E tū union national secretary Rachel Mackintosh discusses the government’s controversial Equal Pay Amendment Act that makes it harder for women-dominated workforces to achieve pay equity.
Photo: Te Māngai Pāho
Photo: NZ On Air
Unions at the forefront of battling the government's decision to cancel 33 existing pay equity claims, and change the threshold for new claims, say the issue is not going away, and that in terms of a response "plans are developing".
"We need to keep the momentum up on this issue because it's an outrage."
Rachel Mackintosh from E tū Union told Mata with Mihingarangi they have had "massive support" and a "really wide response".
It's coming from individuals such as a woman in her 80s protesting outside Workplace Relations Minister Brooke van Velden's office who told Mackintosh: "I have not been on the streets for decades but this is making me incandescent with rage". But the battle was also getting support from industries dominated by men, Mackintosh said. "The miners have said if you need us down in Parliament with our high-vis jackets on to support the women who have suffered this insult, we are there."
In a whirlwind 48 hours last week the law changed - without a select committee, any public meetings, opportunities for submissions or the usual processes law changes go through.
Mackintosh said workers affected by the government's unexpected decision had reported "rage, disbelief, a deep feeling of insult, and of having something that felt as though it was within reach whipped away".
"It's the difference between not being able to enrol your kids in sport, not being able to buy them a pair of shoes, choosing between paying your power bill and your rent."
She agreed the process was a complex one, with "a whole lot of power and so on at play" but disagreed with the government's description of the legislation as "unfair, unaffordable and unworkable".
"This government … recently wound up the Pay Equity Taskforce because they said it wasn't necessary because the system was working, that was just a few months ago, and now they say it's not working.
"The attack on comparators is really an attack on the whole principle that work that is female-dominated is undervalued because of that reason."
She said the system allowed claimants to compare the wages across industries and professions. "What you compare is the responsibility, the skill, the effort and the knowledge you need.
"For care work one of the comparisons is prison guards, and so prison guards also deal with complex human interactions. They deal with violence as do care workers. They are responsible for people's safety as are care workers, and so it's these kinds of comparators … and that consideration of complex human interactions … skill and responsibility. It's not that the work is the same."
The difference in pay between care workers and prison guards? Roughly 20 percent. "Actually what we concluded was that prison guards were also underpaid, because prison guards are paid less than fisheries officers."
Mackintosh said that when it came to care workers "30 percent is the kind of average wrong pay that people are suffering at the moment, and that's after having got a boost in 2017 from the Kristine Bartlett case".
Finance Minister Nicola Willis characterised the current regime as "a Trojan Horse for a multi-billion dollar grievance industry driven by public sector unions."
Mackintosh said she found that description "so interesting".
"What I immediately think of when I hear that is the 'Treaty Grievance Industry' - and the point about grievance is that it's about wrong and harm that has been done, and so to use that word as an insult is an insult. Because there is a grievance to have been undervalued … that people responsible for how much you get paid don't think it's important for you to have enough money to live on. If that's not a grievance I don't know what is."
