Last year, the regime rammed through the Equal Pay Amendment Act under urgency, gutting pay equity laws, dumping all claims, and stealing $13 billion from new Zealand women.
Today, they got a taste of the alternative. Because before that law was passed, the College of Midwives started a class action on behalf of its members, alleging breach of a prior settlement, breach of good faith, and unlawful discrimination on the basis of gender. Today, the High Court issued its decision, finding for the midwives on those points, awarded (token) BORA damages, and required that they be restored to the position they would have been in had the breaches not occurred. Which means:
Held, fair and reasonable take home pay, as at 1 July 2020, for a notional LMC midwife working 1.0 FTE was $170,340. Figure to be adjusted for successive years based on Labour Cost Index.And "adjusted using the LCI, fair and reasonable take home pay was $200,275.59 in July 2023, and $206,946.03 in July 2024."Held, LMC midwives must be paid the fair and reasonable service price, backdated from 1 July 2020.
In June 2025 the take-home pay for an LMC midwife was $132,000. And that's after a substantial pay equity bump in 2023. In 2020, it was about $99,000. In other words, the court has ruled they've been underpaid by $70K a year for the last five years. Multiply that by 1500 claimants, and its half a billion dollars in midwives pockets.
The question is whether the regime will accept the ruling of the court, whether they'll appeal in a desperate effort to delay payment until its someone else's problem, or pass "fuck you" legislation to overturn the ruling. And with this coalition, the latter can't be ruled out. The sooner we have a new government, the better.
