Equal Pay Amendment Bill

I move, That the Equal Pay Amendment Bill be now read a third time.

This Equal Pay Amendment Bill marks an important step in the journey towards workplace gender equality, building on the Equal Pay Act to make it easier for women to ensure they are paid fairly for their work. Pay equity is about the principle that women and men should be paid the same for work that is of equal value. It’s a simple idea but, unfortunately, one that has not yet been achieved, despite it being a priority of Kate Sheppard so many decades ago.

This bill is not just about women and men who sit next to each other in the same workplace doing the same job; it’s about fixing the injustice of female-dominated workforces being paid less than male-dominated workforces to do work that requires a similar level of skill, effort, and education.

In Aotearoa New Zealand, we have had a long history of paying female-dominated workforces less. Because this has gone on so long, it has become normalised, invisible to many, and extremely difficult for any one woman to change for herself. To solve this, we need to rewrite the rules so that women are supported and empowered to negotiate equal pay for work of equal value.

While women have been able to take their employers to court in the past and win, the reality is this is too high a bar for many women and for many workforces. It forces employees and employers into a costly, protracted, and adversarial situation. This bill moves pay equity negotiations from the court to the bargaining table. It creates a framework and a set of rules to support female-dominated workforces and their employers to identify and correct pay imbalances.

This process is based on the evidence. It is fair and reasonable for employers and workers alike. We all do better when people are properly valued and supported to do their work, especially the caring work that has not often been highly valued in our society. I think we saw a perfect example of that during the level 4 COVID-19 lockdown, when many of our essential workers, it turned out, were some of the lowest-paid workers, and yet they were the ones who enabled our society to continue functioning in the middle of a crisis.

So this bill lowers the bar for historically female-dominated workforces to raise a pay equity claim by advising their employer in writing that they consider their work is undervalued. This process makes court an avenue of last resort for workforces and employers, rather than the first step, and I’m really proud that we’re progressing a bill that is fair to both employees and employers.

The process set out in this bill has already been used in the State sector, which has allowed us to see the impact it can have on people’s lives. Recently, teacher-aides—a hard-working, skilled, but historically underpaid profession—negotiated a settlement for over 22,000 employees. This settlement secured an extra $178 a week in remuneration for the lowest-paid teacher-aides.

Care and support workers also recently settled their pay equity claim, and the comments from those women highlight the real-world benefits these settlements have on people’s lives. One woman who benefited from this settlement told us “Now, I am able to save for my son’s future.” Another said, “It means I don’t have to work myself into the ground, and now I get to see my family.” Another said, “It has made it easier to pay the bills and has given me and my child a better quality of life.” We’re not talking about dramatic changes, but we are talking about change that is fair and that allows people to be paid to live dignified lives, and that is something all of us in this House should be proud of.

Finally, I would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge the expertise and work put into making this bill what it is today: the tripartite working group who agreed the principles that guide this bill; all those who made submissions to the Education and Workforce Committee, with some of them sharing what must have been very difficult experiences; the input from the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions and BusinessNZ; and my colleague Iain Lees-Galloway, who did significant work on the bill; the officials and the many women who wrote to me to share their views on this important issue; and, of course, Kristine Bartlett, whose campaign for equitable pay laid the groundwork for this legislation.

There is still work to do to close the gender pay gap, especially the ethnic pay gaps, and to ensure all women and all people are treated equitably in the paid workforce. There is also work to do to recognise the unpaid work that is predominantly performed by women. This bill is an important milestone, and we can do even more. But, this evening, I’m very proud of where we have got to, and I look forward to the passing of this bill.

I’m proud to stand in this House tonight and say that National will support this final reading of the Equal Pay Amendment Bill. And I’m proud that our party has contributed to crafting this legislation and bringing it to the House. We support the simple concept that people should be paid the same for the same work, regardless of their gender, and we support the equally important concept that, if someone has been doing work and there are reasonable grounds to believe that that work has been historically undervalued based on their gender and has been underpaid because of that, they should be able to make a pay equity claim. So we support this bill, but I do want to put on the record some regrets that we have about the way that this legislation has come through this House.

The first regret I have is around the unnecessary delay in finalising the framework that this bill provides. Because what it does, as the Minister outlined in her speech, is provide a more effective bargaining framework to resolve pay equity claims so they need not all go to court. Of course, this was a process that National kicked off in the last Government, with recommendations coming from the joint working group on pay equity in 2016. A bill was drafted, things were ready to go, there was a change of Government. So my colleague Denise Lee, who believes very passionately in the concept of equal pay and pay equity, took a member’s bill to this Parliament to progress pay equity in the absence of the new Government picking up where National had left off. And I think it is of continuing shame to the members opposite that, when Denise Lee’s bill was picked from the ballot and came to this House, and with the provision of a very sound framework for equal pay and pay equity bargaining, members opposite chose not to act in good faith.

What they could’ve done is pick that bill up in 2018, and they could’ve taken it to the select committee and made amendments to it. Instead, what they did was they rejected that bill entirely in what I think was a piece of unnecessary partisan politics on an issue that need not require that. What that meant was we then waited and waited for a bill to be introduced, and, of course, the bill was symbolically introduced at the anniversary of women’s suffrage, which is nice in terms of the timing of the press release but, actually, just amounted to delay. And what we have seen since is ongoing delay. So, here we are, in the last three-week session of this Parliament, and, finally, this bill is being passed.

I do also want to note—and it’s going to be at midnight when it passes, I think. I do also want to note that a very substantial Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) has been tabled, amending the bill quite significantly. I note the constructive approach of the Minister, who said that she has been working behind the scenes with BusinessNZ and the unions on that SOP, but I do want to put on the record my concern that that SOP hasn’t been tested via the select committee process—it hasn’t been tested by public submission, by public questioning; members of the public haven’t had the opportunity to have their say on what’s in that SOP. The reason I raise that concern is there is always a risk when legislation is passed in this way, late at night, with SOPs that haven’t been responded to, that there are remaining—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): I’m going to interrupt the member. This is a third reading. The SOP passed through the committee of the whole House. This is the time to debate the bill as accepted by the committee of the whole House, not to relitigate the actual SOPs or the process. I’ve given the member a very long time to try to get all of that that she said—and she can get it in order, but she needs to do that now.

The reason this matters is, in commenting on the final form of this bill, there is always going to be a concern that there is something in this bill that members on both sides of the House have missed that will create an issue into the future. So I want to put on the record that we are hopeful this process works as well as possible for all parties to it. We want to see women being able to progress their claims for pay equity as easily as possible, and we want to see employers being engaged in good faith in that process to address claims. But, should there be issues and should there be problems, I want it noted that the process may have contributed to those issues.

I want to end my contribution by saying that, actually, this is an important moment. Equal pay matters. We still have an outstanding gender pay gap in this country. We all, I believe, want to live in a country and a world in which men and women have equal opportunities, are equally rewarded for their work, and are able to progress and fulfil their own potential to the maximum extent possible. This legislation provides a further step in the right direction, and I commend it to the House.

Kia ora, Mr Speaker. I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to speak to the Equal Pay Amendment Bill. I want to put on the Hansard the name of Rachael Baxter-Mackay, one of the women who actually signed the court action so that social workers would enter the process to create a standard of equal pay compared to their male counterparts inside the world of skills. It is 10 to midnight on a Thursday night and something of real importance is about to happen, and that is that women will finally see themselves and their skills measured against their male counterparts. The fact that we need legislation to make sure that they are measured for their skills against males who have the same distresses me. The fact that the National Party now finds themselves able to support that at third reading, even though at the committee of the whole House stage they voted against every amendment to do so, is a good thing. But they do so at 10 to midnight on a Thursday night.

We should not require ourselves to be measured against men. We should be recognised for our skills as women inside the workforce, but, finally, after a debacle in the last Parliament, where the National Party put hoops and barriers in the way of women to be able to be recognised and the value that they bring to society, finally, at 10 to midnight, we are finally going to pass a piece of legislation that will write what we have all known for decades. So I don’t know how to make this more important, but to say that New Zealand First not only commends this bill to the House, it commends every woman who has stood throughout the decades to get us to this point, including Rachael Baxter-Mackay, who put her name on a court case to take this forward to get the Government to recognise that women need to be paid equally for their skills. Kia ora.

I’m very pleased this evening to take what will be a very short call on the Equal Pay Amendment Bill, and I say “a very short call” because I understand that we want to get this bill passed tonight and I think that we should.

The dreams I have for my daughter and my grandchildren—one day, when I have them, hopefully—is that they will grow up in a country where the work that they do is equally valued and compensated equally to that of their male counterparts. This bill sets out the framework that we will achieve that outcome.

I want to acknowledge tonight the Minister, Julie Anne Genter, who has done an exceptional job. She did an exceptional job earlier answering our questions and has done a great job shepherding this bill through the House, and I commend her for that. She’s been outstanding.

I also wanted to do a mention of my colleague Denise Lee, who has done an exceptional amount of work on our side of the House on this bill. We know, as was noted earlier, that she brought a member’s bill to the House in her name to try and progress this legislation more quickly through the House. It was a frustration of hers that this wasn’t being progressed as quickly as it could have been. We note that the gender pay gap has remained the same for the last three years, which just isn’t good enough.

But we are here tonight to pass this bill so that we can address that imbalance so that, for women of today, our children and our grandchildren will grow up in a country where their work is valued and paid and compensated fairly and in accordance with that of their male counterparts. With that, I commend the bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise to speak at the third reading of the Equal Pay Amendment Bill, as I have at the other two readings. I think that the bill is, as many have said, one whose time has come. These have been very slow, very small steps towards something that is inevitable. This bill makes a contribution to that.

As far as I’m concerned, when I look at the way in which this country has managed its pay equity, this is another step along the way in the right direction. It’s been a long time coming. It’s taken quite a lot of time. I find it extraordinary that, in the midst of COVID recovery challenges and the issues facing the economy, a bill of this kind is—in the same way as the previous three bills—being done under urgency at six minutes to midnight on a Thursday night. It is unnecessary and bizarre and reflects badly on the way that the Government has organised its legislative programme.

💬 Hon Tracey Martin: It could have been done in nine years under a National Government, of course.

Is that a Chihuahua I hear in the corner of the Chamber? We’ve heard enough of that strange noise, and I guess after the dinner break and at this time of night, some members have become tired and emotional. We’ll ignore them as we always do. But equal pay—

💬 Hon Tracey Martin: Nice way to devalue contributions.

—is the principle here, “Madam Chihuahua” on the other side, and that is a principle that is worth doing and worth talking about.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): Order! Order! I’m on my feet. No, you cannot refer to another member of the House in that manner. I don’t know who you were speaking about, but if it’s a member of the House, you must not do that.

Duly noted. Thank you. Getting back to the substance of this bill, which we support—we don’t support the Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) or some of the nonsense that has been said around the bill. But the principle is there: the unlawful discrimination claims—the things that we’ve all fought and talked about for a number of years. This is not a bill that needs to take up any further time; it has taken quite enough time thanks to the slackness of this Government to get to the stage where it is today. So I commend the bill to the House, but we oppose SOP 548 for very good reason that has been extensively covered already, and we will leave it at that. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It is an absolute privilege to take a short call on this bill. The member who just resumed her seat, Maggie Barry, in a previous debate commended Kristine Bartlett on her tenacity going through these years of court cases. That was more than a little disingenuous, because the National Party previously prevented Kristine Bartlett and her union from actually settling. So that comment from that member was an absolutely disingenuous comment.

But I would like to focus on the positive. This is, tonight, a very historic moment. This bill has been a very long time in the making, and I’m glad that at midnight we are passing a bill that is a start to addressing the unacceptable gender pay gap that still exists, after decades of discrimination and prejudice in female-dominated industries. Luckily, we’re not passing the National Party’s bill that they tried to pass, push through, in 2017, trying to prevent women from ever getting to pay equity, because that’s what that bill would have done, and the member’s bill was an exact copy—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): Order! We are debating the third reading of this bill, not another bill.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. This bill is absolutely the right way to start addressing that unacceptable pay gap that still exists. So, in this bill, we are now seeing a tidy-up, where we’re setting a lower threshold to get claims through in a simpler and more accessible way for women to progress those claims.

I would like to congratulate all the women and all the people that have been fighting for so many years for pay equity—the Ministers and officials who have worked tirelessly on this piece of legislation, tidied up all the many complex issues that there were to tidy up. They have done excellent work in this legislation, and I commend it to the House. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Bill read a third time.