Sheffield councillor demands answers on staff pay inequalities
A Sheffield councillor has questioned what actions are being taken to tackle pay inequality in the authority’s workforce, rather than recording it.
Coun Mohammed Mahroof served on the city council’s Race Equality Commission which was established in 2020. He said he had seen statistics looking at inequality on pay for workers for years but still those differences persist.
Councillors at a meeting of the key strategy and resources policy committee yesterday (March 25) discussed the council’s annual equality report. It contained statistics about differences in pay for council staff by gender, ethnicity and disability.
The council employs 8,568 staff and 19.27% of employees are black, Asian or minority ethnic (BAME). The majority are white British.
The ethnicity pay gap shows that the median (midpoint) hourly rate for BAME staff is 5.02% lower. The mean average rate is 4.05% lower.
The report concluded that pay and progression rates both need to improve.
Progress
There has been some progress at recruiting more staff with protected characteristics.
Coun Mahroof said: “I’ve been involved in similar reports for the last 20 or 30 years in this local authority.
“The reporting is brilliant. It’s what we do with the data that’s important; we’ve seen a number of reports saying this is where we are.
“What’s going to be different this time that wasn’t before? It’s always raised as an issue but it never seems to get across the line.”
The gender pay gap shows that women’s average hourly rate is 1.84% higher than men’s but the median hourly rate is 1.07% lower. The report concluded: “This suggests that higher paid roles held by females are influencing the overall average, even though the median remains slightly lower.”
The disability pay gap for people who have declared disabilities shows the average hourly rate is 3.13% lower than non-disabled workers. The median hourly rate is 5.02% lower.
Struggling
People with declared disabilities make up 15.77% of the council workforce.
Green Party leader Coun Angela Argenzio said that workers with sensory disabilities, such as deaf people who might need a BSL interpreter, are struggling because of cuts to support services that help them to make a decent living.
“We have come a long, long way as a council, we are a lot more self-aware of how we need to do better,” she added.
Deputy leader Coun Fran Belbin said: “The wider context is an increase in racism in the wider society – for example the rise in hate crime.
“We see quite divisive political parties out there who are pushing those kinds of messages.”
Accountable
She said the data must be used purposefully to show what needs to be done and how the council will be accountable for that.
Director of strategy and communications Jonathan Clifton said that the council must have a clearer action plan for itself and the other members of the city race equality partnership, including police, the NHS, businesses and the two universities.
Equalities and engagement manager Adele Robinson said that work is taking place to look at customer complaints, focusing on disability and race. It needs to extended to include more protected characteristics.
“It’s not necessarily the complaint itself, it’s how the complaint was dealt with and how people feel about the complaint.”
Director of people and organisational culture Jane English said there has to be “relentless action” to ensure that all communities are represented at senior management level in the council.
She said that four people have this year been on a staff development programme to help them progress into executive roles.
The council has also introduced a new, easy-to-use system for staff to report hate crimes and other problems in the workforce.
Committee chair and council leader Coun Tom Hunt said that the council must be clear at a time of “emboldened racism” that diversity is the city’s strength. Everyone is stronger when Sheffield’s diverse communities come together.
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