Tui has been found to have one of the largest gender pay gaps reported to date by a major UK company, with many male employees paid more than double the female staff.
Women at the travel group’s Tui Airways UK earn on average 57% less in hourly pay than men, according to data filed under a new government scheme aimed at highlighting the gender pay gap and encourage employers to address the disparity.
The company said the gap stemmed from low representation of women in highly paid roles such as pilots, engineering, technology and senior management, The Guardian reported.
Tui Airways UK employs 870 pilots earning an average of £111,683, of whom 95% are men. In contrast nearly 80% of its cabin crew, who are paid an average of £26,272, are women.
Tui also revealed a pay gap at its head office. Although 62% of its 3,308 headquarters staff are women, men are more likely to hold the better-paid roles in senior management, engineering or technology.
The company said it has “work to do in addressing the gender pay balance of our senior management population and also in the STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) roles.”
Within Tui’s retail arm, 93% of the 4,585 staff are women across 620 stores. Out of the total, 60% work part time. Women are paid an average 10% less an hour than men across the retail estate.
“The flexible nature of the work and the product itself make travel advisor roles of particular interest to females,” the company said.
All private and public sector organisations and charities with more than 250 employees are required to submit their pay figures to the government by April under a new scheme intended to reveal differences in average pay for men and women.
About 1,000 have filed figures so far, but the legislation is expected to affect about 9,000 companies which collectively employ more than 15 million people.
The gender pay gap refers to the difference between what men and women working for an organisation earn regardless of their roles, rather than men and women in the same role.
Of the 1,000 companies that have reported only fashion retailer Phase Eight has a larger gender pay gap than Tui when looking at the mean.
This measures average pay by taking the total paid to each gender and dividing it by the number of employees of that gender, according to the newspaper.
“We know that our gender pay gap is not an equal pay issue, rather a lack of representation in specific roles such as pilots, engineering, technology and senior management,” Tui said in its 2016-17 gender pay gap report for its UK and Ireland business.
Tui said it was seeking an “inclusive and diverse workforce in all areas of our business” and would try and find answers both internally and with the rest of the airline industry.
However, the report said: “To make significant change in our gender pay gap will take time.
“We are committed to increasing the number of females holding senior roles by reviewing and ensuring our attraction methods contain no bias in style, tone and language and are implementing unconscious bias training for our hiring managers.
“This will not only help us address any gender bias in recruitment, but any other bias that impacts diversity and inclusion in the broadest sense.”
A Tui spokesman told The Guardian: “We remain committed to raising awareness within the retail and airline industry on all aspects of diversity and inclusion, as well as effecting change in our own business.”
Tui’s efforts come after new easyJet chief executive John Lundgren voluntarily took at £34,000 pay cut to match the salary of his predecessor, Carolyn McCall, as he said he was “committed to giving equal pay and equal opportunity for women and men”.
The budget carrier has a large gender pay gap, with women paid 51.7% less than men. This is because the vast majority – 94% – of its pilots are men.
Only 4% of commercial pilots in the industry worldwide are female. EasyJet has set itself a target that a fifth of all new pilots recruited should be female by 2020, up from 6% in 2015 and 13% now. Last year it recruited 49 female pilots.
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New easyJet boss Lundgren takes pay cut to predecessor’s level