Shropshire health trust's pay gap more than 30 per cent
The trust running Shropshire's two main hospitals has reported a gender pay gap of just over 30 per cent.
The figures, released by the Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust (SaTH), are for 2016/17.
It shows the average hourly rate of pay for men being £20.56 and £14.29 for women, with men's bonuses on average amounting to £11,056.17 – nearly double that of women employees.
The hourly rate is calculated for each employee based on ‘ordinary pay’ which includes basic pay, allowances and shift premium pay.
Bonuses are only applicable to certain groups of medical staff.
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Health bosses say the figures are "heavily skewed" by the medical staff pay gap.
In SaTH's gender pay gap report, workforce director Victoria Maher said: "If medical staff were removed from the calculations, our female staff (who represent around 80 per cent of the workforce) have a 3.98 per cent higher average rate of pay than male staff.
"In addition, our results related to the payment of bonuses can be accounted for in the allocation of Clinical Excellence (CEA) awards (and historically Discretionary Points) to medical staff that are permanent additions to remuneration.
"Medical staff are the only category of staff that are eligible for bonus payments.
"In this category, bonuses paid to male medical staff are higher on average than those paid to female medical staff and as at March 31, 2017, 111 male medical staff benefitted from Clinical Excellence bonus payments (or Discretionary Points Awards) as opposed to 29 female medical staff."
Reduction
She said the trust has been taking action to encourage and support CEA applications from female medical consultants.
Health bosses expect to see a reduction in the bonus pay gap between new awards made to men and women in 2017/18.
The report says women's median hourly rate of pay is also 12.45 per cent lower than men's.
The median hourly rate is calculated by ranking all employees from the highest paid to the lowest paid, and taking the hourly wage of the person in the middle.
The median gender pay gap is the difference between women’s median hourly wage and men’s median hourly wage.
At a recent meeting of the SaTH board, medical director Dr Edwin Borman said the trust's medical workforce has been to date largely made up of men.
But he said there was evidence of this changing in the future with more women attending medical schools in recent years.
