Budget carrier easyJet has announced new chief executive Johan Lundgren is to voluntarily reduce his salary to match that of his predecessor, Dame Carolyn McCall.
Lundgren’s starting annual salary was £740,000 but this will be reduced to match the £706,000 earned by McCall when she left easyJet to head up ITV. In all other respects his remuneration package is identical to McCall’s, easyJet said in a statement to the City.
EasyJet was recently found to have a gender pay gap of over 50% which it put down to the fact that its pilots, which earn more are predominantly male while its cabin crew, which are predominantly female earn less.
Lundgren said: “At easyJet we are absolutely committed to giving equal pay and equal opportunity for women and men. I want that to apply to everybody at easyJet and to show my personal commitment I have asked the Board to reduce my pay to match that of Carolyn’s when she was at easyJet.
“I also want to affirm my own commitment to address the gender imbalance in our pilot community which drives our overall gender pay gap. easyJet has already gone further than other airlines in trying to attract more women into a career as a pilot. I want us not just to hit our target that 20% of our new pilots should be female by 2020 but to go further than this in the future.”
The easyJet statement continued: “The overall gender pay gap figure at easyJet is 51.7%. This is driven not by unequal pay for women at easyJet but by the massive gender imbalance in our, and the aviation industry’s, pilot community. Like all airlines pilots make up a large proportion of easyJet’s employees, they are paid more highly than our other communities and, most materially, 94% of them are male.
“This is not about unequal pay. EasyJet’s pilots (and cabin crew) salaries and other pay is collectively agreed and negotiated with the trade unions, which means that the pay rates are exactly the same for men and women.
“This gender imbalance is an issue for the whole aviation industry. Around 4% of commercial pilots worldwide are female. easyJet does better than the industry as a whole at 5% and easyJet’s progressive culture has enabled female pilots to progress more easily than at other airlines. In fact, over a third of easyJet’s female pilots are already Captains.
“But we recognise we need to do better. That is why three years ago easyJet launched our Amy Johnson Initiative to encourage more women to enter the pilot profession. We set a target that 20% of new pilots should be female by 2020, up from 6% in 2015.
“Last year we recruited 49 female new entrant co-pilots. That’s a 48% increase on the previous year and takes the proportion of easyJet new entrant female pilots to 13%. This is a great achievement given the deep seated view in society that being a pilot is a male job and means the airline is on track to meet our 2020 target.”