“For equal work, equal pay”: the European Commission today proposed rules to respect this principle and advised the Twenty-Seven to impose fines to force companies to stop paying men differently from women, according to APE.
“For an equal salary, you need transparency. Women need to know if their employers are treating them fairly. “And when that does not happen, they must have the power to defend themselves and achieve what they deserve,” said Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.
The proposal was presented a few days before International Women’s Day. The Member States and the European Parliament will now be addressed, says a senior European official.
“Equal pay has been a right since 1957 and yet today in the EU women earn less than men and the gender pay gap now stands at 14.1%,” the commission said in a statement. It reaches 30% in pensions, it is underlined in the document.
The gap is “much larger if only the private sector is taken into account,” say EU officials who worked on the program.
The European Commission wants to be a role model in this. Commissioners, general managers, heads of units all have the same salaries, men and women.
But equal representation is difficult to achieve in the institutions, and Ursula von der Leyen has had to put pressure on many Member States to nominate 13 women and 14 men for her group. There are not many women in management positions yet.
“Gender-based pay discrimination is a systemic problem, but it is difficult to prove. “Thanks to the introduction of rules for transparency in pay and a mechanism that allows them to be implemented, employees have at their disposal the necessary tool to receive the information they request for possible pay gaps,” explained Equality Commissioner Elena Daly, who presented this proposal together with the Vice President for Values Vera Jurova.
“For those who refuse to change their practices of discrimination, we are strengthening workers’ confidence to take action, including seeking redress in court,” Jurova said.
The Commission plan provides for Member States to impose specific sanctions and fines for breaches of the equal pay rule.
“The ideal would be the same level of fine for all Member States, but we must be clear: companies must not be able to avoid sanctions and fines must be dissuasive. We have at least that in the proposal “, the high-ranking official explained.
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