Collective action:
Do get in touch if you're aware of something I haven't added. Thanks in advance for your help!
*Pay equity petition - initiated by Labour's Women's Affairs spokesperson, Sue Moroney. *Media statement launching it, *Phil Goff's statement in support, *Support from the New Zealand Educational Institute, *Hand Mirror post on the petition. I'll put up a link to it online when it's available, in the meantime if you email me I'll send it back to you as a PDF.
Past collective activity:
Pay Equity Faxathon on March 6th - organised by The Hand Mirrovistas (thanks to Kiwipolitico, No Right Turn, The Standard, Ideologically Impure, Kiwipolitico again and Just Left, NRT again for promoting it) and there's an update on spreading the word too. * It looks as though some organisations are doing the faxathon today (Monday 9th), ah well, the most important thing is that the message gets through, not which day the faxes arrive :-)
Protests in Hamilton on March 6th - organised by Trade Unions Waikato
Bloggers in favour of continuing pay equity work:
Quick hit: Pay equity for women is just too expensive - Julie at The Hand Mirror
Women come last under National - Idiot/Savant at No Right Turn
Actions speak louder than words - all_your_base at The Standard (pointing out the dissonance between National's courtship of the women's vote and the cuts they are making)
Sorry, girlfolk, your equality is getting in the way of my ideology - Queen of Thorns of Ideologically Impure (with delightful raging against the manchine)
Why the National Party killed the pay-equity inquiries - frog at Frogblog (who could do with a hand in the comments, if anyone has a log-in there)
Women are paying for bankers excesses - Anita at Kiwipolitico (with particularly interesting comment thread, imho)
Friday Feminist - Laurie Shrage - Deborah of In A Strange Land (and here)
Equal Rates - the eponymous MacDoctor (who picks up the common refrain, what did Labour do in 9 years of power? Well for a start they put in place these pay equity programmes that National just cut, silly!)
Only if Convenient - Lucy at Too Hip to Be Nats adds her 10c in support.
Mediocrity Watch - Russell Brown of Hard News focuses on the impact on special education (and while there is a lot of discussion of bees in the comment thread, it's worth wading through that for the further thoughts of PA readers.)
Let the Nats know women matter too - Steve at The Standard promotes the faxathon, the comment thread sadly descends into a discussion of country music because it's too hard to talk about pay equity.
Action! Pay Equity Faxathon at The Hand Mirror - Queen of Thorns at Ideologically Impure is mad as hell and ready for faxtion!
Pay Equity Faxathon - three sleeps to go! - Julie shares a poster sent in by a reader.
Nurses and police officers - Anita at Kiwipolitico considers these two professions and the comment thread explodes
A wee pay equity anecdote - Anna of our own fine blog has a real world example.
Pay Equity Faxathon - Michael at Just Left describes National's actions as akin to "peeing on the lamp-post". Ewwww.
progressing pay equity - Anjum writes here about what Labour did through it's 9 years, with lots of great links.
Pay Equity - Phoebe Fletcher of Tumeke brings together some of the research and also makes a plea to National and its supporters about why pay equity should matter to them too.
Faxathon for pay equality organised - Byron Clark writes on Instablogs about the faxathon and the broader issue of pay equity in Aotearoa.
*Same problems everywhere - Idiot/Savant of No Right Turn looks at recession-based reasoning behind axing pay equity steps in the UK too.
Bloggers supporting the end of the pay equity programmes:
I've not found a thing. I have however noticed that almost none of the right-wing blogs have mentioned the cut to the pay-equity programmes, despite it being front-page news (in the Herald anyway).
Yes I am really posting about pay equity - Psycho Milt at No Minister explains why right wingers don't see it as an issue, and puts his case for why some of those arguing for pay equity are ticking him off.
*NZ-centred research
(This is a new area that I am hoping to grow in coming weeks)
*Comparison of Wages and Costs of Education and Training - Ministry of Women's Affairs, 2006
Media articles:
Government kills pay-equity inquiries - NZ Herald, Friday Feb 20th.
Ryall issues warning over pay rises - TVNZ, Friday Feb 20th.
Ryall warns public service to keep pay rises within budgets - TV3, Friday Feb 20th.
Media statements:
No pay and no say for women workers - Green Party
Working women deserve better from Government - Council of Trade Unions
Pay Equity is a social justice issue - NZ Association of Social Workers
School cleaners ask "are we next to face the axe?" - Service & Food Workers Union
Government turns the clock back on women's rights - NZ Educational Institute
Huge gender imbalance in CYF - Family First (who rather manage to miss the point)
Govt making it harder to recruit for state sector - Public Service Association
Wong fails to stand up for equal pay for women - Labour Party
Government scraps pay equity investigations - Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union (kind of a news article, rather than a media statement?)
Media statement from Working Women's Resource Centre
*Govt should honour pay equity on international working women's day [PDF] - NZ Educational Institute
*Moroney: launches petition for pay equity - Labour
*Goff and Moroney push for pay equity - Labour
The Tertiary Education Union also has a great page with links to all sorts of resources on pay equity. And they've picked up the faxathon and ran it on their front page on Friday the 6th March.
Letters to the editor:
NZ Herald on Mon 23rd and Tues 24th February
Last updated Mon 16th March (* next to newer additions)
3 comments:
Bloggers supporting the end of the pay equity programmes:
I'm yet to find any
Well, I thought about posting on it but I don't actually support ending the programmes, at least not without clear evidence that they're a failure - and a stuffed shirt like Ryall certainly isn't someone I'd trust to decide that. But in the interests of playing devil's advocate:
I'd like a little more honesty from the pay equity side. For instance, if CYF really is paying female social workers 9% less than male ones, the women have a fairly straightforward legal avenue for resolving things, as CYF would be in breach of the law. I presume what we're actually looking at is a situation where the male social workers on average have longer service histories and are more likely to have taken on extra responsibilities or be promoted, resulting in a male/female difference in average salaries across the organisation.
It's certainly possible that the evil patriarchy at CYF prefers to promote men over women, but I work in a female-dominated industry and I've seen no sign of it. What I have seen plenty of over the years is capable women who aren't rising through the ranks because:
1. They're more likely than men to take years out of the profession looking after children; and/or
2. They'd actually prefer to reduce their hours so they could spend more time at home, rather than taking on more responsibility; and/or
3. They're far more likely than their male counterparts to consider their spouse's career the primary one, and therefore to avoid opening themselves up to the kind of additional commitment that promotion brings with it.
The above aren't rules, they're matters of more-likely vs less-likely, but apply those more/less likelies across a large organisation and you're going to see a difference in average salaries.
Yes, all three of the factors mentioned above are absolutely about sexism. What I'm struggling with is what CYF, the SSC or Tony Ryall are meant to be able to do about them. If it turns out that the pay gap really is about things like the three factors above rather than evil pointy-haired bosses, how exactly will these pay-equity programmes address them?
(Sorry this sat in moderation Psycho Milt. Everything was set to moderation for the blackout from last night. There was no implication of breaching our comment policy or anything like that.)
Well for a start there's the Gender Neutral Job Evaluation tool which was created, piloted and then was in the process of being rolled out under the last Government. It is the future of that roll out that has been cancelled now.
We hope to have a post coming soon with more detail on the pay equity programme as it was and where it might have gone next.
No worries, I was working on blacking out our blog at the time so the reason for the comments moderation was clear enough.
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