Labour Union VR has announced a new certification that they hope will encourage the elimination of the gender pay gap. The union will begin to offer VR Equal Labour Certification to companies that demonstrate that their wage policy and human resources are non-discriminatory toward either gender, according to the press release on VR’s website.
VR has been collaborating with the British Standards Institution for the past two years and has based the certification on the equal pay standards announced by Íslenskir Staðlar (IST), the national standards body of Iceland, last year.
“The unions have fought for equal pay for men and women for decades and, despite significant progress, there remains a big difference between the wages of men and women. According to VR’s findings in 2012, women’s wages are, on average, 14.9% lower than men’s… This is unacceptable, in our opinion, and neither VR nor its members can wait any longer for men and women to be sitting at the same table,” said VR director Stefán Einar Stefánsson in the unions press release.