Performance-related pay systems tend to widen the gap in wages between men and women, a union conference was told yesterday.
Ms Mags O'Brien of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions said despite decades of legislation to outlaw discrimination, there was still a gender pay gap in the Republic of 15 per cent on average.
"You might ponder for a moment on the fact that if I said there was a pay gap between members of different religions or races, then right-thinking people would be up in arms," she told an IMPACT conference in Kilkenny.
"Why then should we continue to comply with the fact that there is still a gender pay gap, and that one half of the population continue to suffer discrimination on the basis of sex?" Ms O'Brien, who is manager of ICTU's gender and pay project, said pay determination systems operated by employers, such as grading structures, performance-related pay or appraisal systems, incremental pay scales and competency pay, contributed to the gender pay gap.
"The lack of openness and transparency about criteria for merit/performance payments in organisations means that the potential for discrepancies to creep into these systems is considerable," she said.
"When women are assessed for performance-related pay, they tend to receive lower ratings on average than men, and/or a lower proportion of the highest category rating." The British banking and finance union, UNIFI, had reported in 1999 that performance-related pay figures from a number of employers in the finance sector showed that men were receiving a larger share of higher percentage pay increases than women, she said.
Ms O'Brien said some of the "hidden discriminations" against women were an undervaluing of traditionally female skills such as "manual dexterity, human relations skills and caring".
ESRI figures had shown that in the broad occupational group "technical and associated professional", wages paid to women as a percentage of those paid to men rose from 92.1 per cent in 1994 to 92.4 per cent in 1997, but fell back to 82.7 per cent in 2000.
"While in general rates in the public sector show a more positive trend, rising from 93.7 per cent in 1994 to 95.2 per cent in 2000, any gap in pay is not acceptable," she said.
Ms O'Brien was addressing the civil service division of IMPACT, the State's largest public sector union, which is holding three separate divisional conferences in Kilkenny.
Ms Una Campbell, chairwoman of the local government division, told its conference that morale in the sector was so low, because of inadequate funding and allegations of malpractice, that she knew staff who lied about where they worked.
"Every time we open a newspaper we see a new scandal, a new illegal dump, criticism of some planning authority abusing its powers. Local authority staff have no control over this, but they have become the target of criticism. Even the most dedicated public servants are becoming tired and disillusioned about their role." Mr Al Butler, national secretary of the local government division, said services to the public would "almost certainly" get worse, despite the recently-negotiated blueprint, Better Local Government. This was because of the Government's drive to cut the number of public servants by 5,000, and the "total absence of stability in local government funding".