Equal pay tribunals in the UK overwhelmed with claims
Though women have made great strides in the workplace in recent decades, there is still a disturbingly significant gap between the earnings of men and women in the same jobs. In both the US and the UK, independent juducial bodies have been created to address claims of pay disparity. However, the pay gap issue is so significant that these organizations run the risk of being overwhelmed.
In Britain, the large numbers of women taking employers to equal pay tribunals has left the system under such strain that the head of the Equal Opportunities Commission says that a moratorium on claims is urgently needed.
Jenny Watson, outgoing Chairman of the Commission, stated that the 155% increase in the number of claims from 2005 to 2006 has left the system overburdened and in danger of collapse.
In part due to the advent of “no win, no fee” lawyers in 2003, the current upsurge in claims is mainly focused on pay discrepancies in local government. However, Watson says that more of these lawsuits may soon be seen in the private sector.
Watson warns, “No one should be under any illusions that this growth in individual cases will stop here. When things move on in the public sector, no win, no fee lawyers will be looking for new business – and they are then likely to turn to the private sector.”
While few of the high-profile banking discrimination case judgements in the UK have favored the claimant in recent years, many claims are never made public, as they are settled before trial. Many employers prefer to settle these claims on the eve of trial, often for substantial sums, to avoid bad publicity.
The UK Commission would do well to look to the example of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), formed in the United States after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prevented discrimination on the basis of race, sex, national origin, color or religion. When the Commission was first formed in 1964, it had a backlog og 3,000 cases at inception. Rather than settling cases quickly as its founders had hoped, the backlog only grew as the administration proved unable to keep up with the tide of claims. By 1977, there were 130,000 cases waiting and the Commission started to lose credibility. To cope with this huge number of cases, the Commission instituted a rapid processing program.
Under the leadership of future Supreme Court Justice (known for his alleged sexual harassment of co-worker Anita Hill, ironically), the EEOC moved to a full investigation system and away from rapid processing. At the same time, the EEOC’s mandate expanded to cover age discrimiation and persons with disabilities. Again, the backlog of cases piled up to 96,945 by the end of 1994. In response, the Commission developed task forces to examine the problem, and established “Priority Charge Handling Procedures” to prioritize cases. Finally and most importantly, the Commission began to strongly promote alternative dispute resolution mechanisms like mediation to settle more cases more efficiently.
The British system is still in its developmental stages, and thus may be able to learn from the best practices on the EEOC, particularly its use of mediation, and adapt them in a way that will work with the British judicial system and prevent the system from being overwhelmed.
