Equal Pay for Mother's Day – an oldie but a goodie!
Many years ago, Women’s Rights Party Co-leader Jill Ovens had a button that said “Equal Pay for Mother’s Day”.
“How relevant is that this week!” she says.
Women’s Rights Party members are concerned about the impact on women of changes to pay equity legislation under urgency last week. An estimated 150,000 women workers whose pay equity claims have been extinguished are now in limbo. Many of these claims will not be able to restart under the new pay equity regime.
As we celebrate Mother’s Day today [Sunday, 11 May] we acknowledge that our mother’s work and contributions to society, whether paid or unpaid, have been systematically undervalued over a very long time.
“Work typically done by women, continues to be undervalued, and this contributes to the on-going sex-based pay gap,” Ms Ovens says.
She says the 14 pay equity settlements to date, mostly in the core public sector and the education and health sectors, have made a big difference in the pay of women workers, and of men working in women-dominated sectors.
Low paid workers such as teacher aides and care and support workers now have more money in their pay packets to feed, clothe, and house their families.
But the settlements created pay disparities with those employed in organisations largely dependent on government funding, like Plunket, hospices, medical laboratories, and community organisations employing social workers.
Many of the 33 pay equity claims that have been extinguished, pending the Governor General’s assent to the new Pay Equity legislation, were to address pay parity with nurses and social workers who are directly employed in public sector agencies like Health NZ and Oranga Tamariki whose pay equity settlements were settled some time ago.
“This is where market forces come in as it becomes impossible for non-government organisations to attract and retain staff if they are not being funded to pay the same rates,” Ms Ovens says.
As a negotiator for MERAS, the midwives’ union, Ms Ovens says she was aware of the struggle of private birthing centres to pay midwives and nurses the same rates as those directly-employed by Health NZ, even though birthing centres are highly dependent on Health NZ funding. A pay equity claim for midwives employed by private birthing centres is among those cancelled this week.
Long lasting effect on women
The Women’s Rights Party says that cutting back on pay equity for women workers will have a long-lasting effect. A major source of the disadvantage women face in retirement is inequity in retirement savings because women earn less than men on average over their working life (this is called the “pay gap penalty”).
Women are also disadvantaged by unpaid responsibilities caring for children, family members with disabilities, and their elders (this is called the “mothering penalty”).
According to the Institute of Economic Research (NZIER), the average KiwiSaver balance for women is 25% lower than the average balance for men across all age groups,
The NZIER reports that at 65 years old, a woman working full-time and earning the median wage, will have the equivalent of at least three years less retirement income in her KiwiSaver account than a man her age; a meaningful difference as women tend to live longer than men.
Ms Ovens says Health NZ, New Zealand’s largest single employer of women, contributes the minimum statutory 3% KiwiSaver employer contribution to its women-dominated workforces – nurses, midwives, clerical workers, cleaners and food services workers. But the historically male-dominated doctors and dentists are paid a 6% employer contribution on much higher salaries.
Police also have a healthy employer contribution to KiwiSaver, as do many other male-dominated occupations.
“This is why we argued in the midwives’ claim that KiwiSaver contributions should be taken into account in comparing work covered by the claim with the comparators,” Ms Ovens says.