A rally against the pay equity reforms. Photo / Brendon Lane
There is no great rush of pay equity claims brought under the Government’s new, more restrictive regime, with a tiny number of the claims cancelled by urgent reforms of the scheme likely to be revived in the near term.
Thirty-three claims were being pursued at the time the Government legislated its reforms in May, which raised the threshold to make a claim and changed the way claims are assessed.
The changes are likely to result in fewer and less costly claims and are estimated to save the Government $12.8 billion over the next four years.
However, the nurses’ union confirmed to the Herald it was “very close” to bringing two new claims, which may become the first to be started under the new system.
The Herald contacted the ministries and unions at the centre of most pay equity claims that were extinguished.
Last week, the Herald asked Workplace Relations Minister Brooke van Velden for an update on the number of claims brought or likely to be brought under her new regime.
Van Velden’s office said the matter was better handled by the agencies responsible for the claims, and forwarded the Herald’s query to them.
When asked whether she was happy with the way the new regime was working, van Velden said it was “early days to see how it will roll out in practice”.
“I do believe we got the law correct,” she said.
Health NZ Te Whatu Ora’s funding and investment director, Jason Power, told the Herald it purchased “services from a large number of third-party providers but we are not the employer of the workforces that deliver these contracted services”.
“We are not aware of any new pay equity claims across the third-party providers we purchase services from,” Power said.
The Ministry of Education’s hautū (leader), Anna Welanyk, told the Herald “no new pay equity claims have been raised since the amendments were made to the Equal Pay Act”.
She said the ministry “has ongoing obligations under the amended Equal Pay Act to respond to and investigate new pay equity claim/s that are raised, once it’s been determined the claim meets the required thresholds applying to new claims. Our responsibility to respond to new claims continues under the amended Equal Pay Act.”
The Herald also spoke to the unions responsible for the workforces likely to take claims.
Public Service Association (PSA) national secretary Fleur Fitzsimons, who ran as a Labour candidate at the last election, told the Herald the union “had no intention to file any claims under the new amended Equal Pay Act”.
Fitzsimons said the union had “no confidence women will get equal pay through that legislation”.
“It guts the heart of pay equity. It undermines the ability for women to even be heard,” she said.
She said that in some cases, the legislation barred claims from being lodged. This was the case with care and support workers’ claim.
That claim, which was fought in the courts and sparked the creation of the old pay equity scheme, expired at the end of 2023. In some cases, these workers are now earning the minimum wage.
The new regime prevents settled claims being revisited for 10 years after they were initially settled. This means if a pay equity settlement is eroded as a result of male-dominated workforces’ wages rising faster, it cannot be litigated until 10 years after the settlement.
“There isn’t any ability for those women to even advance a claim under the current legislation – it’s not a choice we’ve made, the legislation itself bans the claim,” Fitzsimons said.
She said in the case of other workforces such as probation officers, library assistants, and administration and clerical workers, the union would not be taking pay equity claims but is “seeking improvements to their pay through collective bargaining”.
The New Zealand Nurses Organisation (NZNO) is taking a different approach. It had 12 claims that it took or was a party to – covering 13,200 members – extinguished by the law change.
NZNO chief executive Paul Goulter told the Herald “we decided pretty much immediately after the announcement the issue was too important for us not to pursue any chance at all of continuing pay equity claims”.
“Our members are very strongly in support of us doing that,” he said.
Goulter said the Government’s changes were “intended in our view to rule out advancing pay equity claims under the guise of making it easier and more transparent”.
He said employers in the funded sector, the private employers who deliver mainly government-funded services, were also keen to have pay equity established because it would help to grow the workforce.
He said the union was “very close” to lodging claims relating to Plunket and hospice workers.
Goulter also raised concerns with the 10-year rule. He noted a large claim relating to nurses employed by Health NZ could not be reopened until 2033. It covered 35,000-40,000 nurses.
Education sector union NZEI Te Riu Roa is still delving into how the new regime will function.
Because it was passed in mere hours under urgency, without consultation or a select committee, unions had very little time to come to grips with the way the new regime works.
NZEI’s national secretary Stephanie Mills said her union was still “analysing“ the new regime.
“We’ve asked the ministry a number of questions about how they would interpret the new act in relation to a claim or claims,” she said.
Mills said many of the things her union is looking at include “technical” problems, such as the new regime’s changing of the threshold for raising a claim to one of “merit”. The old system allowed claims to be raised if they were “arguable”.
What that means in practice is still not clear to NZEI.
Asked whether the union would take a claim in future, Mills said NZEI wanted to “keep looking”.
“We do want to do the best by members. In the end we’ll have to make a call about whether we do or don’t [lodge a claim].
“In the meantime we’ll be making the argument that the legislation does need to change and does need to be fixed,” she said.