Latest news with #payequity
RNZ News
3 days ago
- Business
- RNZ News
Christchurch protesters confront Finance Minister Nicola Willis over pay equity
Protesters outside Addington Raceway, where Finance Minister Nicola Willis addressed business leaders. Photo: Nathan McKinnon/RNZ Protesters have rallied against the government's pay-equity legislation at a post-budget business lunch featuring Finance Minister Nicola Willis in Christchurch. About 50 people chanted, waved banners and flags, and yelled through megaphones, as Willis entered the Addington Raceway event centre to speak to Canterbury business leaders. Public Service Association delegate and library worker Sioniann Byrnes, who was on parental leave, said the changes were an attack on the working class. "The library assistant pay equity claim was one of the 33 that was basically stopped in it's tracks," she said. "I think what they've done is shafted a whole lot of people, who've done a lot of robust work to try and fix pay and equity that has been going on for a long time. Protesters make their voices heard. Photo: Nathan McKinnon/RNZ "I think it is frankly disgusting." Byrnes hoped her four-month-old daughter, whom she was holding at the time, would not have to deal with the issue of pay equity in future. E tū delegate Keri Makiri was concerned about the effect of the legislation on partner, two taimaiti (children) and four mokopuna (grandchildren). "The changes are absolutely diabolical and rip the hearts out of lower-paid workers," he said. New Zealand Nurses Organisation delegate and nurse Maree Vincent was rallying for not just the pay equity of nurses, but also for carers and support workers. "'We're back to square one," she said. "All we are asking is to be paid the same as our male counterparts in our jobs and the same as our nurses in our hospitals." Budget documents revealed the tightening of the pay-equity regime - passed under urgency in early May - would net the government $2.7 billion every year or $12.8 billion in total over the next four years. The pay-equity changes meant workers would face a higher threshold to prove they were underpaid , because of sex discrimination. Finance Minister Nicola Willis addresses Christchurch business leaders. Photo: Nathan McKinnon/RNZ Inside, Willis told the audience that the savings were significant. "The government remains committed to the concept of pay equity and, in fact, New Zealand continues to have a legislated, workable pay-equity regime for the raising of pay-equity claims and for the settlement of those claims. "The government itself continues to have funding put aside to settle claims we anticipate will come through in the future." Willis said the pay-equity regime had departed from addressing sex-based discrimination into issues that could be dealt with in normal bargaining rounds. "Without teaching you to suck eggs, pay equity is different from equal pay. Equal pay is that you and you, if you do the same job, should be paid the same amount. "That concept is protected in law and must always be." Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero , a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
RNZ News
25-05-2025
- Politics
- RNZ News
Pay equity changes: 'People's select committee' formed to gather evidence instead of 'high-flying cliches'
Dame Marilyn Waring. Photo: Supplied Former National MP Dame Marilyn Waring has gathered a group of female former MPs to hold their own 'people's select committee' on the government's pay equity changes . The unofficial committee is rounded out with former MPs Jackie Blue, Jo Hayes and Belinda Vernon from National, Nanaia Mahuta, Lianne Dalziel, Steve Chadwick and Lynne Pillay from Labour, Ria Bond from New Zealand First and Sue Bradford from the Greens. All are working on a 'pro bono' - unpaid - basis. Independent consultant Amy Ross, previously the Public Service Commission's lead on pay equity, and former Parliamentary librarian and researcher Bessie Sutherland would provide additional research support, and would be paid. Dame Marilyn said they were planning to hold their first session, hearing from submitters, in Wellington on 11 August with subsequent sittings via Zoom to allow for submitters to attend from around the country. All sessions would be public. She said they would be aiming to gather the evidence the government should have. "I sat in a Parliament that was bedeviled by urgency under Muldoon... on many occasions. But my beef here is, where was the evidence? "I'm sure it's there, but it has not had a vehicle for publicity. It has not been brought together in a consolidated, rigorous way for people to make their own decisions, as opposed to just listening to a lot of kind of high-flying cliches." The changes sparked protests nationwide. Photo: RNZ/Marika Khabazi Some of the submitters on the original bill - like Business NZ - had changed their minds without explaining why, she said. "We can see that 600 people or groups made submissions the last time the legislation was up for amendment, and we'll be sorting through those to invite key people who made submissions business New Zealand, EMA (Employers and Manufacturers Association), a whole range. "We'll be inviting the 33 groups whose claims were effectively disbanded by this legislation, and we will hope to write a report for the public and for you all by Christmas." While they would be unable to compel people to appear as Parliament could, they could offer confidentiality and anonymity to some submitters, she said. "I expect from both the public and private sector that things will 'fall off a truck'," she said. While the Public Service Association (PSA), the Council of Trade Unions and Whānau Manaaki Kindergartens were also providing support, Dame Marilyn said the idea was entirely hers. The former MPs gathered in less than a week. "It was all my initiative. I did have a friend inside the PSA with whom I was corresponding about the legislation... and she said to me, can you think of anything? So I went for a long swim - which is when I think - and by the time I'd finished the swim, I thought, 'We'll have a select committee.' "I started making calls on the seventh [of May], and it was over by the 12th." She rejected any suggestion the committee's view was already bedded in, saying they would look at the changes made by the government and the evidence for and against. "No. It's an evidence-gathering mission," she said. "There's going to be a really sound report. The government says that it wants to progress pay equity claims, the opposition is saying that it will rescind this and again address the legislation. So we're doing them all a good turn." However, they did appear to agree that the process the coalition had taken in passing the legislative changes was inappropriate. "Well, that's exactly how I couched my invitation to them - that we wanted evidence." She said they were negotiating with Speaker Gerry Brownlee, hoping to hold the first session at Parliament - but Parliament itself would not be providing any organisational support. Finance Minister Nicola Willis. Photo: RNZ / Samuel Rillstone PSA national secretary Fleur Fitzsimons said they were "enormously proud" to be supporting the initiative, and would be making their own submission, "however, this should not have been necessary". "The government - without any signaling during the election campaign and no ability for women to have their say in a select committee - committed constitutional vandalism and wage theft on a national scale. We really want the opportunity to be heard about how we achieve pay equity for New Zealand women," she said. PSA national secretary Fleur Fitzsimons. Photo: RNZ / Samuel Rillstone "The government say they want to achieve that too, so they should have nothing to be scared of in setting up their own select committee. However, given they are unwilling to do that at this stage, we're very supportive and welcoming of this 'people's select committee'." In a statement, National Council of Women spokesperson Dellwyn Stuart said the women's organisations that made up their membership were shocked by "the arrogance displayed by the coalition government". "This government is gaslighting women. It says one thing, and does the opposite. They have executed, under stealth, the biggest setback for women in 35 years. "Through this people's select committee a vital platform for women's voices will be restored, and we encourage women and their representative organisations to make submissions." Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
RNZ News
24-05-2025
- Politics
- RNZ News
Mediawatch: Political rows and newspaper column blur focus on pay equity
The c-bomb heard around the media. Photo: RNZ Mediawatch Anyone watching the 6pm news bulletins on TVNZ 1 and Three simultaneously last Wednesday might have been tempted to call jinx. "This pay equity issue isn't going away is it?" Simon Dallow asked TVNZ political editor Maiki Sherman on 1News . In reply she said the row about it would roll on right up to the Budget. "The pay equity debate is showing no signs of abating," said Lloyd Burr on ThreeNews . It was true. The story was sticking around almost as stubbornly as the gender pay gap. Pay equity has been on almost every homepage, front page, and news bulletin for the better part of two weeks. A lot of that coverage - particularly early on - was negative to downright angry. On Dame Anne Salmond said she was "incandescent with rage" over the halting of 33 existing pay equity claims which would have to start again under a new, more stringent scheme. In an opinion column for The Post , Stuff's national affairs editor Andrea Vance accused six senior female MPs of acting like a word beginning with 'c' - a word still at number two on the BSA's list of terms New Zealanders rate as most offensive. The column last Sunday that caused a storm in the House - eventually. Photo: Sunday Star Times Disability support worker Jo-Chanelle Pouwhare was equally blunt on 1News . "They can kiss my fat arse ," she told Sherman when asked what she would say to the female MPs who supported the law change. "Kate Sheppard will be rolling in her grave over this," Three Gals One Beehive podcast co-host Esther Robinson told listeners. The living weren't too hot on the move either. "What the f***?" was Robinson's co-host Georgina Stylianou's response to the political management of the issue. Maybe the government's handling was a bit WTF because it wasn't quite anticipating such an intense barrage of bad press. It took a few days to come up with some messaging in response. But once it did, it really hammered it hard. "All we have done is fix the law that was unworkable and also unaffordable and that compared librarians to fisheries officers," Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said under questioning in Parliament. "The problem is Labour designed a pay equity regime that was so loose and unworkable it resulted in social workers being compared to detectives, librarians with fisheries officers," senior Cabinet minister Chris Bishop said on X . "If you look at the comparators that were being used to determine whether it was work of equal value, for example, female admin workers were being considered with male mechanical engineers, or female librarians with male fisheries officers," said social development minister Louise Upston, in an Instagram reel recorded in a car . ACT was even more concise, posting a female librarian and a male fisheries officer with an equals sign in between them to X, along with the words "this is what pay equity looks like under Labour". That sparked a round of fact-checking (including from Hayden Donnell ). Three Waikato University lecturers teamed up on The Conversation to explain why comparisons between quite different sectors were a feature, rather than a bug, of the former pay equity legislation. "Pay equity seeks to make visible and fix the deep, structural inequalities that have historically seen women's work undervalued compared to men's work. It's about ensuring jobs that are different but of equal value are paid similarly, as a way to achieve gender equality," their article said. Lawyer Fiona McMillan told RNZ's Nights finding jobs of different-but-equal value in male-dominated fields sometimes meant comparing roles that were dissimilar at first glance. "Parties weren't looking for odd comparators for the fun of it. But often comparators weren't close to home because either they didn't exist - or those close to home were female-dominated anyway, so it wasn't of assistance." But these explanations barely had time to clear the political windshield before more mudslinging messed it up again. For a while, journalists were distracted by a lengthy argument between National and Labour over who was lying about what. Lloyd Burr's ThreeNews video editor did a great job of making duelling accusations delivered at separate times in different places into a coherent conversation. Burr also wrote an explainer which went through the political back-and-forth, before pointing out this semantic debate risked taking the story away from its central facts. "The truth of it is this: women who were in the process of a pay equity claim with the government will get a pay rise under the new system, but it won't be as much and it will take much longer to get." Despite all of this, the plight of those women remained in the headlines until Wednesday afternoon, when ACT's Brooke van Velden denoted a c-bomb in Parliament. "I do not agree with the clearly gendered and patrionising language that Andrea Vance used to reduce senior Cabinet minister to girl bosses, hype squads, references to 'girl math' and c****," she said, with reference to Andrea Vance's controversial opinion piece . In politics, there's something called a dead cat strategy. If you're in trouble, the wisdom goes, just throw a dead cat on the table. Pretty soon everyone will have forgotten what they were talking about originally and start discussing the dead cat. In this case, cat could be replaced with another slightly less savoury word beginning with c. At the very least, we know van Velden's historic entry into Hansard was pre-planned. It came as a response to a notified written question from Labour's Jan Tinetti, which referenced a section of Vance's scathing article for The Post . RNZ's political editor Jo Moir confirmed the ACT MP had done some groundwork before making her response. "It was a really bizarre decision by Labour yesterday... thinking it would be some sort of ammunition in the House - and to put it on notice so that Brooke van Velden had more than a couple of hours to think about how she was going to respond to it," she said. "It meant she had time to go to the Clerk of the House and check whether she could use the c-word in the House." If this was a media distraction tactic from the government, it worked impeccably. Every major news website in the country led with Van Velden's c-bomb. It was the lead story on 1News . ThreeNews delivered a bulletin-opening play on words. "To C or not to C - that was the question for parliament when workplace relations minister Brooke van Velden chose to use the c-word in full today," said presenter Samantha Hayes. The following morning, TVNZ's Breakfast brought in a language expert to discuss the nuances of calling someone the c word. That interview was interesting but, as Moir noted on RNZ, it was also a sign that the coverage had strayed quite a long way from the original topic - pay equity for low-paid women. "Now everyone's stopped talking about the issues that Labour had been on this - and are now talking about what language is appropriate or inappropriate and whether a former minister of women was right in raising remarks from a column that many believe was misogynistic." Labour MP Kieran McAnulty echoed that lament while sitting shoulder to shoulder with Chris Bishop on TVNZ's Breakfast . "The billions of dollars earmarked for future settlements that would have gone to women workers isn't going to now. That is the issue we really want to focus on. There's been a few distractions and attempts to point the finger elsewhere and 'hey, look over here', but those things remain and matter to millions of New Zealanders." They do matter, though it might have helped if Labour's own MP and former minister for women hadn't brought up Vance's column in a written Parliamentary question. The past week has been a lesson in how both how forceful and single-minded our media can be - and how easy it is to divert them. There's no easy solution. When someone dumps a dead 'c' on the table in Parliament it's hard not to talk about it. But in the end a debate about media ethics is probably not the most important thing in this story. That would be the thousands of low-paid women who won't be getting a pay rise they were counting on, at least in the near future. Even if new - and potentially sweary - developments arise, their story doesn't go away. Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero , a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
E&E News
22-05-2025
- Business
- E&E News
EPA watchdog flags concerns over remote worker data
The EPA Office of Inspector General has found pay-equity issues linked to a lack of data on the location of teleworking or remote employees. At issue: differing pay scales based on cost of living. The IG report concluded, 'EPA cannot ensure that employees are paid the correct amount because it doesn't have comprehensive or reliable data to verify employees' work locations.' Michael Molina, the Office of Mission Support's principal deputy assistant administrator, agreed to come up with a plan to verify each year an employee's location, resolving the report's recommendation. Advertisement Heightened surveillance measures have already been implemented, according to a memo Molina sent to employees last month.
RNZ News
22-05-2025
- Business
- RNZ News
Budget 2025: Government books to return to surplus after three years
Photo: RNZ An uncertain economic outlook and slower recovery will keep government finances in deficit for the next three years before a return to surplus. The Budget forecasts a $3 billion a year lower tax take, while expenses are about $1 billion higher than forecast in the December update, resulting in the budget deficit peaking at $12 billion in the coming year and staying higher than expected before a surplus of $200 million in 2029. Finance Minister Nicola Willis said the Budget was aimed at securing and enhancing economic recovery. "Budget 2025 responds to New Zealand's long term challenges with initiatives to boost growth, investment, and savings," Willis said. "There are targeted investments in essential services and infrastructure... And reforms fix financial holes in the government books." Treasury forecast this year's deficit, using the newly introduced calculation excluding ACC costs, to the end of June would be $10.2 billion, about $2.7 billion lower than forecasted. The deficit will peak in the coming year at $12.1 billion, nearly $2 billion more than the December forecast, with the 2027 forecast nearly double the previous forecast at $8.1 billion. Willis said she was proud to get deficits lower and reduce debt levels. The Budget has used close to $13 billion from the now-revamped pay equity scheme . Treasury economic forecasts were pulled back in the near term because of uncertainty about the global outlook and a slower economic rebound after last year's recession. Growth was forecast to be slower for the rest of this year before picking up and sitting near three percent a year for the next three years. Unemployment is forecast to be near the peak and is expected to fall below five percent in the next two years, while inflation is forecast to stay close to the Reserve Bank's two percent target point for the next few years. Businesses were offered a tax break for new machinery and plants through a larger and quicker depreciation of assets. The Investment Boost incentive will allow businesses to claim 20 percent of the cost of the asset immediately, compared to the current 10.5 percent rate. Willis said the enhanced tax break would help drive growth. "Investment Boost delivers more bang for buck than a company tax cut because it only applies to new investments, not those in the past." The policy was forecast to cost the tax take about $1.7 billion a year in foregone tax, but was said to be likely left economic growth by one percent and wagers by 1.5 percent over the next 20 years, with much of that in the first five years. Net debt is forecast to peak at 43.5 percent of GDP in 2025 and is forecast to remain above the government's 40 percent ceiling for the following three years. The KiwiSaver retirement scheme was given a makeover with a staggered increase over the next two years in the minimum default contribution rates to four percent from the current three percent, with 16-18 year olds also to be eligible for contributions. Willis said the changes would make KiwiSaver more sustainable and encourage people to save more for their houses. However, the government halved its own annual contribution to $260 a year, and withdrawing that from anyone earning over $180,000 a year. The move was expected to save the government about $400 million, while it was assumed that employers would offset their contribution through lower wages.
