England: Wegweisendes Gerichtsurteil gewährt Männern gleichen Lohn wie Frauen

Die britische BBC nennt es einen "landmark case", einen Meilenstein in der Rechtsprechung: Ein Gerichtsurteil setzte gestern durch, dass Männer genauso gut bezahlt werden müssen wie Frauen. Jetzt wird von tausenden von männlichen Arbeitern eine Lawine von Prozessen erwartet, die hunderte Millionen Pfund ausmachen dürften.

The Employment Appeal Tribunal ruled that the 300 men should have been offered the same back pay as the women. These claims are sometimes called piggy back claims as the men "piggy back" on the successful women's claims.

Mr Justice Underhill said: "It would be surprising and unsatisfactory if the [Equal Pay] Act offered no remedy to men in a situation like the present. The case where men and women do the same job but receive different rates of pay is the paradigm of the kind of situation which the Act was intended to prevent, how would it seem if the roles were reversed and the 'piggyback' claimants were not men but women?"

Lawyers involved, from the Cloister Chambers, have described it as a landmark ruling which will have a bearing on many other cases, and could cost councils hundreds of millions of pounds. Yvette Genn from Cloisters said: "This ruling is what thousands of male workers who have not received equal pay up and down the country have been waiting for. There is no doubt that many of the similar 12,000 cases in the system will now proceed and are likely to be successful."

Hier findet man den vollständigen Beitrag.