Ombudsman for Equality

Between whom should comparisons of pay be made?

Comparisons between and within different occupations and/or jobs

According to the Equality Act, a specification including details of the employment of women and men in different jobs and a survey of the grade of jobs performed by women and men, the pay for those jobs and the differences in pay, shall be made as part of gender equality planning. The Act does not prescribe in more detail how the employee groups between which the comparisons in pay and pay differences shall be made, are to be formed.

When enacting the Act, the purpose was that women's and men's pay would appear in the pay survey according to competence levels or jobs. Consequently, examining the pay differences between women and men only at the level of the entire personnel is not sufficient. Instead, it is necessary that women's and men's pay and pay differences are examined and compared both within occupations and/or jobs, as well as between occupations/jobs considered of equal value.

If a certain employee group consists exclusively of either women or men, it should be assessed whether the pay of this employee group as a whole corresponds to the appropriate competence level when compared with the pay of employee groups also including employees of the opposite sex. Furthermore, whether the employee group is treated equitably in terms of bonuses should also be assessed.

Comparison across collective agreement divides

An assessment of how pay systems treat women and men and whether jobs at the same competence level are treated equitably, should be made, if possible, even when the pay is determined by different collective agreements. The reason for this is that the implementation of the principle of equal pay should be employer-specific and that the jobs for the same employer can be of equal value even if they are covered by different collective agreements. The preamble of the pay survey provision makes numerous references to pay comparisons across collective agreement divides.

If the wages or salaries of the jobs to be compared are based on different grading or evaluation criteria, there are no clear criteria to be found in the collective agreements either on private sector employee or civil servant salaries for comparisons of competence levels between jobs. In fact, there is no single correct and possible way to compare a job to another. Even in such a case, the starting point may be to use evaluation criteria that are consistent with the ones stated in the preparatory materials of the Equality Act (nature and content of tasks, and working conditions) and to take the characteristics of female-dominated and male-dominated jobs adequately into account.

If the competence levels of jobs covered by different collective agreements are not to be examined to the full, the implementation of gender equality between employees covered by different collective agreements can be assessed more generally on the basis of, for example, whether jobs ranked in the same pay bracket in euros can be considered of equal value. Sometimes jobs covered by different collective agreements may, for instance at the managerial level, consist of elements so similar that a mere comparison and assessment of differences between the jobs is enough.

Any unjustified pay differences detected between jobs covered by different collective agreements should be rectified as far as possible. Particular attention should be paid to these differences when making decisions on pay raises at a workplace level.

Salaries and wages of individual employees are not disclosed in the equality plan

Salaries and wages of individual employees must not be disclosed in the equality plan. If an employee group consists of just a few employees and, consequently, the pay of the group cannot be reported without at the same time revealing the pay of individual employees, these employees shall be included in the next closest employee group.

Combining groups may result in a situation where employees representing jobs of very different competence levels are included in the same group. This places higher demands on the assessment of the grounds of pay differences and their acceptability. This is due to the fact that differences in pay might not only be based on different competence ratings of the jobs but also various reasons affecting the amount of bonuses.

For the purpose of assessing the grounds for pay differences, it might be beneficial to report the lowest and highest wages and salaries of each employee group. This provides information on the pay dispersion and on whether the pay differences can be explained by a single deviation.

According to Section 7 of the Act on Personal File (1010/1989), pay data in the public sector is public information. For this reason, persons participating in carrying out the pay survey may make use of pay data concerning individual employees when examining pay systems and assessing pay differences, even if this data is not to be disclosed in the equality plan. Whether this kind of procedure is possible at workplaces in the private sector depends on the collective agreements. The pay survey provision does not include regulations on the right of the employee party to receive pay data concerning individual employees.