The Government is planning a massive overhaul of New Zealand’s pay equityregime, which will make it more difficult for people to take pay equity claims.
The reforms will overhaul a 2020 law establishing a regime to allow people in sectors with a large female workforce to argue that they were underpaid relative to similar work done in sectors dominated by men.
The changes will be retrospective and passed under urgency. All 33 current claims will cease and those claimants will need to reapply under the new regime. The Herald confirmed with MBIE there was no regulatory impact statement for the changes. The Government is looking to do a post-implementation review of the changes.
Workplace Relations Minster Brooke van Velden who is in charge of the new regime and acknowledged it was likely to affect hundreds of thousands of workers.
A single claim made by teachers affects 75,000 people.
Jesus wept, you gotta give it Van Velden! Girlfriend  just wants it more!
She has brought war directly to the Union’s door and the Unions ain’t sure.
Pay parity legal action has been the main go to for the Union movement in NZ. It’s easier than actually growing Union Membership and going on strike, which is fine and dandy. Until it’s not.
The sheer scale of the hard Right’s agenda demands a response far greater than, ‘we will take you to Court’ because Van Velden intends to change the bloody law!
She is going to crush the right of women workers and she won’t flinch once, a point E Tu notes…
Government move to kill pay equity process is an attack on women workers
E tū is slamming the Government’s announcement that it will make it harder for workers to claim pay equity, describing it as an attack on women and a green light to pay them less for work of equal value.
The changes, announced by Workplace Relations Minister Brooke van Velden, will raise the bar for proving historical undervaluation in female-dominated workforces – cutting off current claims and making new ones near impossible.
…the NZCTU drives this home…
Changes will gut the Equal Pay Act and lock in discrimination
The New Zealand Council of Trade Unions Te Kauae Kaimahi is slamming the Government’s proposed changes to the Equal Pay Act, announced today by Brooke van Velden, as an attack on working women and their rights to pay equity.
…once again, the Union movement has underestimated the enemy they face.
At what point does the Union movement admit it and call Van Velden out as a bad faith actor who has zero interest in negotiating a deal for worker rights, and instead wants to crush them?
The Unions have no choice but to call a general strike and damn the consequences!
The NZ Union movement have to actually fight back because Van Velden is here to play for keeps, and despite the constant warnings that Van Velden was something far more malicious than the Unions had previously faced (a point TDB has been making monthly since this Government was elected), the Unions are still sitting on their hands!
Look, if the Unions start pushing for the right to strike by citing Van Velden’s extremism as the reason, they move the Overton Window.
This seems to be a concept the Unions are incapable of comprehending.
EVERY PUBLIC WORKER requires a 15% across the board pay rise ALONGSIDE more holidays ALONGSIDE more benefits so that we build public sector jobs that acknowledge their importance in the running of the State and Society.
To do that we need real political muscle and Union Leaders prepared to use that political muscle.
Our refusal to enact ILO Convention 87 on the right to strike, our lack of true leadership inside the Union movement and the failure to do anything other than perk up bureaucrats in Wellington has meant that when a truly right wing government appears with a radical agenda, there is no Union movement left to fight.
We have almost no rights to strike in this country.
No rights for sympathy strikes, no rights for wildcat strikes, no rights at all because we have a Union movement too frightened to actually fight for them.
I agree with the International Centre for Trade Union Rights (ICTUR) and their analysis of our weak union movement:
- Reforms to overturn the legislative undermining of freedom of association and the right to strike
- Amend the right to freedom of association in the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990 to expressly include the right to collectively bargain and the right to strike in conformity with the law
- Include the right to decent work (including the right to gain one’s living by work which is freely chosen or accepted) in the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990
- Include the right to just and favourable conditions of work (as expressed in art 7 of ICESCR) in the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990
- Include other economic, social and cultural rights in the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990
- Review the role of the courts, and Parliament, in ensuring rights-consistent legislation – remove excessive sanctions from the social welfare system
- Ensure effective implementation of the principle of equal opportunity and treatment in employment, including for Māori workers
- Review immigration policies and regulations to remove barriers to migrant workers seeking assistance and remedies for labour exploitation and other rights abuses
A 10 day nationwide strike would do more for workers than 10 elections ever could.
This anti-Worker Government has pushed for lower wages, weaker safety regulations and deregulation of industry for their donors interests at the cost of those who make capitalism work – the actual workers!
As geopolitical tensions point the pretension of free market capitalism, it is the workers who are tasked with getting the job done who are trapped in late stage capitalism on a burning planet!
Our economy, community and society are going to be forced into urgent adaptation thanks to global warming and AI.
Late Stage Capitalism is collapsing under the weight of its own greed.
Workers Rights are Human Rights.
We need to be kinder to individuals and crueller to corporations.
It is time for the Left to unite and fight back.
The Unions must take a stand!
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The unions never recovered from the Employment Contracts Act. They embraced identity politics because it’s easier than class politics. They have alienated their rank and file members who just use them for bargaining. Unions are supposed to do more than bargain. The PSA has a good delegate system but it’s a middle class union and has little in common with workers.
Ennius Ostensibly, this looks like a continuation of the war on women enacted at Albert Park, enthusiastically embraced by Labour, the Greens, and the MSM, seemingly aided and abetted by the police. As long as New Zealand continues to import masses of exploitable predominantly Asian immigrants to fill the gaps, the power and significance of the union wanes, as does that of the workforce when many immigrant see us as a back door to Australia. It’s the ‘haves’ bullying the ‘have nots’ on that trajectory initiated by the Employment Contracts Act, and a shocking kneecapping of the democratic process.
DO NOT BLAME THE RAINBOW COMMUNITY FOR THIS OURAGE THE PERSON TO BLAME IS WILLIS BECAUSE SHE CANT DO MATHS
Nobody is blaming the the rainbow community for this.
QUOTE “AN EXTENSION ON THE WAR ON WOMEN AT ALBERT PARK “ WHO HAD THE BLAME FOR THAT ONE I’ll give you a clue it wasn’t Posy Parker
It’s 10 words in about 90 words in the comment that was not the major point being made so stop being so sensitive.
Sensitive ???why mention it in the first place
Try to stick to the larger matter Not my govt eh.
It is time to realise that there is no happy balance in present society. So please choose not to make it worse and pick on every possible affront. We are assailed by problems bigger than Mt Everest but can trip on stones in our path.
Why are people upset with me when the first words off a page are about albert park
Plus your caps lock key is stuck.
PURPOSELY
Yes indeed.
History repeats itself because that’s what leading Italian Marxists did a 100 years ago. And fascism was born!
No, when she was born it was Brooke, now it’s fascism.
No the unions never recovered when industry was gutted along with the employment contracts act.young workers have no clue about workers,sorry to say but working immigrants from India only look after themselves plus the left fighting amongst themselves doesn’t help. Where is Winston you know the man with a forked tongue one minute wanting to define a woman next minute grinding their noses in the sand all to balance the witches budget. We were warned
The Minister is NZ’s Thatcher–minus the charm…Van Velden, women’s Pay Snatcher.
Trashing Pay Equity in 24 hours with no public consultation shows this vandalistic CoC’s allegiance to the parasite class. As others have pointed out, new military hardware is being funded, while they kneecap years of work in advancing women’s working lives. Women were 50.33% of the population in 2023, and hopefully they will return the favour at the next election to this bunch of arseholes.
Direct action needs to be taken by women, and their supporters, across the country. Official Union leaders will likely baulk under the weight of anti strike law and their generally wimpish outlook–so it will need to be a grassroots movement–many thousands of women are affected here not just union members.
I’m PM Luxon, and I’m too busy jetting about the world, than to deal with Tuesday afternoon media conferences. My trusty chainsaw has slashed the civil service, putting droves of highly experienced, onto the unemployment quagmire by underfunding health and education.
But heck, it only costs $200000 to house a prisoner for a year, so I’ll get minister Mitchell to build more prisons. And heck, what’s a few billion on brand spanking new hyperveolicity military helicopters, and the latest gadgets and gizmos to kill and maim, becuase of course that needs to be our priority, because the “Don” says so.
We have generously provided our massive ECE and tax package releif, to a fully qualified wopping number of families in this country – I believe the actual number is between 25 and 30.
And becuase I want to do the right thing, I will authorise the abuse in care redress system as soon as I possibly can, somewhere in the never never, preferably kicking the can down the road as far as possilble – but torpedoing pay equity has to happen immediately under urgency, for the seriously serious reasons of mumble mumble, and mumble mumble, and don’t forget mumble mumble.
And I have one hundred percent trust and faith in Nicola, who’s a lean mean killing machine…having killed the great ferry deal that would have seen state of the art futuristic hybrid boats plowing the Cook Straight, and she’s now getting ready to sink her fangs into Kiwisaver government contributions, and ending winter energy payments to shivering pensioners. Truely Nicola and I, are like the Mahatma Gandhi and Mother Theresa of NZ politics, and the country needs to show us more appreciation. In fact, I may even call a snap election to allow voters the chance to prove their adoration at the ballot box. I polish my noggin especially, to refect back all the love.
National have suffered a major panic attack with this Bill passing and the budget pending.
Better manager of the economy? Yeah, right. Pull the other one!
Don’t B.S. the voting public, they won’t fall for it a second time.
Unfortunately they do fall for it. Idiots like BTF think this iteration of National have a clue
Disgusting stuff, can’t quite get a handle as to why this has been pushed through without anyone being able to make a submission on it.
When will her Bill be put forward to stop women getting the vote?
General strike now!
Agree with Applewood AND our PM has been talking with a forked tongue again; in one breath he says he is pushing for more trade deals so NZers can get good wages. And yet he is backing this rushed and retrospective equity bill. In the meantime unskilled low qualified immigrants are pouring into our country, and they will take up these lowly undervalued paid roles leaving many kiwis out in the cold.
Every public sector worker should get 15% more pay. Seriously?
That would add another $5 billion to the cost of government each year. A massive increase in taxes. And get literally nothing more.
By this standard Grant Robertson was a penny pinching miser.
I have read Wayne before and it seems that none of our suggestions for betterment find favour with him. What would he do to help the ordinary person manage better as far as money goes? Presumably he is not feeling the pinch him or herself?
Everyone needs to sign the petition now up and running and already more than 20,000 signatures.
https://www.together.org.nz/fbt_for_pay_equity?utm_campaign=protect_pay_equity&utm_medium=email&utm_source=together
Last year I heard a clinician from the Wairarapa saying he thought that health would be this government’s downfall.
But surely this legislation is also a bridge to far for the government. How many women will vote for parties that do or go along with this sort of shit.
Then I read a critic of the new sex education shit, I mean it is just so so very old in its thinking and information.
I hope someone is keeping a tab of all of these things, that are going to take 3 years for any government following to put right.
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