Pay equity taskforce welcomed

By MATHEW DEARNALEY

Nurses and other public servants have welcomed the Government's appointment of a pay equity taskforce which could add hundreds of millions of dollars to its annual wages bill.

The extra cost for healthcare alone, if the Government accepts research commissioned by the nurses' union, could exceed $240 million.

Labour Minister Margaret Wilson yesterday announced a joint Government-union taskforce to recommend a five-year plan for closing pay gaps between women and men in the public service, and in the public health and education sectors.

This follows a Government election pledge to promote pay equity, despite the demise of centralised wage-bargaining.

The Council of Trade Unions described the taskforce as "a positive and constructive step" towards valuing work done by women.

CTU president Ross Wilson said the issue had not been addressed for more than a decade and the council looked forward to contributing to the goal of ending all forms of pay discrimination in the public sector.

Retirement Commissioner Diana Crossan will head the seven-member taskforce, which will also include three senior civil servants and three CTU nominees, to report back to ministers by the end of the year.

The Government appointees will be the chief executives or nominees of the Labour Department, the Ministry of Women's Affairs and the State Services Commission.

Finance Minister Michael Cullen will be one of a four-member ministerial reference group which will receive the taskforce's report.

Various subgroups will be appointed to carry out work in the three public sectors in question, and will be chaired separately by human resources consultant and former primary teachers' union secretary Joanna Beresford.

The cost of resulting pay increases can only be estimated.

But a Nurses Organisation claim that its 20,000 or so members earn $12,000 to $19,000 less than members of comparable male-dominated professions suggests a potential catch-up of at least $240 million for them alone.

Last week's Budget acknowledged the Nurses' Organisation's indication that it would seek substantial pay rises in a medium-term campaign to close the gap as an unquantified fiscal risk to the Government.

* Union membership has risen for the third year in a row, according to a survey by Victoria University's Industrial Relations Centre.

The centre also found membership to be "increasingly a public sector phenomenon".

Approximately 335,000 New Zealand workers now belonged to unions, a rise of 10.7 per cent, or 32,400 people, over the three years to December 2002, the centre said in a statement released yesterday.

During the same period the labour force had grown 6.9 per cent.

Union density for the year to December 2002 had been calculated as 21.7 per cent of wage and salary earners.

Centre director Professor Pat Walsh said membership growth continued to be strongest in the public sector with health, education and core Government unions recording solid increases.

"In fact, our research on collective bargaining is starting to show that membership and bargaining are increasingly a public sector phenomenon."