A record equal pay award of £100,000 each has been made by the Labour Court to four women clerical workers in the Irish Aviation Authority. The ruling sounds the death knell for "jobs for the boys" practices in the public service, according to Mr Blair Horan, general secretary of the Civil and Public Service Union.
The case began in 1992 when the four women were paid £12,468 a year as communications assistants while the men - who were radio officers - were paid £21,941.
The £100,000 awards will bring the women's salaries into line with those of the men. It is made up of a £9,500 increase in current pay, plus back money from April 1987. The payments will be subject to tax and PRSI deductions.
The Labour Court has found that the work of the women, who are communications assistants at the Ballygireen radio station in Shannon, is of equal value to that of the male radio officers who supervise them. "In the light of that reality, the court finds that the differential in pay between the claimants and the comparators is not genuinely based on grounds other than sex," the chairman of the court, Ms Evelyn Owens, has ruled.
Mr Horan said the CPSU will use the ruling to fight a number of other cases. He described the way the women had been treated by the Department of Transport and the authority during the five years since the case was initiated as "shameful".
Offensive cartoons of "women trying to be men" were displayed on the notice-board at their offices, he said, and two of the women were left sitting at their desks without work for six months in 1993. They took an action under the 1977 Employment Equality Act for victimisation and were awarded £3,000 compensation by an equality officer.
The main action on behalf of all four women was begun in 1992 under the Anti-Discrimination (Pay) Act of 1974. An equality officer found that the work of the two groups was similar and recommended equal pay. The case was appealed by the Department of Tourism, Transport and Communications to the Labour Court.
The court was told that on health grounds the radio officers had been reassigned to less demanding work in the accounts department of the Ballygireen station, which provides communication and weather services to transatlantic aircraft. Their salaries had been "red circled" to ensure they did not suffer financially.
The Labour Court rejected that defence. The Department appealed the case to the High Court. Mr Justice Keane ruled that the Labour Court had erred in law. He said the court should examine the health issues in determining if the pay differential was gender-based.
The court issued its ruling to the CPSU at the end of last week. It found that "at least two positions in the accounts section were, as a matter of course, retained for filling by radio officers". It "suited the Department to use these positions for filling by officers who were not available for shift work", but the positions also went on occasion to officers who were fit for shift rostering.
The Court was satisfied that the work for radio officers in the accounts department was not dependent on any special arrangement to protect their pay while they were unfit to do their normal work. "But rather it was the rate for men working in the accounts section who had previously been working as radio officers."
Mr Horan said the situation in the Ballygireen office was an extreme example of a practice in the public service where technical staff, who were predominantly male, were sometimes redeployed to other offices and allowed to keep their salaries by assigning them supervisory duties over clerical staff who were predominantly female. "Obviously we will be looking at other areas where the practice exists", he said.