The Minister of Labour says that there is no need for legislation to modernise the Equal Pay Act 1972, as workers can request Department of Labour inspectors to investigate if they think that men and women are not being paid equally. As there are very few labour inspectors and this mechanism has never been used, unions are trying to test it by getting 100 worksites to request an investigation.

There is a big gap between the average pay for men and women for each hour we work. There is also probably a very big gap in the finance industry – in Australia, where data is available by industry, finance is the industry with the widest pay gap – at 32.2% twice the national average.

Finsec will be asking some of our elected leaders to participate in the campaign and ask for investigations to be conducted in their worksites.

“This will make people more determined to ensure their wages do not fall in value. While there is a welcome increase in the number who have had increases during the year (rising from 56 percent to 58 percent), with a median of 2.9 percent, most have had increases less than inflation, and many people (42 percent) have not had wage increases at all during the year,” said Rosenberg.

“Collective agreements are consistently one of the most important reasons (combined with cost of living and keeping up with market rates) for pay rises. This underlines the importance of collective agreements negotiated by unions in ensuring wages do rise as the economy improves.”

The gender pay gap in the average wage is 13 percent.

Thompson said in a radio interview this week that the 12% gender pay gap was “Because once a month they have sick problems.  Not all women, but some do, they have children they have to take time off to go home and take leave.”

Helen Kelly told NZPA Thompson should stand down immediately. “It will be insulting for every woman worker in this country today that is at work, earning less than men, rushing home to look after kids, dealing with all the household issues. And to hear him suggest there is a physical reason for the difference in pay is just outrageous.”

Kelly and Thompson had been discussing a new bill from Green MP Catherine Delahunty to modernise the Equal Pay Act, and make sure that workers and unions could request information on pay levels by gender in their workplaces to make sure women were being paid fairly.

Banking and finance was the worst sector for unequal gap at nearly double the industry average of 16.9%. Information on the gap for our sector is not available for New Zealand – but if it is similar to Australian, women staff at our banks could be 25% behind male staff in terms of pay.

Howden said that the issue was very pertinent for Finsec members, the majority of whom are women.

“In ANZ National for example, we are helping to address pay inequities by ensuring that our largely-female casual staff are covered by the collective agreement and are in a better position to negotiate fair pay increases,” said Howden. “This would be a good move if we could spread this right through our industry.”

Howden said before the action, he wasn’t aware of how much the Government had dropped the issue of pay equity. “National cut all the last government’s pay equity initiatives. Government needs to have a role in ensuring we have fair pay for everyone.”

18 February is Red Bag Day – the day that women effectively start getting paid this year. Before 18 Feb, women were working for “free” – catching up with men’s pay from 2010.

“A series of actions underway to close the pay gap in the state sector, and followed up in the private sector, were abruptly stopped by the government last year,” said spokesperson Angela McLeod. “Gender pay reviews, and the action plans that resulted, were tangible ways for the government to close the pay gap between women and men, currently 12 per cent.”

McLeod says that suffrage day should be a celebration, to honour the work of Kate Shepherd and the suffragists who won the vote for women in New Zealand. “But there is not a lot to celebrate in the government’s attitude towards working women in 2010.”

“This government wants to take us from leading the world on fairness for women to lagging along behind or at best, stay with the pack”.

While the overall gender pay gap in Australia is 18%, the gap in the finance sector is 28% – the worst in the country. “We must get to the bottom of this issue, to not only gain a better understanding of why this pay gap exist, but to also develop solutions, for the good of the whole finance sector,” said FSU National Secretary Leon Carter.

ME Bank, together with the FSU, is looking to scrutinise its systems and pay outcomes, to engage staff in an examination of the work environment, and recommend improvements to overcome the pay gap for their 700 employees. ME Bank CEO Jamie McPhee said the bank was committed to gender pay equity.

The FSU engaged in a similar process with NAB in 2006-7, and are in discussions with the bank about progress made since then.

Five large stones were placed on parliament grounds and were then “turned” with five simple suggestions underneath to highlight what the Minister could do to close the 12% gap between men and women’s hourly earnings in New Zealand. These included adopting legislation to guarantee pay equity, raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour and increasing access to quality early childhood education.

“Come on National – how are you going to work with employers and unions across both public and private sectors to reduce the pay gap?” asked Coalition Spokesperson Angela McLeod.

Finsec Campaigns Director Andrew Campbell spoke at the rally calling on the Government to provide leadership on the issue, saying it was cruel to leave it to the women currently most disadvantaged by gender pay issues to resolve this problem with no help.

The study, by the Financial Services Institute of Australasia (Finsia), showed that 85% percent of women agreed there was a gender divide in the industry, compared to only 26% of men.

Fifty eight percent of men flatly denied there was any discrepancy between the sexes in the industry, despite later agreeing that any gender pay gap was a fair reflection of the men’s skills and the hours they work.

A majority of female financiers said family commitments forced women to trade promotion for flexibility, and 72 percent did not think that employers had taken the steps necessary to give women the same career opportunities as men.

The Unison union said it was a “major” victory for these union members. Theresa Daly, a school laundress for a school and one of those affected, said “I was annoyed. I worked as hard as the men and I had been working for a long time. To think they were getting paid more than me wasn’t very fair.”

Finsec members are taking up the issue of pay equity in the banking sector this year, and have asked the banks for information about how women’s pay compares to that of their male colleagues.