Equal pay claims

The Advocate General, the European Court of Justice's legal adviser says that workers contracted out to the private sector cannot use equal pay law to claim pay parity with their ex-colleagues who continue to work in the public sector.

He has recommended that the ECJ reject a claim submitted by a group of women cleaners whose jobs were transferred some time ago. The women found that following the transfer they did not enjoy the same wage increases as were awarded to male colleagues who had not been transferred. Since their jobs had been identified as being of equal value, the woman thought that it must be possible to use equal pay law to improve their pay. Unfortunately the Advocate-General disagrees. He has held that it would not be right to allow private sector workers to compare their terms and conditions with those of public sector workers. They could only do so where the terms and conditions of both sets of workers were:

1. set nationally; 2. covered by the same collective agreement; or 3. determined by a central authority.

In the absence of any one of these three alternatives the new employer has no obligation to refer to the terms and conditions of another employer nor indeed to know the background to those terms and conditions and to any pay increases.

* Lawrence and others v Regent Office Care C-320/00