The judgment of the European Court of Justice allowing discrimination between workers based on length of service is a retrograde step for women workers and for social progress in Europe.
The judgment arises from a case brought by a health inspector against the UK, claiming that her employer had unjustifiably paid her male colleagues of the same grade more only because they had worked more years than she had. She argued that length of service often depended on domestic circumstances such as pregnancy and maternity leave, and that it therefore impacted unduly on women.
The court found that paying more based on length of service was "appropriate to attain the legitimate objective of rewarding experience acquired which enables the worker to perform his duties better". It added that there was no need to show that an individual worker had actually acquired any such experience during the extra time worked. Thus the general thrust of this judgment will be to encourage discrimination in payment between men and women doing the same work on the same grade.
The judgment goes against the spirit of a number of EU directives seeking to end discrimination against women, including those protecting part-time workers and workers with broken service, on the basis that women are more likely to work part-time, or take time out for family duties, than men. It raises once again the much-debated issue of who should make the sacrifices necessary for the bearing and rearing of children. Should this burden be borne entirely by women, the only sex capable of bearing children and the one which disproportionately spends time rearing them, or should society as a whole bear some of this burden? It also raises the question as to whether workers are to be seen only as economic units.
Employers might argue that they should not have to bear the cost of workers' inability to work due to family responsibilities, but this runs counter to modern labour relations. Across Europe employers pay social insurance to help shield workers from sickness and unemployment. They have accepted the principle of equal pay and non-discrimination against women on the grounds of pregnancy and family status. It is only right that society as a whole, including employers, should be asked what they can do to distribute the burden of child-rearing.
This question is all the more urgent in a Europe which has a falling birth rate, and whose population is not replacing itself. Unless steps are taken to encourage women of child-bearing age - the majority of whom are in the work-place - to have children, the ageing of Europe can only accelerate.