The Queensland Dental Assistants' Equal Remuneration Case: Advancing Gender Pay Equity at State Level?

ABSTRACT

One of the concerns for the pursuit of gender pay equity in Australia, following the implementation ofWorkChoices in March 2006 and the commitment by both major political parties to a ‘unified’ national system of private-sector industrial relations, is loss of the momentum recently achieved through the development and application of state-level Equal Remuneration Principles. In this article we use the Dental Assistants’ Equal Remuneration case, heard before the Queensland Industrial Relations Commission in 2005, to examine the efficacy of this type of approach, based on the use of an Equal Remuneration Principle, in identifying gender-based undervaluation and translating findings of inequity into wage increases. The case illustrates a capacity to address structural gender-bias in the wages system in a way that would be inconsistent with a model such as WorkChoices, which prioritises decentralised wage bargaining and rejects broad notions of comparative wage justice. It also illustrates a developing capacity to engage with the difficult processes of assessing and redressing gender-bias in the valuation of ‘women's’ work. Although there is much still to be achieved in this area, sidelining emerging expertise and experience under a nationally based system can only impede the pursuit of gender pay equity.