Employment law SOS: equal pay

It is possible for an employee of one gender, ie a woman, to compare their pay with a man working in a similar role at a different site. It is likely that they could be said to be working in the same establishment (if the two sites were in similar geographical locations and generally considered as one entity), or to be working at different establishments but where 'common' terms of employment applied (such that there were broadly similar terms either generally or between their respective jobs), or that their pay was attributable to a single source, being the common employer. The woman could argue that she was doing like work, or work of equal value (through a comparison of the respective overall job requirements) – therefore, unless there were good reasons, unrelated to sex, for paying the two roles at different levels, the individuals could succeed with equal pay claims. The key would be to seek to justify any pay differences by reference to, for example, the market/recruitment forces that applied when setting the two individuals' pay and/or the geographical location of the two sites that resulted in the pay difference, such as a South East weighting. This advice focuses on equal pay issues based on gender differences, but if an individual with a protected characteristic (other than sex), such as race or religion, could point to a difference in pay in comparison to someone without that characteristic, at a different site, they could equally seek to challenge that as discriminatory. Genuine reasons for the difference in treatment that are unrelated to any such protected characteristic would again be needed.