HSE guilty of paying women less than men
The ruling means the HSE faces a bill of more than €2 million in back pay to compensate the women who are directors of public health.
Although the judgment refers only to these 33 women, the Irish Nurses Organisation (INO) believes 200 assistant directors of public health, whose pay is determined by what the directors are paid, should automatically benefit.
In addition, Dave Hughes deputy general secretary of the INO, said the determination had huge consequences in the long term for the pay of up to 3,000 nurse managers, who were also being paid less than others in the health service doing jobs of equal value.
He said the ruling “vindicated the INO’s view that nurse pay rates are depressed simply as a consequence of the female domination of the nursing and midwifery professions”.
The HSE said yesterday it was “considering the judgment” but the 21-day deadline to appeal the Labour Court ruling to the High Court has passed.
The Labour Court, in a legally binding equal pay determination, found the system that set the pay of all nurse managers to be discriminatory against the exclusively female directors of public health nursing. It compared these public health posts with the job of director of mental health services, a male-dominated grade (33 out of 38 directors are male), and found the men were paid substantially more for doing jobs of equal value.
According to the INO, the women now stand to gain a pay adjustment of circa €16,000 retrospectively to 2002 as previously directed by the Equality Tribunal in 2005.
The difference in basic pay between the directors of mental health and the directors of public health nursing is more than €11,000 and the performance related awards can amount to €7,000 per annum.
According to Mr Hughes, the Labour Court findings may prompt the INO to legally challenge the outcome of the forthcoming benchmarking report if it fails to address satisfactorily the claims they have made on behalf of nurses and midwives.
“The INO will now legitimately scrutinise the outcome of the current exercise from an equal pay point of view given that the first benchmarking body had failed to unearth the discrimination which has now been found to underpin the basis for determining pay of all nurse managers,” said Mr Hughes.
The latest report of the Public Service Benchmarking Body is to be published on Thursday.
Mr Hughes said the INO expected it to deal “honestly and fairly” with claims.
Nurses suspended their campaign of industrial unrest prior to last year’s election when it was agreed that their demand for a 10.5% pay increase would be addressed by the benchmarking process.
