General

Rudd has chance to fix pay inequality

By Suzanne Hammond
National Pay Equity Coalition

The new Rudd Government promises a fair, modern workplace relations system. This promise has been in response to the WorkChoices debacle inflicted upon and rejected by the Australian worker.

The gender pay gap has been persistent and intransigent and while many see the solution to the `gap' and women's equality in the workforce as eventually responding to the market, or to women entering male dominated areas of work, or to education, all these solutions or explanations have failed so far.

Wages in jobs and industries where women work haven't increased despite labour shortages and while women have increased education levels this still hasn't provided equality in earnings and career progression.

The main contributing influence in institutionalizing gender pay inequality is that the work that women do is underpaid and undervalued. It is clear that women work in low paid sectors, as carer's, in the health and education sectors and as clerical and retail workers.

However because women choose to work in these sectors is no justification as to why these workers are low paid. One would ask `who will do the work? And why shouldn't women ( or men) choose to work in these areas of employment. Often the work that women do is overlooked or unrecognized. Many tasks and so called soft skills such as communication, decisionmaking, pastoral care go unrecognized as a work skill.

Who is to say that making a decision about what child ought to be attended to, or which patient needs priority is less a decision or worth less than that of an information systems officer deciding the priority of which computer to fix or which order a bricklayer should lay bricks?

Current income rates indicate that many occupations where women work are paid hundreds of dollars a week less than similarly but differently skilled male jobs. Women's skills are valued and paid less.

A way forward to redress this problem of the gender gap is to have the work that women do properly valued and remunerated. The problem of undervaluation of women's work can be redressed through tackling gendered notions of skill and reward that exist in pay and classifications structures in awards and agreements.

The current re-structuring of the Workplace Relations system, Fair Work Australia, provides an opportunity to improve women's working lives and create a more efficient labour market.

There are three ways that Fair Work Australia can improve the gender gap. Firstly, as part of Fair Work Australia , the Rudd Government passed legislation to allow for `Award Modernisation'. Awards are to reflect the nature of a modern workforce. As part of the award moderinisation process the Australian Industrial Relations Commission, who certainly have the expertise to do so, could investigate skill, value, pay and classification structures that may reflect past concepts of the value of women's work. Award moderinisation provides a unique opportunity for tackling past held gendered notions of skill and value of work.

Secondly, there is an opportunity to review the Equal Remuneration Principles in the current Federal Workplace Relations Act. The current provisions have proved to be inadequate in redressing the undervaluation of work.

In reviewing the Equal Remuneration provisions of the Federal Act those drafting the Fair Work Australia framework need to examine Principles set in State Tribunals such as New South Wales and Queensland where the need to prove discrimination and establish comparable work value, as currently bedevils the Federal Act, are not required. The State Tribunals and Principles have proved to be a much more successful forum for correcting gender wage inequality.

Thirdly, the new minimum wage setting body must ensure a fair and decent wage is set on principles of a fair wage for the work performed. A strong minimum wage is an important factor in improving women's wage outcomes and dealing with the gender wage gap as many women are reliant on minimum wages.

Any proposal that discounts increases in the adjustment to the Federal Minimum Wage based on tax cuts or welfare payments is a huge step backwards in pay equity. Workers ought to be paid for the value of their work not on their personal circumstances. Furthermore, it is poor policy when we have forecasts of an ageing population which will be more reliant on superannuation. Cutting minimum wages will impede a workers ability to build superannuation. The gender pay gap not only effects women's economic livelihood in their working life but also in their retirement.

Pay equity is a complex and difficult problem to solve but it does have serious implications for working women, and their workforce participation, the efficient function of the labour market, and Australia's future economic prosperity.

It is true to say that the former Federal Government dropped the ball on pay equity and WorkChoices was a disaster for working women. The new Fair Work Australia could give us an opportunity to tackle gender wage inequality and build a `modern' workplace relations system free of past gendered notions of skill and work value.

Suzanne Hammond
National Pay Equity Coalition

© 2001 Community & Public Sector Union - State Public Services Federation (CPSU-SPSF) - National Office

http://www.cpsu-spsf.asn.au/latest_news/general/20080509_wages.html
Last Modified: 09 May 2008