Over a working lifetime, the average woman will earn around half a million dollars less than the average man – and veteran campaigners will meet high school student leaders today to discuss the equal pay campaign.
Monica Briggs, the chief executive of YWCA Auckland, will join Maori Party co-leader Marama Fox MP and leaders from Wellington schools at an event in Parliament’s West Foyer.
“These young women are about to embark on their working lives, and they’re horrified that the average woman still earns 14 per cent less than a man doing the same job,” Ms Briggs says.
“That’s despite the Equal Pay Act being law in this country since 1972.”
Ms Fox will also receive some of the 10,000 postcards calling for the government to accept all the recommendations of the Joint Working Group on equal pay.
“Getting equal pay for work of equal value is a crucial part of this equation,” Ms Briggs says.
“Employers, government negotiators and unions agreed on the recommendations – and we want Cabinet to do their part.”
At a recent conference, a speaker suggested that women just stop working for 14% of the working day, because they are getting 14% less pay than the average man?
Let’s say that is an 8-hour day, 480 minutes. If my maths is right after a carry-the-one-and-divide-by-the-number-you-first-started-with, the answer is 67.2 minutes, just over an hour.
So if you see your female boss, with her feet up on the desk and her hands clamped behind her head, just give her the thumbs-up sign – “I support your protest against unequal pay averages”
Yes inequality is bullshit alright, especially because there is legislation against pay inequality.
These are the sorts of issues that the left-wing of Mana, Labour, Green and New Zealand First should be champions of, leading up to the next election.
What do we have instead? A referendum on a flag that no-one wanted. A suitcase bill from a patsy National Party hack and inequality in New Zealand at the worst levels it has ever been at. Left wing, socialist, aroha and tatau tatau (what is mine I share with you) should be on the lips of every voter in 2017.
I recall the ads from the last election (the one where the Nats stole Eminem’s song “Lose yourself”), with rowers rowing off into the distance and all the colonialist iconography of Oxbridge elitism, while the rowboat of the hapless coalition of the left floundered in a sinking rowboat. It was classic neoliberal scaremongering Cossack-ism.
Get your shit together Left-Wing – stand for something like pay equality, or closing the economic gap between rich and poor, or fair slice of the economic cake.
Get your collective shit together, or spend another 3 years on the cross benches of NZ politics.
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