees must disclose salaries
The pay gap between women and men is to be closed with the new pay transparency guidelines. The guidelines stipulate that all salaries in a company must be disclosed. Companies with more than 100 employees where the pay gap between women and men exceeds 5 percent will have to find a solution on how to equalise salaries in the future.
The EU Pay Transparency guidelines prohibit recruiters from asking applicants about their current salary. This is to prevent salary discrepancies from arising in the first place.
Social partners are to play an increased role in enforcing the guidelines. Companies that do not comply with the wage transparency guidelines will be fined. This is the only way to ensure compliance with the rules, emphasises the chief negotiator of the S&D group, Evelyn Regner.
EU Pay Transparency Directive: “Transparency of crucial importance”
Regner, member of the Committee on Women’s Rights and Gender Equality and Vice-President of the European Parliament, identifies in a dispatch the crucial importance of transparency for an equal society:
“Without it, it is simply impossible to take action against wage discrimination. “With the new EU rules, workers – and women in particular – will be better equipped to assert their right to equal pay for the same work or work of equal value as men.”
According to Regner, all workers will be able to share information about their pay internally and externally. “This means an effective ban on non-disclosure clauses.” It is also crucial, she said, that it is not women who have to go to court to prove wage discrimination, but companies who have to prove the opposite.
Wage discrimination is a systematic problem, not an individual one. Therefore, it should also be tackled systematically. Läs mer…

Remote Inequality: The effects of working from home on the work-life balance of women

Publicerad denFörfattareJohanna Pauls

Remote work has established itself throughout the past two years. The change to labour suddenly taking place in the private sphere of our own homes has led to drastic changes and raised a debate about what exactly can be called ´real´ work. 
During 2020 around 40% of workers in the European Union switched to working from home. This marked a rise of 35% compared to 2019 where only 5,4% of EU-employees worked remotely—the majority of them being women. 
But even before facing the challenges of a global pandemic, working from home has been the only practicable way to combine both their paid and unpaid work. Unpaid work includes tasks like childcare and household duties which, even in 2022, are still predominantly carried out by women.
Carework such as childcare is still mostly carried out by women
In 2020 12.3% of EU-employees started to work remotely on a regular basis with 41% of EU-women working from home—and this is not a coincidence. A report by the European Foundation for the improvement of working and living conditions issued in late 2020 has found that the work-life balance of women has been affected to a much greater extent by the overall effects of the pandemic than those of men. Women, for example, were found to carry a much heavier burden of care responsibilities. Simultaneously, young women were more likely to lose their jobs compared to their male coworkers. This depicts an utterly different picture of the way employees adapted to the changes work life has undergone within the past two years. 
Carework is work 
The divide between working in the private and the public sphere has manifested itself for centuries. Even though work itself has undergone some drastic changes with ongoing digitalization and globalization, the changes remain limited. The perception of work in the private sphere, often referred to as carework, versus work taking place in the public sector has differed enormously.
Carework is rarely considered real work in our society
Carework such as childcare, cleaning and cooking duties have historically been unequally distributed in households. The majority of the work is still taken care of by women. This is clearly linked to gender stereotypes and gender based discrimination in social (and public) institutions. Even after centuries of fighting for women’s rights and emancipation, men are perceived as the main breadwinners in most families.
On the challenges of Teleworkers
With the surge of remote work during the crisis, many challenges of working from home have been highlighted. Overall, it can be stated that remote workers are less protected in their own homes. This is especially noteworthy when talking about women that live with abusive partners and/or under poor living conditions.
“In addition to being less protected in the ‘private’ space, home-based teleworkers are at risk of being sidelined at their workplace, with reduced professional visibility and career prospects and less access to information and personal and professional support.” Kalina Arabajieva and Paula Franklin, Researchers at the European Trade Union Institute (ETUI)
Additionally, most of them experience reduced professional visibility, which stems from them not being physically present at meetings etc. This then leads to their isolation from the in-office team.
41% of EU-women worked from home in 2020
The lack of physical presence also leads to reduced interpersonal exchange with the team. This can result in a lack of information and support—both personally and professionally—such as unionizing. That alone can lead to severe work-life conflicts disproportionately affecting women.
Protecting the health of remote workers
Telework is filled with psychosocial risks affecting the health of workers. Therefore, preventive measures must be undertaken to ensure the safety of those working from home. An overall review of the working conditions is required to ensure that the shift from office to home based or hybrid work can be adapted without workers losing the rights that the working class has fought for over the past centuries. Such changes have to be established within both the legal and the social landscape. But therefore, the binary divide between paid and unpaid work has to be questioned.
Establishing homeoffice as a protected working sphere 
Even with all the challenges workers face when carrying out telework, many of them still want to work from home or at least have the opportunity to do so. However, the divide between work carried out from home versus such carried out in the public sphere leads to remote work from home being perceived as less valuable or not real work. 
Telework is filled with psychosocial risks affecting the health of workers
To support workers in their ability to divide their private from professional/work life, it is imperative to end the societal perception of remote work and unpaid domestic labor. Only this way can a better work-life balance for those with caring responsibilities be established. Both the rights and working conditions of teleworkers need to be protected—particularly of those with caring responsibilities.  Läs mer…