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Union Strategies
Unions can use the following strategies to address the gender wage gap.
Cases in the courts
Equal pay cases have been important in clarifying and extending the scope of equal pay. However, claims can take a long time to process through the courts and action can be very costly to unions supporting these cases.
Tackling discriminatory grading schemes and occupational segregation
Unions have reformulated their strategies in order to enhance the value placed on women’s jobs through job evaluation. This can help to address discriminatory grading schemes, tackle occupational segregation where women are clustered into female dominated and low paid job categories or grades.
Minimum wages
Addressing minimum wages has been a strategy adopted in several countries on the basis that an increase in the national minimum wage can have significant benefits to low paid women workers.
Equality bargaining
The promotion of equality bargaining and mainstreaming equal pay issues into pay bargaining through the collective bargaining process. This means that union negotiators need to address gender pay issues specifically. As well, there is a need to reorganise negotiating teams to ensure that women are properly represented. There has been a lack of funding in the public sector to close the gender pay gap and this has led some unions to argue for specific allocations of funding for rectifying the gender pay gap, and to challenge the under-funding of public services.
Capacity building
Some unions have been directly engaged in building the capacity of their members in the areas of gender mainstreaming and awareness of gender pay issues.
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