ShareAction said the first year of the campaign would be targeted at the financial services industry and would then open up to other sectors. The campaign is backed by various minority-led groups such as the Runnymede Trust, the Living Wage Foundation and CIPD.
The firm reported that no financial services companies within the FTSE 100 report ethnicity pay gap data in accordance with Office for National Statistics recommendations.
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The campaign calls for companies with no procedures for reporting their ethnicity pay gap to begin making disclosures, while those already reporting should improve the standards of their disclosure, while working to find the causes and solutions to the problem.
ShareAction said it has asked 16 companies at AGMs about the issue, with 15 agreeing to follow-up meetings. It added that three – abrdn, Hiscox and Schroders – have now committed to publishing their ethnicity pay data once their disclosure rate has increased.
ShareAction said it would also be bringing investors from its ‘Good Work’ investor coalition to support the campaign.
Despite gender pay gap reporting being mandatory for companies with over 250 employees since 2017, no regulation exists for pay disparity between different ethnicities.
In the UK, BME young adults are 47% more likely to be on zero-hour contracts than white young adults, while the unemployment rate between BME and white workers has continued to widen over the pandemic.
Catherine Howarth, CEO of ShareAction, said: “Companies across the economy have begun reporting their ethnicity pay data as they understand both the moral and economic imperative to do so. However, so far, this is still a tiny fraction of FTSE 100 companies. We want to change that, and fast.
“Ethnicity pay gap disclosures are a critical step towards tackling inequality in the workplace. We recognise that capturing and reporting ethnicity pay gap data is a more complex exercise than for gender. We also know that solutions are available so long as employers are committed to action and change.”
