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CEC European Managers - Confédération Européenne des Cadres

CEC

La CEC est l’un des six partenaires sociaux européens à siéger au Comité de Dialogue social interprofessionnel.

Lobbying Activity

Meeting with Isabella Lövin (Member of the European Parliament) and Volvo AB

15 Oct 2025 · Sustainable leaders summit

Meeting with Alicia Homs Ginel (Member of the European Parliament, Rapporteur)

29 Jan 2025 · Discussion on the State of Play of the Traineeships Directive

Meeting with Florika Fink-Hooijer (Director-General Environment)

29 Aug 2023 · Presentation of the CEC report

Meeting with Kurt Vandenberghe (Director-General Climate Action) and EUROPEAN TRADE UNION CONFEDERATION and

28 Apr 2023 · FF55; Net Zero industrial plan; Climate risk assessment

Meeting with Nicolas Schmit (Commissioner) and

12 Nov 2021 · Skills, promotion of work-life balance, occupational health and safety and the green transition, digitalisation and the future of work.

Meeting with Joost Korte (Director-General Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion)

29 Sept 2021 · social dialogue

Meeting with Antoine Colombani (Cabinet of Executive Vice-President Frans Timmermans)

26 Feb 2020 · Green Deal and social dialogue

Response to Strengthening the principle of equal pay between men and women through pay transparency

3 Feb 2020

For CEC European Managers, the European social partner organization representing the European managerial workforce, gender equality is fundamental. Improving the presence of women in the labor force, and especially in decision-making positions, is a priority that CEC has been focusing upon for many years. Gender pay gap is only one of the many ways in which discrimination is declined. But discrimination is not only based on gender – pay gaps can also be observed between workers of different ethnic origin or sexual orientations. Legal protection of the principle of “equal pay” (to which the persistence of gender pay gap clearly constitutes a violation) is sufficient: the scope of national, European and international law forbidding discrimination based on individual grounds is wide and solidly anchored as a fundamental legal principle. Against this background, a first reflection should be focusing on how “gender pay gap” is concretely calculated. As the paper correctly says, “it is not possible to measure to what extent gender pay differences are due specifically to gender discrimination”. It is therefore necessary to be precise (and careful) about how gender pay gap is measured, ensuring that the calculations are always based on comparable and homogeneous data. This is essential in order to avoid “dramatizing” the issue, by producing extreme figures that could be met with criticism and give a false perception of the reality of the issue. Whether transparency can contribute to reducing pay discrimination is a complex issue, as many different variables need to be taken into account: • Privacy considerations – speaking about salary is still considered in many countries an extremely confidential and private information; social conventions have it so that it is taboo to approach such issues. This must be respected. • Risk of creating negative professional environments – evidence shows that in many cases, initiatives aiming at revealing workers’ pay levels (or authorizing workers to inquire about colleagues’ pay) do not necessarily always result in an upward convergence of salaries, but all negatively impact on the wellbeing and working environment. • Creating a supplementary administrative burden for the management, with HR managers being the most “severely” concerned. The higher administrative costs that companies are “likely” going to incur mentioned are more than likely going to be assumed by managers. This consideration does not take into account the “extreme” case of possible risks for personal liability of managers being responsible for revealing data considered to be personal. In the light of the above, any debate on the opportunity of pay transparency measures cannot oversee the issue of the level at which the transparency duty is set. Personal, individually-targeted disclosure mechanisms that concern specific persons should be avoided (it should for instance not be made compulsory for companies to reveal salary details of specific workers); instead, disclosure should concern the criteria that inform a company’s remuneration policy, or “aggregated” information about – for instance – workers belonging to the same department, or with the same educational level, or in the same age group. Workers should be in a position to compare themselves not with a specific individual, but rather with other fellow colleagues belonging to the same category. In this context, we believe that consulting EU social partners should be at the center of any future initiative by the European Commission in this field. Irrespective of what their orientation will be, the attention of EU institutions and social partner organizations should however remain on the “root” cause of pay gap: the insufficient presence of women in the workforce, which increases further if we look at decision-taking levels. This regards first and foremost work-life balance (and the unbalanced take-up of family obligations), cultural stereotypes and educational biases.
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Meeting with Joost Korte (Director-General Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion)

30 Oct 2018 · Introductory meeting

Meeting with Michel Servoz (Director-General Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion)

9 Dec 2015 · How to contribute to the advancement of social dialogue and strengthen the relations between the Commissionand CEC