Something for the weekend: Organisations with more than 250 employees in the UK have been paying closer attention to potential gender pay gaps since the government introduced statutory gender pay gap reporting regulations this year, which they must comply with by April 2018. However, a New Zealand-based electrician is also flying the flag for pay parity by giving his female customers discounts to reflect the country’s current gender pay gap.
Electrician Brad Kul, who lives in Aotearoa, posted a picture of an invoice he sent to one of his female clients on Twitter this week, highlighting that he had added a 12% discount to the total bill to help counteract New Zealand’s 12% national gender pay gap.
He tweeted on 28 August 2017: “Invoice to a female client. It feels like a natural thing to do, tradesman like, see a problem and do what you can to fix it.”
The 12% discount enabled Kul’s customer to save $115.68 (£64.27) on her final bill, which included payments for LED lamps, light switches, and labour charges.
Here at Employee Benefits, we think it is great that tradespeople such as Kul are taking up the mantle to help raise awareness of gender pay gaps across the world, as well as demonstrating simple ways to help women mitigate the financial implications gender pay gaps can cause. With the UK’s gender pay gap for full and part-time employees currently at 18.1%, we think that kind of discount could certainly come in handy for our monthly shopping bills…
