From reading between the lines it seems she's dictating where she's going to go within the BBC? That's not really her decision, it'll be HR if she's staff. I fear she's scored a bit of an own goal here. If you are doing the same job, with the same risks, same amount of hours, tasks and airtime then yes, you should be paid the same (and that goes for part time male workers who, on average, earn less than women). But if your pay is set by negotiation with an agent and comes down to years of service within the role and other factors then that would explain the pay disparity. It also depends on who she's comparing her role to? If it's to the Middle East Editor (Jeremy Bowen) for example there are far more risks associated with that post than China Editor.
Don't get me wrong, Carrie is a great journalist but quitting her post, to go into a less senior role on a lower salary isn't going to increase diversity in the top jobs, in fact it'll reduce it.
I'm paid less than my female colleagues in one of the jobs I do. I work the same hours but my responsibilities differ, I acknowledge that and get on with it. Not once have I claimed gender discrimination or being 'a male' as reasons for being paid less.
Back to your point, I suspect she'll end up on BBC World News or even Newsday? After the likes of Jane Hill have had their hours reduced, just putting Carrie back into her old NC post will probably cause even more issues from within.
Last edited by Worzel on 7 January 2018 9:06pm - 6 times in total
From reading between the lines it seems she's dictating where she's going to go within the BBC? That's not really her decision, it'll be HR if she's staff. I fear she's scored a bit of an own goal here. If you are doing the same job, with the same risks, same amount of hours, tasks and airtime then yes, you should be paid the same (and that goes for part time male workers who, on average, earn less than women). But if your pay is set by negotiation with an agent and comes down to years of service within the role and other factors then that would explain the pay disparity. It also depends on who she's comparing her role to? If it's to the Middle East Editor (Jeremy Bowen) for example there are far more risks associated with that post than China Editor.
Don't get me wrong, Carrie is a great journalist but quitting her post, to go into a less senior role on a lower salary isn't going to increase diversity in the top jobs, in fact it'll reduce it.
I'm paid less than my female colleagues in one of the jobs I do. I work the same hours but my responsibilities differ, I acknowledge that and get on with it. Not once have I claimed gender discrimination or being 'a male' as reasons for being paid less.
Back to your point, I suspect she'll end up on BBC World News or even Newsday? After the likes of Jane Hill have had their hours reduced, just putting Carrie back into her old NC post will probably cause even more issues from within.
She was being paid 50% of what Jon Sopel was being paid. They had equivalent jobs. They held equivalent previous positions. They had very similar past professional experience. There's no logic or defence behind the large pay gap between them at all.
I'm also not sure why you're suggesting she's 'dictating' where she goes. Saying she's returning to the newsroom is presumably in line with what has been agreed between her and the corporation (she left the China editor role last week), or what the BBC are contractually obliged to do once she's returned from her foreign assignment.
I'm surprised Ben Brown hasn't considered a return to a correspondent/editor role.
Why would he want to move into a different role when he is paid more than his colleagues to do less work. Whoever agreed his salary should be fired for gross misconduct, but it's not his fault.
I get the feeling his salary is down to longevity more than anything. To be fair even though he doesnt have a regular slot anymore he still does around 4 or 5 shifts a week, the same way the likes of Simon/Annita etc do. But I'm surprised he's paid more than the likes of Clive/Simon/Jane/Reeta, who are also far more dominant on BBC One.
I suggested a return to reporting because he always seemed better suited in that role.
From reading between the lines it seems she's dictating where she's going to go within the BBC? That's not really her decision, it'll be HR if she's staff. I fear she's scored a bit of an own goal here. If you are doing the same job, with the same risks, same amount of hours, tasks and airtime then yes, you should be paid the same (and that goes for part time male workers who, on average, earn less than women). But if your pay is set by negotiation with an agent and comes down to years of service within the role and other factors then that would explain the pay disparity. It also depends on who she's comparing her role to? If it's to the Middle East Editor (Jeremy Bowen) for example there are far more risks associated with that post than China Editor.
Don't get me wrong, Carrie is a great journalist but quitting her post, to go into a less senior role on a lower salary isn't going to increase diversity in the top jobs, in fact it'll reduce it.
I'm paid less than my female colleagues in one of the jobs I do. I work the same hours but my responsibilities differ, I acknowledge that and get on with it. Not once have I claimed gender discrimination or being 'a male' as reasons for being paid less.
Back to your point, I suspect she'll end up on BBC World News or even Newsday? After the likes of Jane Hill have had their hours reduced, just putting Carrie back into her old NC post will probably cause even more issues from within.
She was being paid 50% of what Jon Sopel was being paid. They had equivalent jobs. They held equivalent previous positions. They had very similar past professional experience. There's no logic or defence behind the large pay gap between them at all.
I'm also not sure why you're suggesting she's 'dictating' where she goes. Saying she's returning to the newsroom is presumably in line with what has been agreed between her and the corporation (she left the China editor role last week), or what the BBC are contractually obliged to do once she's returned from her foreign assignment.
But were there any other factors in the 50% difference? Amount of on air screen time, hits to more outlets across a shift, longevity of service at the corporation for example? Jon's role was slightly different on the News channel, he would also cover the national bulletins, mainly the News at One. Just out of interest could you provide the link where she's comparing her salary to Jon's?
Not saying any of this is any excuse but we don't know all the facts surrounding the allegations and how the BBC weight staff in their salary banding depending on different circumstances.
Last edited by Worzel on 7 January 2018 9:38pm - 2 times in total
She was being paid 50% of what Jon Sopel was being paid. They had equivalent jobs. They held equivalent previous positions. They had very similar past professional experience. There's no logic or defence behind the large pay gap between them at all.
I really don't think that Carrie and Jon have equivalent jobs in terms of workload, the respective importance and level of coverage of their respective parts of the world or even previous experience.
As good as a presenter as Carrie was she had only really worked on the News Channel with a few episodes of Hardtalk on occasion, whereas Jon has presented all of the main 3 bulletins a predecessor of Sunday politics and a daily flagship world news programme on top of his news channel work.
Jon also seems to appear considerably more on the major bulletins, covers an area of the world that is more important to most of the UK public (to the extent that we get an overnight special to cover their general election) and also continues to occasionally present specials and 100 days on both the News Channel and BBC World.
I think it is also on record that when asked to become China Editor Carrie also negotiated to spend a significant proportion of her time in the UK which reduces the amount of front line coverage she could do and would quite fairly come with a trade off in terms of salary.
One of the problems here is that both female international editors were paid less than their male counterparts. I'm not sure who they are but it is more than just a single editor being paid less.
The other issue highlighted in Carrie's letter is that the BBC aren't explaining the differences. If for example one editor spends x number of weeks in the UK than another then that might be a justification and it might be accepted - but the BBC needs to be open and transparent with their colleagues.
Considering the volume of retweet and tweets I'm seeing on this the issue affects a lot of staff at the BBC both across the national, international and regional newsrooms - both in front and behind the camera. That suggests there will be some very hard working female staff who probably aren't paid very highly being paid less than their male counterparts for the same job.
What surprises me is that so far this hasn't yet reached legal or industrial action.
Could anyone arguing Jon Sopel's North America brief is the most important please explain to me why it's worth up to (or over) £100,000 more than Katya Adler's Europe brief, please? Katya is routinely breaking news on one of the biggest and most important issues facing the country, and the news agenda clearly prioritises Brexit over American stories. Yet Katya didn't make the £150,000+ list, and as Carrie points out the two men (Sopel and Bowen) are on the list while she and Adler are not. That does not get you to equal pay for equal work. One assumes that when Carrie is making an argument about equal pay for equal work (that's specifically her argument, by the way: that the female international editors are paid markedly less than their male counterparts), she has factored in the differences (days/hours worked, profile, sceentime etc.).
Frankly, Sopel's job seems the least necessary of the four, given how rare it is for the BBC's North American Editor to actually break news, or report stories or even details of stories not already covered extensively by the media (even the BBC). Can anyone even point me to Sopel's expertise on North American issues, in comparison to the large reporting experience of Adler, Gracie and Bowen in their respective countries? Exactly why is Sopel more qualified or important to that position compared to his female colleagues?
Finally, I don't understand the arguments some of you are making regarding Gracie 'quitting'. Isn't it commonplace for BBC broadcasters' foreign stints to be for time-specified periods of time, and whereby they'd have to agree to do another term? That seems exactly like what's happened here - Gracie and the BBC have failed to reach a deal for her to return to China, so she is now a London-based employee again who's only notable here for having taken the highly unusual step of releasing a statement against her employer. But her employment status doesn't seem to have changed.
It'll be very interesting to see what they do tomorrow morning on the Today programme, which she was once again due to guest present with John Humphrys (himself regularly linked to these gender inequality stories). Do they simply not cover the story so there's no conflict of interest? Or get another presenter in instead?
Dear BBC Audience,
My name is Carrie Gracie and I have been a BBC journalist for three decades. With great regret, I have left my post as China Editor to speak out publicly on a crisis of trust at the BBC.
The BBC belongs to you, the licence fee payer. I believe you have a right to know that it is breaking equality law and resisting pressure for a fair and transparent pay structure.
In thirty years at the BBC, I have never sought to make myself the story and never publicly criticised the organisation I love. I am not asking for more money. I believe I am very well paid already – especially as someone working for a publicly funded organisation. I simply want the BBC to abide by the law and value men and women equally.
On pay, the BBC is not living up to its stated values of trust, honesty and accountability. Salary disclosures the BBC was forced to make six months ago revealed not only unacceptably high pay for top presenters and managers but also an indefensible pay gap between men and women doing equal work. These revelations damaged the trust of BBC staff. For the first time, women saw hard evidence of what they’d long suspected, that they are not being valued equally.
Many have since sought pay equality through internal negotiation but managers still deny there is a problem. This bunker mentality is likely to end in a disastrous legal defeat for the BBC and an exodus of female talent at every level.
Mine is just one story of inequality among many, but I hope it will help you understand why I feel obliged to speak out.
I am a China specialist, fluent in Mandarin and with nearly three decades of reporting the story. Four years ago, the BBC urged me to take the newly created post of China Editor.
I knew the job would demand sacrifices and resilience. I would have to work 5000 miles from my teenage children, and in a heavily censored one-party state I would face surveillance, police harassment and official intimidation.
I accepted the challenges while stressing to my bosses that I must be paid equally with my male peers. Like many other BBC women, I had long suspected that I was routinely paid less, and at this point in my career, I was determined not to let it happen again. Believing that I had secured pay parity with men in equivalent roles, I set off for Beijing.
In the past four years, the BBC has had four international editors - two men and two women. The Equality Act 2010 states that men and women doing equal work must receive equal pay. But last July I learned that in the previous financial year, the two men earned at least 50% more than the two women.
Despite the BBC’s public insistence that my appointment demonstrated its commitment to gender equality, and despite my own insistence that equality was a condition of taking up the post, my managers had yet again judged that women's work was worth much less than men's.
My bewilderment turned to dismay when I heard the BBC complain of being forced to make these pay disclosures. Without them, I and many other BBC women would never have learned the truth.
I told my bosses the only acceptable resolution would be for all the international editors to be paid the same amount. The right amount would be for them to decide, and I made clear I wasn't seeking a pay rise, just equal pay. Instead the BBC offered me a big pay rise which remained far short of equality. It said there were differences between roles which justified the pay gap, but it has refused to explain these differences. Since turning down an unequal pay rise, I have been subjected to a dismayingly incompetent and undermining grievance process which still has no outcome.
Enough is enough. The rise of China is one of the biggest stories of our time and one of the hardest to tell. I cannot do it justice while battling my bosses and a byzantine complaints process. Last week I left my role as China Editor and will now return to my former post in the TV newsroom where I expect to be paid equally.
For BBC women this is not just a matter of one year’s salary or two. Taking into account disadvantageous contracts and pension entitlements, it is a gulf that will last a lifetime. Many of the women affected are not highly paid ‘stars’ but hard-working producers on modest salaries. Often women from ethnic minorities suffer wider pay gaps than the rest.
This is not the gender pay gap that the BBC admits to. It is not men earning more because they do more of the jobs which pay better. It is men earning more in the same jobs or jobs of equal value. It is pay discrimination and it is illegal.
On learning the shocking scale of inequality last July, BBC women began to come together to tackle the culture of secrecy that helps perpetuate it. We shared our pay details and asked male colleagues to do the same.
Meanwhile the BBC conducted various reviews. The outgoing Director of News said last month, “We did a full equal pay audit which showed there is equal pay across the BBC.” But this was not a full audit. It excluded the women with the biggest pay gaps. The BBC has now begun a ‘talent review’ but the women affected have no confidence in it. Up to two hundred BBC women have made pay complaints only to be told repeatedly there is no pay discrimination at the BBC. Can we all be wrong? I no longer trust our management to give an honest answer.
In fact, the only BBC women who can be sure they do not suffer pay discrimination are senior managers whose salaries are published. For example, we have a new, female, Director of News who did not have to fight to earn the same as her male predecessor because his £340 000 salary was published and so was hers. Elsewhere, pay secrecy makes BBC women as vulnerable as they are in many other workplaces.
How to put things right?
The BBC must admit the problem, apologise and set in place an equal, fair and transparent pay structure. To avoid wasting your licence fee on an unwinnable court fight against female staff, the BBC should immediately agree to independent arbitration to settle individual cases.
Patience and good will are running out. In the six months since July’s revelations, the BBC has attempted a botched solution based on divide and rule. It has offered some women pay ‘revisions’ which do not guarantee equality, while locking down other women in a protracted complaints process.
We have felt trapped. Speaking out carries the risk of disciplinary measures or even dismissal; litigation can destroy careers and be financially ruinous. What's more the BBC often settles cases out of court and demands non-disclosure agreements, a habit unworthy of an organisation committed to truth, and one which does nothing to resolve the systemic problem.
None of this is an indictment of individual managers. I am grateful for their personal support and for their editorial integrity in the face of censorship pressure in China. But for far too long, a secretive and illegal BBC pay culture has inflicted dishonourable choices on those who enforce it. This must change.
Meanwhile we are by no means the only workplace with hidden pay discrimination and the pressure for transparency is only growing. I hope rival news organisations will not use this letter as a stick with which to beat the BBC, but instead reflect on their own equality issues.
It is painful to leave my China post abruptly and to say goodbye to the team in the BBC’s Beijing bureau. But most of them are brilliant young women. I don’t want their generation to have to fight this battle in the future because my generation failed to win it now.
To women of any age in any workplace who are confronting pay discrimination, I wish you the solidarity of a strong sisterhood and the support of male colleagues.
It is a century since women first won the right to vote in Britain. Let us honour that brave generation by making this the year we win equal pay.
It was also reported in one of the papers last year about the pay disparity where part time male workers at the BBC were earning less than their female counterparts. It's probably affecting everyone at the corporation one way or another.
It was also reported in one of the papers last year about the pay disparity where part time male workers at the BBC were earning less than their female counterparts. It's probably affecting everyone at the corporation one way or another.
Clive Myrie alludes to it not simply being a gender issue on Twitter:
Not awkward at all Rhian. Neither Amol, nor myself made the rich list last year! Let's be clear, the equal pay row is just gender based! Too many people forget that! Cheers.