Thursday, September 07, 2017

Time for pay equity

National has responded to the recent aged care workers case with a bill that would make it harder for women to gain equal pay. Fortunately, the Greens have a better plan:
The Green Party would require all workplaces to measure and disclose the pay gap between men and women employees if it gets into government.

The party released its pay equity policy today, saying it would ensure that women were treated equally and paid better.

Co-leader James Shaw said his party would require employers to collect data on the wage rates for men and women, by adding gender to pay roll data.

If any employee or union asked for the information, the employer would have to provide anonymised and aggregated data about the pay and gender of other people doing the same work.

Seeing the difference in pay rates in black and white would encourage employers to change their approach, the party said.


And if it doesn't, then the victims of their discrimination will have the information they need to prove it. This approach is used in Scandinavia, and it works. We should do the same here. But to do that, we need to get rid of National, and change the government.