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A BBC staffer writes: Twelve months on and the pay list shows how a bad situation has just got worse

BBC Radio 4 Today presenters Sarah Montague and John Humphrys - PA
BBC Radio 4 Today presenters Sarah Montague and John Humphrys - PA

A lot can change in a year if you put your mind to it. But if you’re a female employee at the BBC hoping for equal pay and transparency over earnings, you might just have to sit out those 365 days and watch your bosses squander time, money and opportunity. 

When the BBC was forced to publish a list of those paid more than £150,000 a year in July 2017, the (naive?) expectation was that BBC management would be encouraged to openly assess the problem of gender (and racial) pay inequalities, put their house in order and meet their legal obligations, perhaps even reducing the yawning gap between the highest and lowest paid. 

Well, no. Instead the BBC Executive decided to launch review after review, hire expensive consultants and instruct even more expensive lawyers to repeatedly ask the same questions about where it was going wrong and how to put things right. Women explained till they were blue in the face and offered all sorts of creative solutions. BBC management’s answer? A new pay and grade framework, retrofitted to justify the status quo.

There are none so deaf as those who don’t want to hear, they say... But the pay disclosures galvanised hundreds of female employees at the BBC (a group calling itself "BBC Women") to start asking questions not just about their pay but the wider corporate culture and how they are treated. Lied to; paid less than male colleagues; skills belittled; intimidated into keeping quiet - their stories are legion. 

Hundreds of women have raised pay concerns in the last year. It’s impossible to find out how many cases were dismissed, how many fobbed off with arbitrary “fair pay revisions” or how many are stuck in protracted, exhausting and opaque grievance processes that women are still forced to endure.

The BBC Executive has commissioned another “piece of work” into how transparent they can be about salaries. But being transparent is a bit like being pregnant: you either are or you aren’t. 

It doesn’t appear that a single pay claim has been concluded fully in line with the law, which means salary parity, with up to six years’ back pay and restitution of lost pensions contributions for same work, like work or work of equal value.

Managers hardly ever admit there’s been discrimination. Even in Carrie Gracie’s case, they would only acknowledge that her work as China Editor had been of “the same value” as that of the other international editors...

Twelve months on and the latest high pay list is out and arguably a bad situation got worse. 

More than 1100 women have raised pay concerns in the last year. It’s impossible to find out how many cases were dismissed, how many fobbed off with arbitrary fair pay revisions

The top 12 highest paid are men; no apology for the top man earning £1.75m compared to the top woman's £370k; accusations that some salaries are siphoned through the commercial arm BBC Studios that isn’t subject to the same scrutiny.  

Progress is slow and arduous but women are determined like never before to hold management to account. They’ve seen the benefits of collaboration and support; they’re no longer sitting in lonely silos wondering and worrying about their pay and careers.

The sisterly genie is out of the bottle.  And there’s hope that a project led by the admirable Donalda MacKinnon, Director of BBC Scotland, will make the Corporation a better place for women to work.  Next July, the pay lists will be published again.

BBC management has another year to meaningfully improve how female employees are appointed, paid, promoted and treated. The BBC’s women will be watching...