EasyJet CEO takes voluntary pay cut
EasyJet CEO Johan Lundgren has taken a voluntarily pay cut to match that of his predecessor Carolyn McCall.
His annual starting salary was £740,000 but will now be reduced to the £706,000 earned by McCall when she left the airline.
Announcing the move to investors, he said: "At easyJet we are absolutely committed to giving equal pay and equal opportunity for women and men.
"I want that to apply to everybody at easyJet and to show my personal commitment I have asked the Board to reduce my pay to match that of Carolyn’s when she was at easyJet.
"I also want to affirm my own commitment to address the gender imbalance in our pilot community which drives our overall gender pay gap. easyJet has already gone further than other airlines in trying to attract more women into a career as a pilot. I want us not just to hit our target that 20% of our new pilots should be female by 2020 but to go further than this in the future."
The overall gender pay gap figure at easyJet is 51.7%, driven by the massive gender imbalance in the industry’s pilot community.
"Like all airlines pilots make up a large proportion of easyJet’s employees, they are paid more highly than our other communities and, most materially, 94% of them are male," said the airline.
"This is not about unequal pay. EasyJet’s pilots (and cabin crew) salaries and other pay is collectively agreed and negotiated with the trade unions, which means that the pay rates are exactly the same for men and women."
Three years ago easyJet launched the Amy Johnson Initiative to encourage more women to become pilots.
It wants 20% of new pilots to be female by 2020, up from 6% in 2015.
Last year it recruited 49 female new entrant co-pilots, 48% up on the previous year and taking the proportion of easyJet new entrant female pilots to 13%.
Bev
Editor in chief Bev Fearis has been a travel journalist for 25 years. She started her career at Travel Weekly, where she became deputy news editor, before joining Business Traveller as deputy editor and launching the magazine’s website. She has also written travel features, news and expert comment for the Guardian, Observer, Times, Telegraph, Boundless and other consumer titles and was named one of the top 50 UK travel journalists by the Press Gazette.
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