Paul Doran Law and Stefan Cross Solicitors
Between 2005 – 2013, Paul Doran worked at Stefan Cross Solicitors initially as a paralegal before training, qualifying and working there as a solicitor.
From 2003 until the firm was closed in 2014, Stefan Cross Solicitors was the leading equal pay solicitors practice in the UK acting for tens of thousands of clients. The cases would ultimately change the face of both equal pay law and the working practices of local authorities forever.
On the face of it, the claims seemed relatively straightforward. For decades, local authority employers had been paying men who worked in jobs such a Road Sweeping, Refuse and Gardening as much as three times more than female colleagues who worked in jobs such as Cleaning, Cooking and Care that Council’s themselves considered to be equal.
However, due to the sums of money involved, rather than just hold their hands up and admit their mistakes, local authorities decided to spend millions of pounds of taxpayers money seeking to defend what ultimately proved to be the indefensible.
The initial successes for clients of Stefan Cross Solicitors came in and around the North East of England where it acted for clients against some of the biggest local authorities in the region including North and South Tyneside, Redcar and Cleveland, Newcastle and Middlesbrough.
The cases against Middlesbrough actually led to further litigation which saw a number of women winning sex discrimination cases against the GMB trade union. In a decision eventually upheld by the Court of Appeal, an Employment Tribunal decided that the union had unlawfully pursued a policy whereby it put an emphasis on retaining higher rates of pay for its male members to the detriment of its female members who sought pay equal to the same men.
Following the early forays in the North East of England, Stefan Cross Solicitors soon acted for clients across the country from Cornwall in the South to Northumberland and Cumbria in the North. Its sister company, Action 4 Equality, also acted for clients North of the border, again stretching the length of Scotland from Dumfries and Galloway in the South to the Highland Council in the North.
The highest profile of all the cases which were pursued by clients of Stefan Cross Solicitors were those against Birmingham City Council. The profile was due in part to the numbers of claimants involved but also due to the astronomical sums which were paid to refuse workers with some reports that binmen here were paid in excess of £45,000. In 2009, an employment tribunal unsurprisingly found that the Council was unable to justify such pay levels which led to the Council facing a bill which, at the last count, stood at £1.1 billion.
Other high profile cases won by Stefan Cross Solicitors helped to establish some of the following important principles:
- Employees can compare themselves to other employees of the same employer even if they are both employed under different collective agreements
- A job evaluation scheme cannot have retrospective effect meaning an employer cannot rely on one to defeat an equal pay claim when it has not been implemented
- Equal pay claims should not be struck out simply because the claimants job has been incorrectly described in the claim form
- Men who work in the same jobs as female colleagues who succeed with equal pay claims are also entitled to succeed with claims
- Employers may be able to justify pay schemes that protect discriminatory payments for a defined period of time but not as a matter of course
During his time at Stefan Cross Solicitors, Paul Doran worked on all of the cases mentioned above and has over a decade of experience in dealing with equal pay issues.
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