Victory For Women Workers

The National Council of Women of New Zealand (NCWNZ) is celebrating that the Government has accepted the majority view of the Select Committee that the equal pay section (Part 2) of the Employment Law Relations Bill should be deleted, therefore retaining existing legislation on the matter.

"The voice of reason was heard by the Select Committee," said Beryl Anderson, National President of NCWNZ.

"Since its inception in 1896 NCWNZ has had policy stressing equal pay for equal work and for pay equity (equal pay for work of equal value) which the proposed legislation would have removed."

"While we acknowledge that the current Equal Pay legislation was framed for a different employment scene, NCWNZ strongly supports the principles of the 1972 Equal Pay Act and in particular the importance of recognising both equal pay and pay equity," stated Beryl Anderson. "NCWNZ looks forward to a redesign of equal pay legislation to take account of the issues raised."

Based on Statistics New Zealand figures, women are now 47 percent of all employees in New Zealand and on average they earn 84.3 percent of the average hourly earnings of men. The concentration of women in a narrow

range of low paid occupations using skills such as caring and relationship management suggests that work that has been seen as being traditionally ‘women's work’ is not valued as highly as work that is considered to be

'men's work'.

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