Sex Discrimination Equal Pay Claim Against Host Lost by BBC

In the past few months, there has been a lot of talk about the fight betweens BBC and Samira Ahmed regarding sex discrimination for equal pay at workplace. However, according to a report in The Hollywood Reporter, The BBC has lost a sex discrimination equal pay claim launched by the presenter, Ahmed. 

Ahmed, a journalist, writer and broadcaster, had claimed that she was underpaid for her work hosting the BBC show Newswatch when compared to the salary of Jeremy Vine on the similar program Points of View. She was paid £440 ($575) per episode of the audience feedback show compared to the £3,000 ($3,900) per episode Jeremy Vine was paid, arguing that she was owned almost £700,000 ($915,000) in back pay because of the difference. 

The BBC had claimed the two performed "very different roles," but the judgment, announced Friday following a tribunal that ended in November and was found unanimously in favor of Ahmed, asserted that: "Her work on Newswatch was like Jeremy Vine’s work on Points of View under section 65(1) of the Equality Act 2010."

During the tribunal, Ahmed said she "could not understand how pay for me, a woman, could be so much lower than Jeremy Vine, a man, for presenting very similar programmes and doing very similar work."

In a statement following the judgment, the BBC said: "We have always believed that the pay of Samira and Jeremy Vine was not determined by their gender. Presenters – female as well as male - had always been paid more on Points of View than Newswatch."

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