Bath Friends were pleased to hear that Quakers in Britain have become the first major religious body to be awarded the Pay Compare Mark. The mark is awarded to employers who disclose the gap between their highest and median paid workers on the www.paycompare.org.uk website.

PayCompare is an NGO which campaigns to make pay ratio reporting common practice in the UK.

Quakers in Britain have a maximum of 1:4 ratio between the highest and lowest paid member of staff (allowing for London weighting). In the UK private sector the ratio is now reported as 1:129.

“Our vision of equality springs from our profound sense of the worth of every human being,” said Paul Parker, Recording Clerk for Quakers in Britain. “Every person’s life is sacred and in this we are all equal. Neither money nor status can serve as a true measure of the value of any individual or group. Publishing our pay ratio is an important part of our faith-led commitment to work for a more equal Britain.”

Paycompare lists ratios from publicly available data or from organisations that have responded to requests to report. In Bath both Universities and the District Council data is publicly available.  University of Bath (which has attracted controversy over this issue) has an 1:11.5 ratio, B&NES 1:7.2 and Bath Spa University 1:6. The five largest companies headquartered in Bath are (by turnover, according to Companies House) are

Rotork plc £594m
Wessex Water Ltd £546m
Redde PLC £249m
Happold LLP £148m and
Jamie’s Italian Ltd £107m

No companies in Bath are yet listed (ie they have neither reported, nor declined to report) according to PayCompare. Anyone can request organisations to report their ratios here.