Bargaining for pay equity: an NZ-inspired approach to gender equality in Australia

ABSTRACT

Women’s disproportionate representation in insecure, low-paid, or unpaid care work presents persistent barriers to women’s capacity to work and earn. The COVID-19 pandemic has intensified these barriers to adequately paid, sufficient-hours work. Consequently, women earn almost one-third less than men across all jobs. The industrial system is a critical mechanism for weeding out structural pay discrimination from wage structures. However, Australia’s system for pursuing pay equity is stumbling due to the absence of bargaining infrastructure required to test and enforce pay equity legislation. In Aotearoa New Zealand (NZ), new laws have been introduced facilitating bargaining-led solutions to gendered pay discrimination. Parallel implementation of a bold new system of sectoral bargaining called ‘Fair Pay Agreements’ in 2022 will allow reformed pay equity and collective bargaining systems to co-articulate. Inspired by these developments in NZ, CPSU Victoria has negotiated new gender equality measures in the Victorian public sector (VPS) agreement. While limited to the public sector, the VPS Agreement provides a powerful example of innovative industrial approaches to pursuing gender equity. A NZ-inspired bargaining approach to gender equity can boost women’s wages, reduce inequality, and revitalise a labour regime fit-for-purpose in the modern, feminised service economy.

KEYWORDS:

• collective bargaining
• gender
• pay equity
• employment

Acknowledgments

The authors thank Karen Batt, Noelle Donnelly & Jim Stanford for helpful input.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. For a comprehensive assessment of the gendered impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on Australian women, see Australian Council of Trade Unions (2020). Leaving women behind: The real cost of the COVID recovery. ACTU.

2. Author’s calculations from ABS 6291.0.55.003. Table 1. EQ04. Employees only, excluding owner-managers.

3. Author’s calculations from ABS. Wage Price Index, Consumer Price Index. June quarter 2021.

4. Despite pay equity laws being in place for over 30 years, very few individual pay equity cases have been heard by courts or tribunals. See Charlesworth and MacDonald (2015) for a comprehensive review of Australia’s gender pay equity legislation.

5. A new Australian Public Service Gender Equality Strategy will be launched in 2021.

6. Fair Work Act 2009 – SECT 134 (f) (g).

7. FAIR WORK ACT – SECT 302(5).

8. Author’s calculations. Agreement coverage data from Workplace Agreements Database, Attorney General’s Department. Employees by sector from ABS, Labour Force, Detailed. May quarter. Table 26a.

9. The Gender Pay Equity Principles were recently implemented in the Equal Pay Amendment Act in 2020.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Alison Pennington

Alison Pennington is Senior Economist at Centre for Future Work. Alison has published research on collective bargaining, skills, IR, and gender.

Megan Wenlock

Megan Wenlock is Gender Equality Industrial Organiser for Community and Public Sector Union (State Public Sector Federation) Victoria.