The draft Legislative Decree on pay equality and transparency, prepared in implementation of EU Directive 2023/970, arrives on the table of the Council of Ministers.
It is a text of 16 articles which, after the first green light from the Council of Ministers and the parliamentary process, will have to be definitively approved before the deadline of 7 June. But what does it specifically involve?
The objective is first of all to reduce gender pay differences, given the same hours, tasks and roles. The Legislative Decree will apply to all employers (with different obligations and times, based on the number of employees) and to all workers with subordinate employment relationships, both public and private, including those employed with domestic work contracts, managers and candidates for employment.
What does the Legislative Decree on pay equality and transparency provide
The heart of the decree concerns the definition of equal pay for “the same work” or for work of equal value. This principle, which is at the center of European wage policies, often clashes with the difficulty of measuring the value of tasks which, despite being different, are nevertheless comparable in terms of skills and responsibilities. The decree leaves ample space for national collective agreements to establish the criteria, but also allows companies to adopt their own classifications, as long as they are gender neutral.
Transparency in job tenders
An important innovation concerns job advertisements, which from now on will have to report the salary offered, eliminating any reference to gender. Furthermore, it will be forbidden to ask candidates how much they earned previously, preventing salary inequalities from perpetuating from one job to another.
Goodbye to salary secrecy
Another crucial change is that companies with more than 50 employees will have to provide workers with transparent information on average wages, broken down by gender. Each employee will have the right to request written information regarding the salary levels of people doing the same job or jobs of equal value. Furthermore, salary secrecy clauses are abolished, allowing each worker to make their salary known.
The indicators to monitor
Companies with at least 100 employees will have to calculate a series of indicators annually to monitor equal pay. These include the average and median pay gap between men and women, the percentage of workers receiving bonuses, and pay gaps between different categories of workers. If a pay gap cannot be justified, the company will have six months to correct it. If the difference exceeds 5%, the problem will have to be addressed jointly with the workers’ representatives.
The appeal to the Judge
If, after the established deadline, the company has still not resolved the gap, the workers will be able to turn to the judge. The court may order the realignment of salaries, the payment of arrears and, in the most serious cases, compensation for non-pecuniary damage and the revocation of public benefits or exclusion from contracts. Although the decree does not provide for new immediate sanctions, the law establishes that legal action is a viable option after the company has had time to act.
The times
Companies with more than 150 employees will have to transmit the requested data by 7 June 2027, while those with a number of employees between 100 and 150 will have until 7 June 2031. Although the law provides for a gradual approach, the decree represents an important step forward in combating the gender wage gap in Italy.
