NOt fair but is it legal?

medders2604

A friend of mine has been working for a company for several years doing the same job only moving from team to team.
It has just come to light that she is the lowest paid member of her current team.
Everyone on the team does the exact same job and all have similar experience and qualifications. (My friend is actually one of the more respected members that the others come to with any systmes probs etc)
Now we are not talking a small difference in pay she is paid approx 3rd less than the others and the only reason her line manager can give is that the team she was on previously all had lower rates of pay than the team she is now on (old team worked set hours new team work 4 days on 4 days off alternating days and nights) and that he can do nothing about it.
The company had said they would give her a larger pay rise than rest of team to help balance it a little more but it has now come out that noone will be getting a rise this year.
Can they do this? Surely people doing exact same job with same experience and qualifications should be paid the same.

Conor_3

Yes they can do this. There is no right in law to be paid the same as anyone else, the only exception being discrimination due to sex or disability but you would have to prove that and if there are other women getting more pay, she has no case. If she's incapable of negotiating a better deal for herself, that's her fault.

Just because they've told everyone there's no pay rises doesn't mean that they're not going to make an adjustment to her wages to bring them in line.

eamon

Inconsistencies like this always cause problems, in fact I can't think of any system that doesn't cause problems. Somebody will always be underpaid, not carrying their weight, better/worse qualified etc

darlo_fan

Councils have had serious issues costing loads about equality of pay.

The problem with normal companies is that you negotiate your own pay, its not on set scales (generally) and so its generally what you organised when you started.