COUNTERACTING PAY DISCRIMINATION – A FEW REMARKS ON THE PROPOSED AMENDMENT TO ART. 943 § 2 OF THE LABOUR CODE AND ON THE PROPOSED DIRECTIVE OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCIL TO STRENGTHEN THE APPLICATION OF THE PRINCIPLE OF EQUAL PAY FOR EQUAL WORK OR WORK OF EQUAL VALUE BETWEEN MEN AND WOMEN THROUGH PAY TRANSPARENCY AND ENFORCEMENT MECHANISMS

In July 2020, a Parliamentary draft bill was brought before the Polish Sejm amending the Act – Civil Code (print no. 463). Currently, the legislative process concerning that draft is underway. The draft proposes to expand the definition of mobbing – as specified in Art. 943 § 2 of the Labour Code – by adding a provision under which mobbing would also consist in persistent and long-term differentiating the level of pay on grounds of an employee’s sex. The intention of the authors is to strengthen the legal instruments guaranteeing respect for the principle of equal rights for women with regard to pay for equal work or work of equal value. At the same time, in March 2021 – at the EU level – a legislative procedure was initiated in respect of the Directive of the European Parliament and of the Council to strengthen the application of the principle of equal pay for equal work or work of equal value between men and women through pay transparency and enforcement mechanisms. This article discusses the legal solutions expressed in the draft amendment to Art. 943 § 2 of the Labour Code and in the proposed Equal Pay Directive. The article is an attempt to answer the question if the introduction of the proposed regimes will eliminate or at least reduce pay discrimination on grounds of sex.

Human Rights Activists and the Question of Sex Discrimination in Postwar Ontario

This article examines the varied understandings of human rights in Ontario in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War. The article compares the social origins and implementation of Ontario’s Fair Employment Practices Act – which combatted racist and religious discrimination – with Ontario’s Female Employees Fair Remuneration Act – which mandated equal pay for women who did the same work as men. Although a few feminists called for the Fair Employment Practices Act to prohibit sex discrimination as well, their pleas fell mainly on deaf ears in this period. Men and women who fought against racist injustice were frequently unaware of gender injustice, for they, like so many others, subscribed to the deeply embedded ideology of the family wage. Conversely, some of the most outspoken advocates of women’s rights were unconscious of – or chose to ignore – racism. At the same time, some of the most committed advocates of equal pay for equal work actually reinforced certain conventional assumptions about men’s gender privilege at work and at home. Moreover, while the enforcement of both acts was constrained by the conciliatory framework embedded within them, the government officials who were charged with applying both acts interpreted the equal pay act quite narrowly and were significantly more diligent in tackling racist and religious employment discrimination.

Is it fair that advanced workers get paid disproportionally more: economic analysis

PurposeOn the one hand, everyone agrees that economics should be fair, that workers should get equal pay for equal work. Any instance of unfairness causes a strong disagreement. On the other hand, in many companies, advanced workers – who produce more than others – get paid disproportionally more for their work, and this does not seem to cause any negative feelings. In this paper, the authors analyze this situation from the economic viewpoint.Design/methodology/approachTo analyze the problem, the authors use general mathematical models of how utility – and hence, decisions – depends on the pay-per-unit.FindingsThe authors show that from the economic viewpoint, additional payments for advanced workers indeed make economic sense, benefit everyone, and thus – in contrast to the naive literal interpretation of fairness – are not unfair. As a consequence of this analysis, the authors also explain why the labor share of the companies' income is, on average, close to 50% – an empirical fact that, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, was never previously explained.Originality/valueTo the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper that explains the empirical fact – that the labor share of the income is close to 50%.

Sentiment and Prejudice

This article describes the evolution of Edgeworth’s thought on women’s wages and on the principle of “equal pay for equal work.” We first document Edgeworth’s early works on “exact utilitarianism” as an epistemic basis for his reflections upon women’s wages. Second, we review his first writings on women’s work and wages: early mentions in the 1870s, his book reviews published in the Economic Journal, and the substantial preface he wrote for the British Association for the Advancement of Science 1904 report on Women in Printing Trades. Third, we document his 1922 British Association presidential address in relation to the burgeoning literature on women’s work and wages within political economy at the time. Finally, we show that his 1923 follow-up article on women’s wages and economic welfare constitutes an update of his “aristocratical utilitarianism” in the post–World War I context.

Document Image Binarization using Image Segmentation Technique

Segmentation of text from badly degraded document images is an extremely difficult assignment because of the high inter/Intra variety between the record foundation and the frontal area text of various report pictures. Picture preparing and design acknowledgment algorithms set aside more effort for execution on a solitary center processor. Designs Preparing Unit (GPU) is more mainstream these days because of its speed, programmability, minimal expense and more inbuilt execution centers in it. The primary objective of this exploration work is to make binarization quicker for acknowledgment of a huge number of corrupted report pictures on GPU. In this framework, we give another picture division calculation that every pixel in the picture has its own limit proposed. We are accomplishing equal work on a window of m*n size and separate article pixel of text stroke of that window. The archive text is additionally sectioned by a nearby edge that is assessed dependent on the forces of identified content stroke edge pixels inside a nearby window.

Engaging Contract Labour: Learnings from Landmark Judgements

Despite debates on its hiring, contract labour is a growing form of employment in India. Establishments usually maintain a workforce composition of both regular workers and contract labour for optimizing their available resources and ensuring financial prudence. However, in the process, they often get embroiled in compliance issues related to regularization and ‘equal pay for equal work’ in the context of contract labour. In this article, we have explored the different judicial interpretations of the Contract Labour (Regulation and Abolition) Act, 1970, on contract labour. For this, we have referred to the landmark judgements passed by the Supreme Court of India on the deployment and regularization of contract labour, and also their entitlement to equal pay for equal work. A scrutiny of these judgements directs us to advise establishments to avoid engaging contract labour in their core and perennial activities. Considering the statutory provisions and the possible legal complications, we have recommended some measures to establishments to mitigate the underlying risks in deploying contract labour alongside regular workforce in similar kinds of jobs or activities. We propose that the legislative framework grants flexibility to industries to generate employment to contract labour, without compromising on the rights of these workers.

Change in research and in higher education institutions

Introduction. Funded under the Horizon 2020 programme, the CHANGE project –Challenging Gender (In)Equality in Science and Research– aims to create and implement tailor-made gender equality plans (GEPs) in research performing organisations (RPOs). To make GEPs more sustainable, efforts are being made to stimulate institutional cultural change towards gender equal work environments and foster the gender dimension and inclusive research and innovation programmes in research funding organisations (RFOs) as well. The promotion of a gender equality culture is thus a key requirement for RPOs to maximise their potential. The CHANGE consortium is composed of seven institutions from six countries –Austria, Germany, Portugal, Slovenia, Slovakia, and Israel– of which five are GEP implementing partners and two are experienced partners (one coordinator and one internal evaluator). Objectives and Methodology. This paper approaches the methodology of the project and the structural and cultural challenges faced by the implementing partners so far, looking more specifically to the similarities and differences in the different national and institutional contexts. Results and Discussion. In all the five implementing partners organisations, successful steps have been taken in the implementation of GEPs. Regardless of these first successes, even with increasing women’s representation in management and decision-making positions in some specific cases, implementing partners and coordinators fear that this change may be merely circumstantial or only due and during the project duration. Contribution. The challenges and barriers faced so far to stimulate institutional and cultural change towards gender equal work environments in RPOs are diverse. While there are important social, cultural, and institutional differences among the partner institutions, there is a great similarity in the difficulties faced in implementing GEPs. Resistances and challenges that emerge during processes of change when gender equality policies are implemented in RPOs are more transversal to different national and organisational contexts than one could expect.