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Irish broadcaster needs to deliver on equal pay


RTÉ should follow the postal service’s example, says Emma O’Kelly W


hen women at RTÉ, Ireland’s national broadcaster, heard that An Post, the country’s postal


service, had eliminated its gender pay gap, we were both inspired and angry. Inspired at the great step forward for women announced by one publicly owned Irish company last December, and angry that our own employer was lagging so far behind. It is now five years since women at


RTÉ followed the lead of fellow journalists at the BBC and elsewhere in calling on our employer to live up to its publicly stated commitment to equal opportunities by addressing equal pay and the gender pay gap. But, unlike other organisations,


including An Post, RTÉ gives a strong impression of having done nothing to address the gap between male and female salaries. For myself and my colleagues, this is worse than nothing. The national broadcaster is not only refusing to divulge its gender pay gap – it says it is not even measuring it. And it is now a year since we in the


NUJ Dublin broadcasting branch asked the RTÉ for the mean and median pay figures for women and men across the organisation. After a delay of several months, we were stunned when the company told us: “We do not have such data compiled. We appreciate that this is information that we will compile once the Gender Pay Gap Information Bill is enacted and implemented.” That legislation has been passed by


the Irish parliament but, as yet, no date has been set for its implementation. But why is the broadcaster waiting


for legislation when other organisations in Ireland and the UK are pushing forward in trying to address


the historic imbalance in pay and publicising the fact? For the company to say it will not measure its own gender pay gap until it is obliged to do so is shocking. It is impossible to guarantee equal pay and equal opportunity without compiling the data. You cannot work to address a problem if you are not even prepared to measure it.


An Post did not wait for legislation. Since 2019, the company, a semi-state organisation of a similar size to RTÉ, has been publishing annual gender pay gap reports and working consciously to close the gap. Its latest report, released in December 2021, shows it has reduced the gap from 3.7 per cent in 2019 to just 1.4 per cent in 2020. The difference between female and male mean salaries now stands at 0.16 per cent. No small achievement.


“Both the union and the company


were pushing for this,” Carol Scheffer, equality officer at the Communication Workers’ Union, tells me. “There is a top-down commitment.” Scheffer outlines a variety of


initiatives An Post has undertaken in recent years to promote sex equality, including management development programmes, mentoring and networking circles targeted at women. Men, too, have benefited: last year, 57 per cent of An Post’s male employees chose to take unpaid leave under the company’s ‘term time’ programme, which supports staff who want time off for caring duties. An Post shows what can be done if the will is there and management and unions work to make it happen. “Surely a wise employer would


say ‘let’s start looking at this now, before we are legally obliged to’,” Scheffer adds.


RTÉ’s trade union group, a cross- union body, has taken up the cause. In January, it backed the NUJ branch call and wrote to RTÉ again to request information. Staff in RTÉ, especially women, await the outcome keenly. They want honesty and transparency from the broadcaster. If the company has nothing to hide, they say, then surely it would willingly release the information.


Establishing the size of the gender


pay gap does not answer all questions. That figure does not address the separate issue of equal pay for equal work, for example. But it would be a start, and benefit not just female staff. Where it is introduced, pay transparency increases trust in an organisation and confidence that it is dealing fairly with all. This lays a foundation for a truly diverse workforce. RTÉ is in a privileged position. As the


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The national broadcaster is not only refusing to divulge its gender pay gap – it says it is not even measuring it


national broadcaster, it is expected to represent the lives and interests of all Irish people. To do so, it needs to strive to ensure that its own workforce – at all levels – reflects that audience, not only in terms of sex but also social background, ethnicity and sexuality. It is also charged with holding other areas of Irish life to account, in terms of transparency and standards. To do this, it must apply the same standards to itself. NUJ members in RTÉ are calling on the broadcaster to follow the lead of Ireland’s postal service. If RTÉ truly wants to be considered an equal opportunities employer, then actions will speak louder than words.


Emma O’Kelly is education correspondent for RTÉ and chair of the NUJ’s Dublin broadcasting branch


theJournalist | 09


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