What about the BAME pay gap at the BBC?

The BBC needs to be honest about its BAME pay gap numbers and more transparent about salaries.

With all the discussion around the gender pay gap at the BBC quite a few people have been asking about whether there is a BAME pay gap at the corporation.

So first the good news:

According to independent report commissioned by the BBC and overseen by Sir Patrick Elias (a former Court of Appeal judge) and conducted by consultancy firm PwC and legal firm Eversheds, the BBC has one of the lowest BAME pay gaps in the country. Possibly the lowest for any large organization in the UK.

At an unbelievable 0.4%

Let me give you a few examples to show you how remarkable the BBC's figure is. The BAME pay gaps of different government civil service departments is a lot higher: The Foreign Office has a BAME pay gap of 34%, Culture, Media and Sport 32%, Health 28%, and Education and Communities and Local Government both have a pay gap of 14%. In fact the organization which carried out the BBC audit, PwC, has a BAME wage pay gap of 12.8% , while the BAME pay gap in the bonuses PwC hands out is 35.4%.

So should we be celebrating a BBC pay gap of 0.4%?

The problem is neither PwC, who conducted the report, or the BBC have released any of the raw data which enabled them to calculate this figure. And as pointed out by the BBC’s own Radio 4 statistical programme “More or Less” last week this makes the 0.4% figure almost meaningless.

Let me give you an example of how important getting at the raw data is.

The BBC currently publishes a headline figure that 14.5% of its staff are from BAME backgrounds. Again this figure is amazing and puts the BBC almost in a class of its own for any large media organization.

It is amazing of course until you get the raw data and realize they are including people who work overseas in the World Service and Global News in Africa and Asia, they include people who work in the technical departments and in sales. Once you look at the people who make programmes for the UK the number is probably closer to 8%.

And so the 0.4% figure is the equivalent of a great headline but with no substance behind it and may not stand up to the slightest scrutiny.

We have no idea if the BBC BAME pay figure is inflated by people working in IT, sales or by support staff such as lawyers and accountants.

IMPORTANTLY WHAT THE BBC HAS NOT PUBLISHED IS THE PAY GAP FOR PEOPLE DOING SIMILAR JOBS – ESPECIALLY IN PRODUCTION.

However there are a few tell-tale clues that the BBC has a serious BAME pay gap.

1.       Anecdotally every BBC manager I have spoken to recently believes that there is a substantial BAME pay gap, a lot worse than 0.4%, and coincidently all those managers have worked in production.

2.       The only time the BBC has published the details of the BAME pay gap for people doing similar jobs the statistics were not good. Last year the BBC published the pay of its top on-screen talent the data showed BAME staff are paid far less than their white counterparts with only 10 of the 96 highest earners on the list coming from black and minority ethnic backgrounds. And not a single one making the top 24 earners.

3.       Finally while the BBC (and most labour economists to be fair) like to use the median average to measure gender and BAME pay gaps, if you look at the mean average BAME pay gap the average at the BBC is 5.7%. I won’t bore you with all the mathematics but for there to be such a big difference between the two averages (0.4% and 5.7%) would suggest something very interesting is happening with the pay distribution of the BAME staff and what jobs they are employed to do. Of course we only guess at what that “interesting” thing is – as the BBC won’t tell us.

I worked at the BBC for over twenty years and I still have a lot of love and respect for my former employer. Currently working abroad I can tell my friends and former colleagues that the international reputation of the BBC is taking a terrible bashing over the pay gap issue.

Publishing headline figures that tell people that there is no problem rarely solves a problem and makes an issue go away.

Let’s hope that the BBC publishes more detailed data soon on BAME pay gaps so we can either address any problems or feel confident in the headline figures. Or else I fear the the gender pay gap issue which is being covered across global media will just be the start.