What others are doing about pay equity

Strategies to mitigate the impacts of increasing gaps in pay equity are currently occurring at the State Government level, and within some large enterprises.

The Queensland Industrial Relations Commission report recommended, inter alia, that the Queensland Government enact a Pay Equity Act, which has as its principal object the achievement of pay equity by the promotion of equal opportunity and the prevention of discrimination.

In 2004, the Minister for Industrial Relations, Victoria, announced a Pay Equity Inquiry to identify the extent of the gender pay gap in Victoria and to investigate the factors contributing to differences in pay rates between men and women in Victoria. This Inquiry found that the reasons for the pay gap are related to:
The fact that women are more reliant on awards for their wage increases, and are less likely to engage in enterprise bargaining than men;

• A large proportion of women work in low-paid occupations and industries like child care and retail;
• A large proportion of women work in part-time work, which doesn't offer as many opportunities for training or promotion;
• Difficulty accessing child care or flexible working arrangements limit the job options for working mothers;
• Difficulty of access to processes that remedy pay inequity (e.g. bringing a case against an employer under the Federal Workplace Relations Act 1996 or the Victorian Equal Opportunity Act 1995) and the uncertainty regarding the interpretation of current legislation.

As a result of this Inquiry, in 2005 it was recommended that the Victorian Government should develop a Plan of Action for Pay Equity to ensure that pay equity measures were carried forward, monitored, developed and integrated with other Government initiatives that may affect pay equity. The content of the Plan was recommended to included:

• Education and promotion strategies;
• Strategies to address the undervaluation of ‘feminised' work;
• Strategies to improve relative income;
• Legislative action;
• Gender pay equity audits; and
• Infrastructure to implement the Plan of Action.

Other States' Governments including New South Wales and Western Australia were also looking at expanding the powers of State commissions. Western Australia (where there is a 28% pay gap) has established a Pay Equity Unit in its Department of Consumer and Employment Protection, which is responsible for education, audits and policy on pay equity for the WA Government.

Another approach is based on States persuading large enterprises to develop pay equity strategies.

• The best known of these approaches is the current Enterprise Agreement facilitated by the Victorian Department of Industrial Relations (IRV) between the National Australia Bank (NAB) and the Financial Services Union (FSU), which provided for a pay equity audit that was completed in February 2008. The Department participated in the audit, and hopes to use the audit as a case study for other large firms. This approach is likely to be less useful with medium to small enterprises.

The determination of minimum wages is critical to women's substantive pay position. Pay equity audits and the various State approaches may not be adequate alone.

The narrow functions of the Australian Fair Pay Commission, together with the reduced role for minimum rate industry awards, render the equitable and timely determination of minimum wages problematic. The equal remuneration provisions in Federal legislation (which were inserted by Labor in 1993) lack the capacity to address gender pay equity because they rely on a narrow test of sex discrimination. The constraint of this necessity to prove discrimination limits the utility of appeal to the Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission.