BT women outraged at pay snub

Female employees at BT have dubbed the company unfair after a recent pay review left them with less than their male counterparts. A resounding 72 per cent of women at the telco believe the pay system is not operated fairly.

Connect, the union for IT and communications professionals, conducted an annual terms and conditions survey at BT before and after last year's pay review. It found that women were generally being paid less than men.

The union discovered that the pay review, which should have helped women in the BT Managerial and Professional Group to catch up with their male counterparts, mostly failed to do so.

The report commented that until recently, there had never been a situation where the gap between male and female salaries had actually grown. In some salary scales, women actually slipped further behind their male colleagues.

The report added that, at current catch-up rates, it would take 216 years for some female employees to close the salary gap with male colleagues. "This is a direct consequence of the lack of attention paid to the issue of progression through the pay range in the year's pay review," the report stated.

A BT spokeswoman said that the telco aspires to be an equal opportunities employer and "aims to tackle inequality wherever we find it".

A spokesman for Connect said that BT had taken on board the findings. "BT's position is that, as part of its ongoing review processes of pay implementation, it has identified equal pay as one aspect for further work," he said.

First published in Network News

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