Tribunal allows pay difference based on length of service

Length of service can be an objective justification for pay differences, even if the result is that proportionately more women than men get less pay.

This is the conclusion of a ruling by the Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) in what is the first detailed examination of how length of service impacts on equal pay.

A woman HSE inspector who was paid less than some of her male colleagues, mainly due to their longer service, brought the case.

Although the EAT found in the HSE's favour, its ruling said that it was not "wholly convinced" that length of service in a job "necessarily and in every case" carries greater valuable experience which would in practice "automatically justify higher pay".

It will be up to the tribunals in each case to decide whether experience through length of service was relevant. Labour Research understands that the case is being taken to the Court of Appeal.

The EAT has also dismissed the suggestion that employers can only justify discriminatory pay systems where they had the justification in mind at the time when the pay system is introduced. Although this might be evidence of the "strength or lack of strength of the justification" the fact that it is absent is not proof of lack of justification.