Wages Councils, The Equal Pay Act and Retail Distribution

The purpose of this article is to examine the extent to which implementation of the Equal Pay Act 1970 in retail distribution has been influenced by the wages regulation orders of the industry's Wages Councils. In concentrating on machinery for determining statutory minimum levels of remuneration (SMR) it is recognised that there are obvious dangers in ignoring the role played by collective bargaining, and of drawing conclusions about pay which are unrelated to total earnings. In particular branches of retailing, notably in co‐operative societies and amongst multiple organisations, pay and other conditions of employment are negotiated almost entirely by the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers (USDAW). The general image of retail employment nevertheless remains one of low pay. Negotiated pay structures provide minimum rates which are low in comparison with those in most other industries, and the coverage of trade union recognition and negotiation has not achieved a level sufficient to question the need for statutory minimum wages regulation in the industry as a whole. It will be shown that retail Wages Councils place severe restrictions in the way of progress towards equal treatment of men and women by fixing SMRs bearing a minimal relationship to men's total earnings — an argument which may be applied with only slight modification to the functioning of the industry's main collective agreements, in which the lowest‐paid occupations are those held almost entirely by women.