Source: Workers First Union
Workers First Union has described today’s announcement that the Government will attempt to shut down existing pay equity claims and make it harder to file new ones as a “national embarrassment” that will worsen inequality in New Zealand and continue the flood of experienced professionals in historically female-dominated professions to countries overseas.
Sheryl Cadman, Workers First Central Region Secretary, said that the plan announced today by Minister Brooke Van Velden reneges on decades of bipartisan work on pay equity because the current Government cannot manage the economy ahead of Budget 2025/26.
“Minister Van Velden has decided to make tens of thousands of women pay for her Government’s next austerity budget,” said Ms Cadman.
“As a policy decision, it achieves the ambitious trifecta of worsening the long-term health of our economy, exacerbating worker shortages in health, education and other historically female-dominated industries, and embedding unfairness throughout our society.”
Ms Cadman said pay equity claims like Workers First’s case on behalf of veterinary nurses across the private sector could be jeopardised by the Government’s “fast-tracked” changes to the system that deals with pay equity claims.
“We’ll regroup and assess our options, but the problems do not go away just because the legislative pathway for change has been willingly broken by the Government,” said Ms Cadman.
“Entire industries rely on the pay equity claim process to have an expert court consider their historical underpayment and make recommendations for redress – not an ignorant Minister whose main experience of female workers is as people who bring her things.”
“Using parliamentary urgency to force a law change like this that demands careful scrutiny is especially foolish, short-sighted and authoritarian.”
Ms Cadman said she reserved particular disdain for Minister Brooke van Velden.
“Minister Van Velden is a politician who’s incapable of listening and barely capable of thinking clearly about the present moment, let alone considering the decades of unfairness in the past that has made pay equity a priority for anyone who wants to make New Zealand a better place to live.”
“The union movement has dealt with worse and we will fight this again.”
