A 'Tangible Tool' for Fighting Unequal Pay in the City

does affect their lives. And there's been a case going on now for some time involving one of the big global banks, BNP Paribar, and a light has been shown on some the practices at the bank, which has lessons we think to tell all of us about the future for equality here in the City. I'm Franz and Lacqua and I'm David Merritt, and this is In the City, Bloomberg's podcast, connecting you to the stories and the voices

at the heart of the City of London. So this week we are taking a deep look at the paid discrepancy between men and women working in finance. And there was a verdict in a London court case that could shine even more light on what is actually still a widening gap. Yeah, for the record, he'll have no fury as a woman paid less. Jonathan Browning, legal reporter here

in London, joins us. So, Jonathan, you're going to help us unpack this very specific case of a broker at BNP pair bar in London and the equal payard it that was ordered as part of the verdict in her equal pay suit. Before we get the details, let's just paint the picture of where we are now when it comes to equal pay in the city. Because the very idea of women being paid less than their male colleagues should have gone out years ago. But we know that

that's not the case. Um, So the tell us about the reality of the situation now and and really that this verdict is not so surprising. It's not in one sense. I mean, the UK became the biggest country to zoom in on this on this explosive topic of the pay gap between men and women when it asked for mandatory reporting on wage differences in But the point is that that was a fairly blunt instrument. Um. It shows that men are paid a median of nine more than women.

That's what men and women are on average. It's not a comparison of like for light roles. It highlights the extent to which women have been underrepresented. It's all we have and until now is it worse in the finance industry. It is. Women in in the finance industry make significantly mess less than men. The pay gap is especially wide in investment banking, where some of the highest paid employees work and they tend to be men. But just just to clarify on the data, you say, it's about the

medium pay, isn't it. So it's not showing you say what someone doing the same job is showing. What is showing a little bit as well, is that there are fewer women in senior positions, which are the higher paid jobs as well. Right, that's part of the problem, very much so, and most employees are very keen to say this doesn't mean equal pay. It's not a comparison of

like for like. This is about the averages that men and women and and has been as I say, like all that any employee has to rely on, because because that's all we've had so far. But this case, what what was different about this case? What sort of like did it shine on the issue here at So the big thing is the fact that the verdict at the end and the the remedy that was ordered will go into some serious detail about equal pay. But this is

a case about Stacy Mackin. Hello and Stacy Machin, who was a prime brokerage manager at b MP Parry Back. I spoke with Stacy Mackin and her barrister, Sailer Ali in the Bloomberg studio about a month to go to talk through these issues. She was a sixteen year veteran over the bank and New Zealander who relocated to London. She called this like her dream job, but she started to fear perhaps that she was being paid less than

her colleagues for the same amount of work. BNP paraba, We're paying a mail in the same role more in salary and seven times the bonus for no good reason. All I can say is that I felt very, very lit down by the bank. I had raised a genuine complaint and HI should have investigated it properly, but instead they made a conscious decision to side with male discriminators and cover up the discrimination. And then, I mean to be clear, this is this is a prime brokerage job

at a big investment back. So this is a high paid job, right, This is we're talking serious money here, we are. I think her pay was slightly north of already a hundred thousand, but that's not in this sense the point, um. It's it's the fact that a colleague,

an exact comparator, was being paid more. So, this is not only about pay discrimination, right, it's equal pay violation discrimination laddish culture that came out in the trial, as I imagine, people submitted evidence, and it's also females in HR running a bit of a sham grievance, it is, And initially a lot of the laddish culture got the headlines.

There were some pretty appalling episodes where at one point in time she came Stacy Mack and came to work the next morning to find a witch's hat on her desk and that had been tribunal found left there by a group of male colleagues who had been out drinking. When she made comments and complaints, there was a sort of familiar refrain of not now Stacy, not now Stacy, and it became kind of a thing. So that was what got the headlines. Perhaps initially but the actual meet

of the case, the concern was around equal pay. I think if you are working in an environment where women are but littled, then that's a pretty good indication that there there is an underlying problem in giner pay. And the FCO themselves have made a great play about the fact that in a culture where sexist behavior is tolerated is not dealt with in any way, then other problems fester and misconduct is much more likely to happen. So

what happens now? There was what two million pounds being awarded her in January, but actually the judge went a step further, Yeah, she did. The award of the money is a significant, significant sum. We think it's probably in the top ten of all employment tribunal awards. When a discrimination claim is made there is there is in theory no upper limit, but this award stands out for the

size of it as much as anything else. But even more important is this essentially an order, a requirement from the tribunal for an equal pay Ordit that had never happened before. I requested the equal pay order as part of my remedy because I became aware that there was a wider problem. But Basically, I just wanted to make sure that no other woman at BNP would have to

go through what I went through. I mean, it's been fifty odd years since the Equal Pay it and yet women still have not reached pay parity, and in my opinion, the UK regulations don't go far enough. I think every large employer who has a material pay get should have to publish the underlying data. Otherwise we're just not going to make any progress. As we were saying, that's not just going to show you what the median amounts are.

That's going to look like for like people in jobs throughout the firm, where the male men and women are being paied equally top to bottom, the whole way through the London branch. It's an absolutely enormous undertaking and something you know that employers might have done and kept private.

This time around, we understand that's to be made public and that's the whole point, right because that's when it will have an impact because people can look across and see whether or not and that's just BMP Power bar are going to have to do that. Any other bank's going to follow suit At the moment. This is just for b MP Barry Bar and they have just completed the audit. They've sent it to the tribunal. But we've started to see other claimants in employment tribunal cases in

the financial services industry asking for that too. It becomes a remedy beyond the kind of personal award of of of of damages, something bigger than that. And that's something now that um other claimants are starting to ask of the tribunal ty. So been BNPS response. So they never appealed any of the decisions, both at the what's called the liability hearing where they discovered the issues, and then

and then in the remedy hearing. Either they accept in a sense that they doesn't mean to say they didn't fight it tooth and nail. They thought it tooth and nail. But at the end they've been very clear and they said that we fell short in our duty, Tom miss Mackin. They're considering the tribunals judgment to see what they can learn,

and they have conducted this pay audit. So BNP Power Bar were showcasing themselves throughout this whole process as some sort of champions of equality, even literally as the time the discrimination hearing was happening, Gen Laurent won a favor of CEO was publicly championing this Heath for She campaign that the bank was leading the Newermatic champion and the c for a large bank as a citizen and a further and personally committed to drive forward the employment of

women made he was named a partner in the campaign pledge to take affirmative action to combat discrimination, but the result was literally they were also fighting tooth and nail in a London employment tribunal. Surely Stacy macam must feel pretty frustrated by that. I think, yeah, I think she does. I think it's interesting that they said that they have worked ambitiously on ginger equality for twenty years and there's a huge difference between ambition and action, and their defense

was was what were they trying to discredit? Was that? What was their defense? Yeah? I like, I mean, initially they didn't even admit that there was this discrepancy. It was only through the litigation process that mac and discovered that a male colleague in an equivalent role was being being paid twenty five percent more than she was, and that discrepancy only got wider as this male colleague received

bonuses and a special allowance. They said it wasn't comparable, but the fundamental point was that his bonus was more than five times Stacy mackins she I think also feels that it was noteworthy that none of the individuals at BMP Parry Bar were in any way disciplined, and that's that's still the case. None of the discriminators have been disciplined, despite this being defined as gross misconduct by the Compliance Department, and despite BMP publicly stating on the website that they're

burning discrimination of all types. Now, what I can tell you from the remedy hearing, we discovered that all discriminators received their bonuses after the judgment against them. I just wonder, Jonathan, and none of this is really surprising, right, that these things happen. It's shocking, but not surprising. We all hear stories about either sexual harassment or women being treated differently

at banks. Is it overall changing or is it changing at such a glacial pace that actually doesn't make much difference. I mean, something like this has a real impact because it is a discernible results from a individual's case. This is a tool, this is a piece of this is a document. We don't yet know how it's going to be made available at the moment. The tribunal has that has that the audit and it is considering it. But we've never been in this situation before, so we don't

quite know how it's going to be released. This is this is some something kind of tangible and that's I think what makes it stand out. And you know, to this point, I mean, it isn't that surprising, is that there must be people classibly, people listening to this podcast who have experienced that laddish behavior in the workplace, who might suspect that their colleagues are getting paid more than them for the same job. Are we going to see

many more cases now brought forward or coming to light? Well, it's true. I asked the same question of Saila Alien, Stacy ack Ands, Barrisster. How widespread is this problem of equal pay, especially in the city. That's more widespread than people would think. Nobody walks into a job thinking I'm being discriminated against. Well, hopefully nobody walks in with that view,

but the fact is it happens. I talked to a number of women who don't know what the pay gap is, and it's it's difficult to tell them what to do. They're acting on a suspicion that someone is treated differently, and then they have to bring a claim based on that. And it's only really then at the disclosure stage of the claim when the employer is forced because they have a duty from the tribunal to disclose everything that's either helpful or adverse to the case for them, and most

of the time they will be right. But how many people would really even get to that stage? As I said, I think we'll certainly start seeing these equal pay audits being requested of tribunals. It's a power I think that no one really realized was available to them. But whether or not that has a bigger impact, I mean, I think it puts the pressure on BNP Pariba first, and then you can be sure that every single HR and employment relations team is now aware that that is a

remedy that could be requested of any other bank. And that's I want to get ahead of that now, per fix that get that shopping order right to reveal the numbers.

Because the point about this particular request was the tribunal didn't believe that b MP PARRYBA had looked at this issue in enough detail, it said, and BP said it had, and then it was asked the question of whether or not it considered bonuses in that audit, and they said no. And so then the tribunal said, well, we simply think there are quite there are quite likely to be other people in that situation, and therefore we need you to conduct this equal pay audit from top to bottom to

include bonuses. You spoke to her, So did she feel vindicated or is it still very difficult for a woman to stand up and say, well, actually I'm going to go to a tribunal because then you potentially fear that you could be unemployable afterwards. Yeah, this was a grueling, grueling process. The first hearings were back in Stacy Mackin basically did all the work as far as the litigation herself.

She had a barrister to advocate for her at the actual trial like the actual tribunal hearing, but she did all the background. She didn't have flisters to do the kind of the grunt work she did that all. It's very difficult for women to finance cases like this, especially when you're paid less in salary and seven times less in bonus. And I'll say, the only way I survived. It was by being a litigant in person for the

majority of the time. And what that means is I was managing the case myself behind the scenes, and Shayla was representing me at the hearings. But if I had to hire a solicitor to do that type of work and to do all the communications with the bank, then it would have cost me a fortune and I wouldn't have been able to take this forward. I think she is she was just she would never have said that she was someone who wanted to be initially that advocate

for equal pay. I think she's somewhat unwilling to be in that position, but has found herself in that position as someone who is a bit of a standard bearer and is now kind of someone who perhaps can advocate. It's been quite a battle, um, a David and Goliath battle, if you will, UM. But here I am, five years later, have come out of it successful, and you know, I'm proud that I can help other women and champion them.

And to the women at BMP, I guess one thing I would say is remember that you're in a power position. Now We've got this equel pay audit for you. You're going to have transparency that you never had before. You know that the regulators have already been into BMP on the back of my judgment and um the if c A are now requiring BMP to log all complaints. So I hope it gives them the confidence to go out

and get the equal pay that they're entitled to. Jonathan, thank you, thank you, thanks for listening to this week's in the City. We'll be back next week, but in the meantime, if you like our show, please head on over to Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts and rate, review and subscribe. This episode was hosted by me Francine Lakua with Dave Merritt. It was produced by Summersaidi,

with editing and sound design by Black Maple's. Special thanks to Jonathan Browning, Stacy Maggen, and Sheila Ally.