A look at one of the sources of unequal treatment before the law. Less wealth translates in to lower education, less political power, and less power before the courts, etc....
It's called the class pay gap.
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Those on the receiving end of this class pay gap are being hit by a double whammy as the cost of living crisis also eats into their incomes. Employers and the government need to take urgent action on both to stop hundreds of thousands of workers from being undervalued and underpaid.
The data could not be starker. Research sponsored by the Social Mobility Foundation, which I chair, has revisited the work of academics Sam Friedman and Daniel Laurison to calculate the class pay gap at 13%. In other words, people from underprivileged backgrounds who have made it into professional employment may as well be working 13% of the year for nothing. That is nearly one day for each seven-day week.
Putting it another way, it means that from tomorrow, which is Class Pay Gap Day, professionals from working-class backgrounds effectively stop earning for the rest of the year. The gap is even wider – more than £8,000 – for CEOs, finance managers, management consultants and solicitors.
Depressingly, the research found that when gender and ethnic differences were taken into account those from a working-class background face a “double disadvantage”. Working-class women are paid £9,450 less than their male colleagues, even when they are both working in higher professional-managerial positions. The study also found that people of Bangladeshi and black Caribbean heritage are paid £10,432 and £8,770 less respectively than their white peers in the same jobs.
