I have just decided that my work is of equal value to that of the feminist supermodel Cameron Russell. Neither of us, admittedly, is quite as useful as a plumber, and I can’t claim to be of much use promoting swimwear. But otherwise I reckon we are a pretty close match. We both tart ourselves around and while my work doesn’t involve a lot of physical input, I would like to think that it requires a slightly higher contribution from the brain department.
There then arises the question: should I not be paid as much as she is? Ludicrous? Perhaps, but no more so, I think, than what is going on in Birmingham, where council taxpayers are facing a £1 billion bill for a mass equal pay claim on the part of 11,000 female staff. Not even the proposed sale of the National Exhibition Centre will fill the hole: it has been valued at only £300,000. The city council is facing the wholesale closure of art galleries, museums and leisure centres, as well as the curtailment of social care services and children’s services. The bill is about twice what Birmingham spends running its schools in a year.
The winners, until they want to send their children to school or need a meal on wheels, are the 11,000 staff who are in line for a windfall. One dinner lady is rumoured to have been told to expect £190,000 in backdated pay, with interest. Had these women been paid less than men whom they were working alongside, you could see it as a case of discrimination. But there is no evidence that dinner ladies were paid less than dinner men, if such people exist. Rather they were employed in jobs which, retrospectively, an employment tribunal has ruled to be of ‘equal value’ to male-dominated occupations.
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