Reader, we at Capsule are LIVID about the pay-equity bill amendment travesty. Sarah Lang breaks down exactly what has happened, who it affects, and why we’re all so outraged.
*This is an opinion piece
You’ve probably heard about the legislation that was rammed through Parliament last night, a mere DAY after being announced. The government amended the Equal Pay Act (1972) under urgency in an utter gutting of New Zealand’s pay-equity regime. It’s a WTF moment.
There have been decades of pushing for progress for people working in sectors that have been underpaid due to sexism. The Equal Pay Amendment Bill passed yesterday is a reversal of that hard-won progress. It’s a gut punch. A blindside. And a betrayal. A betrayal of women.
I’m about to go off – call it a rant, or call it resistance – but first, I’ll lay out the background to what on earth is going on.
Back in 2017, Kristine Bartlett and the E tū union won an historic pay increase for caregivers in the aged-care sector. Subsequently, the Equal Pay Amendment Act 2020 allowed individual employees and unions to raise pay-equity claims with employers in sectors that may be subject to sex-based discrimination. That is, if women are being underpaid relative to similar work done in sectors dominated by men. (A pay-equity claim covers all employees doing the same or similar work, regardless of union affiliation or employment agreement.)
Settlements have included amended pay rates, back pay, lump sums, and better work conditions. Over 150,000 people have seen their lives improved as a result, including nurses, and mental-health and addiction support workers.
When the government disestablished the Pay Equity Taskforce last year, Public Service Minister Nicola Willis said “the Government remains committed to pay equity and meeting its obligations under the Equal Pay Act 1972”.
Oh, really? Because, yesterday’s Equal Pay Amendment Bill suggests otherwise.
The government is now putting up huge barriers to proving ‘genuine’ gender discrimination, including “increasing the threshold for what qualifies as work that is ‘predominantly performed by female employees’”. Read 13 bullet points here.
What’s more, the government has actually extinguished 33 pay-equity claims that were in progress – representing hundreds of thousands of workers including carers, teachers and nurses. For example, the New Zealand Nurses Organisation had 10 claims in progress across branches including aged care, primary healthcare, hospices, Plunket, and community health and laboratories. Goodbye, too, to the Social Service Workers Pay Equity Claim. Those claimants will need to reapply under the new regime. To start from scratch. In some cases, it’s wasted years of effort.
This legislation is ‘retrospective’. Remember that word. In the Redacted Cabinet Paper, Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Brooke van Velden writes, “I propose that these changes apply retrospectively to existing claims and existing settlements with review clauses. While this departs from the presumption that legislation will not be applied retrospectively, it is justified to meet the policy objectives of the new legislation”. Er, that’s not telling us why you would disregard this legal presumption.
As law firm Simpson Grierson noted, “the changes will apply retrospectively which is highly unusual, and means all existing pay equity claims, even those currently before the Employment Relations Authority and Employment Court, which have not been settled or determined, will be discontinued.”
This retrospective legislation sets a terrible precedent. It’s difficult to know exactly how the claims that have already been settled will be impacted. The non-government parties – including unions – negotiated those settlements in good faith. Unions fear the government has created enough wiggle room to mess with these claims.
Is this matter being left murky on purpose? Because, when a bill is introduced to Parliament, it generally needs to be accompanied by a Regulatory Impact Statement (these summarise a government agency’s best advice to its minister and cabinet, along with a rationale). However, in this case the Regulatory Impact Statement is missing – here, it would have come from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment – purportedly because of the tight time frame; (we’ll get to the timeframe soon).
And look, if any government ministers or comms people are grumbling that we haven’t asked to interview them, I’d say ‘where’s the RIS’ and also ‘you DIDN’T GIVE US TIME’. The legislation went through yesterday, a DAY after being announced, and that’s why this is an opinion piece not an investigative piece (and we’re not running your Orwellian press release).
Shifting Billions
Why is this happening? Well, as pay-equity claims have been concentrated in the public sector, costs to the Crown have so far totalled $1.78 billion a year. Christopher Luxon has said the new amendment could save the government “billions of dollars”. But at whose expense? Because this legislation moves that financial burden – of billions of dollars – onto workers in low-paid sectors staffed primarily by women. It will cost them – cost us – up to $17 billion of unpaid wages over the next four years – more than paying for $14 billion of tax cuts for the well-off over the same period. Of course, the government isn’t admitting any such connection.
In my opinion, this amendment actually underscores the fact that women are being systemically underpaid. Because if the just-extinguished pay-equity claims had no merit, the claims would be rejected – thus there would be no need for this new legislation, right?
And here’s something that should be mathematically obvious to the government: the billions that will be ‘saved’ is money that would have almost all stayed within the New Zealand economy. Lower earners spend a higher proportion of their income than higher earners. They don’t have the money to save or take overseas holidays.
What’s the rush?
It’s so damning that the government has used urgency in Parliament to pass this legislation. Why? What’s the emergency? Laws passed under urgency are appropriate in time-sensitive and/or big-deal cases like Covid lockdowns. A government that has been in power for 18 months can’t plausibly claim that the pay-equity issue has snuck up on them – meaning there’s been no need to leave it until now and rush it through. This is not like dealing with an oil-tanker spill. Was ramming this legislation through Parliament – just a DAY after it was announced – an attempt to rush this past the media and the public, before other Budget-related matters distract us? Well, not on our watch.
Luxon actually said of this legislation that “it’s got nothing to do with the Budget” – to which we say, yeah right. The Budget is nearly upon us. Also, the Redacted Cabinet Paper says BUDGET-SENSITIVE at the top. Even David Seymour said that van Velden, by making this move, has “saved the Budget for the government”. “Women won’t be worse off because of these changes,” Seymour added. To which we say, yeah right. In fact, van Velden acknowledged this was likely to affect hundreds of thousands of workers. Get your buddies reading from the same script, Chris.
What is the other Chris saying? As reported in a Radio NZ story, “Labour leader Chris Hipkins said women had the right to be ‘absolutely furious. Not only have the government kept this under wraps, they’re now using parliamentary urgency to take away a women’s right to equal pay. That is simply unacceptable’.” He has also said the law change was “not getting the scrutiny it deserves; the government aren’t even explaining properly why they are doing it”.
Meanwhile Greens’ co-leader Marama Davidson called the legislation a ‘disgusting’ and ‘politically violent act’ toward women and workers.
Kristine Bartlett – the aforementioned aged-care worker – told the NZ Herald she was “just about crying” after hearing the news. “I feel as though women have just been let down so terribly today. Nobody is given a chance to stand up and say anything – it’s just done. It’s getting quite frightening if that’s what they can do.”
Meanwhile, Public Service Association national secretary Fleur Fitzsimons called this “an attack on women” and “a constitutional overreach”.
In my opinion, this move is almost the New Zealand equivalent of a Trump executive order. It also has a faint echo of the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion ‘rollback’ in the States. So here’s a free piece of advice for the coalition government: parties who echo Trump policies ain’t doing well. In both Australia and Canada, political parties that had been trailing well behind their Trump-whiffy counterparts overtook them to win the national elections.
This pay-equity legislation rushed through under unnecessary urgency is, frankly, incompetent, unnecessary, patronising to our intelligence and attention spans, and cruel. All people need to be paid fairly. Women earn less than men. So we say to the current government: we women – we women voters – are paying attention.
*Sign the petition ‘Protect Pay Equity – stop scrapping equal pay claims and law’ – launched by 14 NZ unions – here. There is also a series of protests happening around the country – you can find information about those here.
Please email hello@capsulenz.com if you want us to look into this matter further.