Pay equity

Groups of women, for example education support workers in Nelson, women lawyers in Christchurch and Tairawhiti DHB employees, expressed frustration at the lack of progress in achieving gender equality at work, including pay and employment equity. Those in the public sector had been part of the Five Year Plan of Action to review and address pay and employment equity. Reviews were conducted across the public sector but response plans developed from the findings of the reviews are yet to be fully implemented. An education support worker in Nelson told us, “I don’t begrudge cleaners and caretakers a pay rise, but the unfairness is blatant. A cleaner earns more vacuuming than a teacher’s aide who tube-feeds and catheterises a student.” A union organiser said “my son works at a petrol station for more pay than caregivers, with fewer responsibilities and no poos”.

A group of Canterbury women lawyers told us that they had to work twice as hard to be seen as equal and that if you asked to be paid at the same rate as men you were seen as “greedy, unreasonable and ungrateful”. “Nice girls don’t get the corner office (i.e. become a partner). You have to be ballsy, push your position and ask.”

There appears to be no systemic follow-up to review progress. The proposed roll out of the Pay and Employment Women into local government and the wider state sector (Phase 2) is voluntary and uptake has been extremely limited. The Chief Executive of the Gisborne District Council who undertook a pay and employment equity review said, “None of us set out to create injustices and inequity in our workplaces. Intuitively then, there’s no problem … however, I’ve realised it’s not enough to rely on intuition, hard data is needed.”

Discrepancies in starting salaries between men and women were found in many organisations in the state sector, in apparent breach of the Equal Pay Act. Women in the private sector advised us that this was also a problem for them. Lack of transparency about salaries, however, made it very difficult to raise awareness about pay inequality. There was little confidence in existing mechanisms to challenge gender pay inequalities.

Employees valued career opportunities and a number of businesses were proud of the opportunities given to employees to advance careers. In one Tauranga business everyone was expected to have a learning and development plan which included key accountabilities and expected behaviours to reach their goals. Plans were not necessarily related to work performance and included personal goals such as learning to drive. One worker said that in his workplace “there is no capped ceiling, no you can’t go there, the opportunities are endless.”

A feature of Maori businesses in particular was the commitment to providing career opportunities (such as support for further education) not just to build capacity in the company but to build capacity in the wider community, at an iwi level. “It’s just the rotation of life,” said one Southland employer, “we’re giving him his stepping stone.”