Commission to host pay equity roundtable

The Human Rights Commission will host a round table to advance issues of pay and employment equity following the disestablishment of the Pay and Employment Equity Unit this week.

EEO Commissioner Dr Judy McGregor welcomed the Government’s interest in ensuring that pay and employment equity is the responsibility of all employers, not just state sector employers. The round table will explore ways of continuing the momentum towards closing the gender pay gap.

Dr McGregor was a member of the steering advisory group for the Unit.  She said, “I am disappointed by the decision to dispense with the Unit and saddened for the staff involved.”

“The Pay and Employment Equity Unit ensured there was sustained attention on the undervaluing of women’s work in the labour market and the lack of representation of women at senior levels in the workforce.”

Dr McGregor said, “My concern is that without strong Government commitment and leadership on this human rights issue, the public and private sectors will lack incentive to address these issues.”

“So we don’t lose momentum, interested parties such as employers, trade unions, policy agencies and women’s organisations need to talk about how to advance public debate and employer understanding of the need to commit to pay and employment equity.”

The Minister of Labour Hon Kate Wilkinson has been invited to speak at the round table.

Despite the demise of the Unit, public sector chief executives had a statutory responsibility to be good employers. They are unable to opt out of the mandatory requirements to include women’s rights in the workplace, Dr McGregor said.

“While every New Zealander is currently concerned about job security and the economic recession, women are suffering a double whammy effect because of the pay equity problem. For every $1 earned by men in New Zealand today, women earn just 88 cents. Many Māori and Pacific women have poorer economic outcomes.”

Many women in low paid jobs were concerned about recent job summit calls for shorter working weeks, less paid hours and nine day fortnights because of the possible effect on household incomes. “Any potential loss of earnings for lower paid workers, many of whom are women, will be unacceptable to them because they won’t be able to pay their bills.”

The Human Rights Commission in its report on New Zealand’s Human Rights Performance has called for the Government to set a minimum target of halving the gender pay gap by 2012 and eliminating it by 2020. The Commission’s report is part of the first Universal Periodic review of New Zealand which will take place in Geneva in May this year.

Pay and employment equity reviews conducted recently in 39 Government departments and 21 District Health Boards showed there was still significant  gender-based pay inequality with women earning on average between 3% and 35% less than men. Women’s starting salaries were also lower than men’s for similar jobs.

“The pay investigation of education support workers who work with special needs children in schools shows they are paid $7.57 less per hour than Corrections Officers, a job that’s been evaluated as a similar size, at the lower end of their pay scale. At the upper end of their pay scale the difference is $4.07.

“Female special education support workers were also paid a $1 less average hourly rate than their male counterparts, even though the women had on average longer service, says the EEO Commissioner.

Special education support workers are one of two groups caught in the freeze on pay investigations announced by Government. In its expectations for Pay and Employment Conditions in the State Sector, the State Services Minister Tony Ryall, discontinued action on two pay investigations, the other being female social workers at Child, Youth and Family.

However, the EEO Commissioner says that public service chief executives would have to take notice of both New Zealand and international law relating to pay equity. Government policy outlined in the expectations required State sector agencies to take account of human rights and that all conditions, including remuneration, should be fair to individual employees.

“Chief executives are obliged to be “good employers” by law including recognition of women’s rights in the workplace and they cannot opt out of their statutory “good employer” functions. This applies to chief executives in public service agencies, local government and Crown entities, “ she says.

“The State Services Commissioner also has a principal function to promote, develop and monitor equal employment policies in the public service and also reviews the performance of chief executives. It isn’t open to senior public servants to ignore pay equity as a basic human right and fairness issue in workplaces.”

“Job retention is everyone’s first priority, but there are pay equity issues such as the low proportion of women in management positions, women’s lower starting rates and performance pay, and poorer career advancement for part-timers who are mainly women, that don’t lead to unaffordable remuneration movement.

“Many women, if they were asked, might accept a moratorium on wholesale pay rises to close the gender gap as long as there was a commitment to a planned, incremental approach for which public service chief executives were accountable as ‘good employers’. Women are not greedy, they simply want fairness,” says the EEO Commissioner.

The gender pay gap is referred to as a concern in the 2008 US Department of State’s Human Rights Report on New Zealand. The Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women has specifically asked the Government to monitor the measures taken to close the wage gap between men and women, the results achieved in both the public and private sectors. The Committee wants the Government to report to it in its next periodic report to the United Nations.

Sunrise on pay and employment equity in local government?