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RNZ News
7 hours ago
- Business
- RNZ News
Council of Trade Unions take NZ's pay equity fight to international conference
Pay equity protestors voice their opinions outside Parliament on Budget day 2025. Photo: RNZ/Marika Khabazi A representative from the Council of Trade Unions has taken New Zealand's pay equity fight to an international conference. The International Labour Organisation (ILO) is a United Nations agency, which brings together workers, employers and governments to discuss work-related issues, and whose mandate is to advance social and economic justice by setting international labour standards. Council of Trade Unions secretary Melissa Ansell-Bridges is at its annual conference in Geneva, Switzerland. The coalition government announced in early May it would use urgency in Parliament to raise the threshold for proving work has been historically undervalued when making a pay equity claim. Workplace Minister Brooke van Velden said at the time , claims had been able to progress without strong evidence of undervaluation, and some had been "very broad", where it was difficult to tell whether differences in pay were due to sex-based discrimination or something else. The move cancelled 33 in-progress pay equity claims, and saved the government billions of dollars . Ansell-Bridges told RNZ she spoke about the changes during her speech to the ILO plenary on Tuesday. "It was important to inform the 187 member states that despite not being signalled in the last election, reforms to severely undermine the legislation were passed under urgency without any consultation with workers or their unions." The issue had come too late to make it onto the agenda for the ILO's committee on the application of standards, which sat during the two-week conference. "But that's definitely something that we'll be considering in advance of the conference next year," she said. If a case ended up being heard by the committee - which operated on a triage system - it would then be able to make recommendations to governments on how to stay in alignment with agreed conventions. Ansell-Bridges said the response from those international representatives who heard her speech had been one of warmth, support and surprise. "Obviously we have this reputation of being quite a progressive and forward-thinking country that values equality, and so to hear that these kinds of changes are happening in New Zealand, people are very surprised." Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
RNZ News
14-05-2025
- Politics
- RNZ News
Brooke van Velden meets with Council of Trade Unions after pay equity changes
Workplace Relations Minister Brooke van Velden. Photo: RNZ / Samuel Rillstone The Council of Trade Unions is meeting with Workplace Relations Minister Brooke van Velden on Thursday morning, hot on the heels of pay equity changes passing under urgency last week. The half-hour meeting from 10.15am is the minister's first with the union in about a year, despite her predecessors typically booking monthly catch-ups . It also coincides with an event hosted by Labour and the Greens to bring union members to Parliament to hear from them about the effects of the pay equity changes. CTU national secretary Melissa Ansell-Bridges told RNZ the minister's approach to the relationship was unprecedented, but they hoped to get straight into the substantive issues. "This is really an opportunity to, I suppose, begin some of those conversations that we haven't been able to have with her to date. Obviously top of the agenda is going to be pay equity and we're going to be conveying to Brooke how we think the changes that they have made are absolutely heading in the wrong direction. "We'll be wanting to get into the substantive issues, we have a lot of questions for Brooke about the changes she has made firstly to pay equity but also there's a range of other issues we haven't been able to engage with her about as well." Those other matters included calls for a ban on engineered stone, the government's policy of banning partial strikes, and other health and safety policies. She said they would be asking for the 33 in-progress claims that were scrapped last week to be restored, and the changes to the Act to be reversed. Whether that would be possible was up to the government, she said. "What they have done is absolutely atrocious and really needs to be reversed as soon as possible ... the changes that they have made to the Act undoubtedly make it harder to settle claims, and to settle claims that actually reflect the work that women do in those female-dominated industries. "We are going to be making sure that workers' voices are heard in that meeting, and that Brooke van Velden understands the depth of feeling about the changes." Asked about the lack of meetings, she said van Velden had shown she was not interested in what working people had to say about the changes she wanted to make. Whether the minister would be receptive was unclear. "I guess we'll see." Ansell-Bridges helped facilitate the earlier event for opposition MPs and media to hear from union members about the equity changes, which were passed within a couple of days of being announced. Labour and Green MPs had planned the event - held in Labour's larger caucus room - last week, inviting a handful of women and their families. Decrying a newspaper opinion article in Parliament which criticised female MPs for backing the legislation, van Velden quoted from it - using the c-word in Parliament for the first time. Labour's spokesperson for Women Jan Tinetti addressed that at the start of the meeting on Thursday, saying there had been some "deliberate distractions" from the government over the reaction to its move. She said she was frustrated and angry about the legislative changes and would continue to fight them. Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
