From 2017, companies with more than 250 employees are required to submit their gender pay gap data using a ‘snapshot’ date of 5 April, and must submit this within one year.
Letsrecycle.com looked at the performance of six of the biggest waste companies – Biffa, FCC Environment, Grundon, Suez, Veolia and Viridor. All six companies posted figures above the national average, with some even posting ‘negative’ rates, with women earning more than men.
The waste sector often has a more even split because a lot of roles such as refuse crews, with traditionally lower salaries, are male.
The assessment considered the mean and median pay and bonus gaps.
Median hourly
The median hourly pay gap is the difference between the midpoints in the ranges of hourly earnings of men and women.
It takes all salaries in the sample, lines them up in order from lowest to highest, and picks the middle salary.
As outlined below, data on the government pay gap portal showed that on average using this model, women earned more than men at Biffa, FCC Environment and Veolia. Suez paid women 95p to every pound earned by men, while it was 93p for Viridor. Grundon’s median hourly pay gap was at 90p to a pound.
Nationally, this figure stands at 85p.
Bonus
The data also assessed the ‘bonus gap’.
This calculates the difference between the median bonus pay paid to employees who are men, and the same for women.
As outlined in the graph below, Grundon recorded the biggest gap with a figure of 18p paid in bonuses to women against £1 to men.
At the other end of the spectrum was Veolia, which paid women £10.38 in bonuses in comparison to £1 to men. Veolia put this down to the fact that a “large proportion of our roles are operational and, by the nature of our business, a high percentage of those occupying these roles are male”
‘Mean’
The ‘mean’ gender pay gap is the difference between the average hourly earnings of men and women.
Veolia and Suez pay their female employees more in average hourly pay – 5% and 3.7%. Veolia’s figures for women’s average bonus pay are also exceptionally high (118.2% higher than men). However, Suez pays women 8.1% less in ‘mean’ bonus pay.
Biffa didn’t record a big difference in ‘mean’ hourly pay – women earn 0.6% less than men, and women’s ‘mean’ bonus pay is 17% higher than men’s. Similarly, FCC pays women 1.4% less on average, but women’s mean bonus pay is 5.5% higher.
Viridor’s female employees earn 9.9% less in ‘mean’ hourly pay, but 6.9% more in ‘mean’ bonus pay.
Grundon’s performance landed at average hourly pay for women lower by 14.4%, with mean bonus pay 81.4% lower than men’s.
Report
Companies are also able to publish a supporting narrative to accompany their data.
Grundon published its on 5 April 2022, where it explained: “We are confident that our gender pay and gender bonus gap does not stem from paying males and females differently for the same or equal work.”
It explained that bonus payments were also made up of commission or weekly bonuses for LGV drivers, who made up just over 40% of the company’s overall workforce and who are 99% male.
The company said: “The shortage of LGV drivers within the transport industry in the UK is well documented and we therefore continue to believe that the bonus schemes that we apply specifically to this group of employees is fair and proportionate in order to attract and retain people in these roles.”
Viridor said its pay gap is due to a number of factors, “including it being historically difficult to attract female
colleagues to work in parts of our industry”.
FCC said it doesn’t have a gender pay gap “because we have a high proportion of women in non-manual support, technical and managerial roles within the business”. These roles are typically paid higher than male dominated manual roles.
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