Trinity Mirror reveals 15% gender pay gap
Trinity Mirror’s median gender pay gap stands at 15% in favour of men, the company reported today.
Trinity Mirror reveals 15% gender pay gap
The publisher, which employed 2,804 men and 1,971 women in 2017, released two sets of figures for its group as a whole and its sub-divisions Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN), Local World and Media Scotland: the median gap, which is the difference between the middle male and female wages, and the mean figure giving an average from all employees.
The mean for the group was a gap of 18%.
The median gap for hourly pay rose to 20.7% for publishing staff at Canary Wharf-based MGN, home of the Mirror and Sunday People newspapers, and 15.5% at Media Scotland, which counts the Daily Record and Sunday Mail among its titles.
There was a smaller median pay gap of 7.1% at Local World, a stable of 100 regional print titles. The UK's national average median gap currently sits at 18.4%.
All UK companies with 250 or more staff must publish a snapshot of their gender pay gap by April, and Trinity Mirror chose to release its data as part of an annual report that revealed chief executive Simon Fox’s 19% pay rise and the group’s plans to rename itself as Reach.
“In common with many companies our gender pay gap is driven by more male employees in senior roles within the business,” the company said in its report. “We also have an impact from a traditionally higher paid print workforce which is heavily male dominated throughout all levels.
“Given the declining nature of this part of our business this is unlikely to change. Whilst our position is not unique within the media sector and FTSE companies, the group is committed to addressing this issue.”
To help tackle the problem the company said it had launched a Women in Trinity Mirror Group Forum “which is exploring ways of increasing female participation in our organisation at all levels” and that it had reviewed its recruitment processes to “ensure more focus on achieving better balanced candidate pools”. It has set a target for senior positions of having no all-male shortlists.
Chris Morley, Trinity Mirror’s National Union of Journalists co-ordinator, described the 18% difference between the mean hourly pay of men and women as “a huge gap to bridge” and pointed to a discrepancy in bonuses at MGN as a signal of inequality within the business.
He said: “While the overall gap on average bonus payments was relatively small at 3.4%, it hid significant differences within the different Trinity Mirror businesses, such as a more than an 11% gap between those bonuses paid to men and their female colleagues at MGN. Clearly, the top paid jobs are weighted considerably towards men.
”And as for the proposed new name for the group, I think our members will be happiest when the company can Reach equality in their ranks and women are not demeaned by lower pay rather than a cosmetic name change.”
Last week advertising giant WPP revealed a 14.6% gender pay gap, with a 44.7% chasm between the pay of men and women at its agency JWT.