Resistance to equal pay auditing in the UK

Summary

Patrick's research paper, "Resistance to equal pay auditing in the UK" (2024), investigates the underlying reasons and manifestations of employer resistance to conducting thorough equal pay audits within the United Kingdom's legal framework. While the full methodology is not explicitly detailed in the provided abstract or search snippets, the paper appears to employ a critical legal and policy analysis approach. It likely scrutinizes the design and implementation of key UK legislation, particularly the Equality Act 2010 (Equal Pay Audits) Regulations 2014 and potentially the later Gender Pay Gap Information Regulations 2017, to assess their effectiveness in promoting pay transparency and equality. The analysis would involve examining legislative texts, governmental objectives, and practical outcomes or challenges in compliance and enforcement. The paper's findings highlight significant limitations within the existing regulatory framework, which inadvertently fosters employer resistance rather than overcoming it. A central argument is that the Equal Pay Audits Regulations 2014 were inherently flawed in their design, never intended to compel widespread, proactive change in employers’ pay structures. Although these regulations mandate employment tribunals to order pay audits for employers found to have breached equal pay law, numerous exceptions and conditions significantly limit their application. For instance, it was anticipated that audits would be ordered in no more than 25% of successful equal pay claims, suggesting a narrow scope rather than a broad enforcement tool. This narrow focus means that only a small fraction of employers, already found to be non-compliant, are subjected to an audit, thereby failing to incentivize proactive measures across the wider business landscape. Employers might also opt to settle equal pay claims to avoid the scrutiny and potential broader implications of a mandatory audit, which could reveal systemic pay inequalities and necessitate more extensive remedial action and public transparency. This strategic avoidance contributes to the observed resistance. The implications of these findings are substantial for the ongoing struggle to achieve gender pay equity in the UK. The paper implicitly suggests that current legislative efforts, while aiming for transparency, may create only an "apparent transparency without accountability". This lack of genuine accountability allows employers to resist fundamental changes to their pay practices. For true widespread change to occur, the paper likely advocates for a re-evaluation of the regulatory approach to equal pay auditing. This could include calls for more robust, less easily circumvented mandates for proactive auditing, stronger enforcement mechanisms, and a broader scope of application to prevent breaches rather than merely reacting to them. Ultimately, the research underscores that unless regulatory frameworks are designed to actively dismantle resistance and enforce comprehensive auditing, the ambition of closing the gender pay gap within a generation will remain an elusive goal.